“I’ll go find him.” Tera stands from the recliner and heads toward the door. Just as she reaches for the handle, the door swings open, and the hooded woman who joined them in that last battle enters. The face mask is gone, but with her head bent, I can’t see her features. This is her first time visiting the room in the days since Eshe’s been here, and I surge to my feet, stalking across the room toward her.
“Who the hell are you?” I growl.
For a moment, she doesn’t move, doesn’t answer me. Just as I’m ready to drag a reply out of her by any means necessary, she lifts her head and tugs her hood off.
My chest tightens, my lungs stuttering.
I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe.
It’s an impossibility as I meet gray-blue eyes identical to mine.
As I look into the light brown face of my sister.
Miriam.
I stumble backward, a dull, deafening roar filling my head, roaring in my ears. The floor sways, rises to meet me. My back slams into the wall, the impact jarring.
And none of it penetrates, none of it, because I’m staring at a ghost.
“Miriam,” I rasp.
After a brief hesitation, she nods.
I shake my head as if trying to cast off this surreal reality that feels like a dream.
“Miriam,” I repeat. “It can’t be… How…?” I can’t complete my sentences. Can’t get my words together to form a coherent thought. Not when the baby sister I believed was dead is standing in front of me. Alive. Not covered in blood and bruises.
From the depths of my battered and dirty soul, a hoarse cry barrels up my chest, claws its way into my throat, and escapes me before I can trap it.
In two strides, I’m across the room and wrapping my armstight around my little sister. She stiffens against me, and I almost back away, let her go. I, more than anyone, understand space, avoidance of touch. But I can’t. I can’t let her go.
Because a part of me is terrified that if I do, she will disappear.
After several long moments, her body gradually relaxes, and she lifts her arms, sliding them around my waist. And clinging hard to me.
A shudder ripples through me, and I draw her closer, pressing my cheek to the top of her head. How long we stand there, I don’t know. We have an audience in the room, but when I finally lift my head, I look around and am surprised to see it’s empty except for Eshe still sleeping in her hospital bed.
“Miriam.” I say her name again because, shit, I can. “How are you here? And not just in this room, buthere? Alive? Where have you been? Last time I saw you…”
I can’t finish that thought, don’t even want the image in my brain.
“Can we sit down? This might take a while.”
“Yeah.”
We get seated on the couch, and I just stare at her. She’s a replica of Sharon Bowden, our mother. And except for the eyes, little remains of the girl I remember.
I take in the hood. The formfitting black jacket and cargo pants. The combat boots. Remember the mask from three days ago.
And it clicks.
“You’re Poison.”
“And you’re the Huntsman.”
Silence settles between us, and the heavy knowledge of what we have become echoes in that quiet.
“Tell me everything,” I murmur, though part of me is afraid to hear her truth.
