I sat back on the bed, hands burrowing into my hair, easing the tension that was building up like a dam ready to burst.
“What if—” I started, but half of me didn't recognise that I'd spoken. My jaw worked. "There's n-no wa-ay."
The stutter was soft, like a handshake from an old friend. From the child who’d stopped talking until he was fourteen, who had learnt to hold every emotion behind an iron door. Unlike those years of silence, now my voice only disappered when I was anxious. When something happened that made it feel like the world was resting on my shoulders and I couldn't think, let alone breathe.
Since the breaches started, I hadn't lost it until now, and if this, whoever it really was, kept taking from us as though every door we'd locked they had the keys to, I was scared I'd wake up one day and find that fourteen year old staring right back at me.
With my head in my hands, I shook it. “I—I can’t l-letthem—”
In the silence that followed the thumping of my heart, all I could hear was the ghost of my sister’s laugh, sharp and wrong, and the hollow it left when the world didn’t protect her. When I didn't protect her. I’d poured that hollow into the company. I’d made walls that would keep others safe. If those walls collapsed, what had the pain been for?
I scrubbed my face with the heels of my hands, hard enough to sting, then shoved back from the screen. The lights from the city below hummed like she had. But it wasn’t enough to calm me. I needed to move. Sitting still made the panic grow teeth.
I went to the storage closet and dragged out my luggage, unfolding the compartments and rummaging until I was seated by the window, looking out at London, with three paints, one brush, and a small canvas.
For emergencies.
It was the one thing Oscar always teased me about—“Marcus, you and your emoitional support art projects.” I knew he'd said it to make me laugh, but he didn’t know. He’d never see the way colours calmed the static in my head. Paint was all mess and permission. It didn’t care about threat models or indemnity clauses. It accepted sloppy hands.
I opened a tube.
Cadmium red. Undeniable favourite.
I squeezed until a bead of paint swallowed the brush. The motion was mechanical at first: load, smear, press. The first stroke was ugly and fierce. The second followed, angrier, then softer, like a man arguing with himself in a foreign language.
“I—I ca-n’t l-lose it,” I told the empty room, the stutter more pronounced now. But the paint heard me. It took the cracks and filled them in. Every last one.
I didn’t think about strategy. I didn’t think about the logs. I painted a hand—broad, protective, cupped like a shield. Then another hand, smaller, reaching.
By the time the fear ebbed a fraction, the canvas was half a confession and half a map of where my head had been. My knuckles were slick with colour. My breath had slowed. The stutter loosened like a knot.
“I’ll— I’ll fi-x it,” I said, to myself, to the paint, to whatever had picked Jamie up and handed him back as a weapon.
The words felt like a promise and a threat all at once. One I went to sleep reciting.
chapter twenty five
i wanna trade fates with ophelia
Ihadn’t been to an art gallery in literally a million years.
We sometimes went for our classes, and before the attack, if you couldn’t find me, all you had to do was head to The Met or the Whitney, and you’d find me wandering around, usually in the Impressionist or Post-Impressionist sections.
I used to make a beeline for Monet’sWater Lilies, or if I had Mum on my mind, I’d hover around any Mary Cassatt painting I could find. It was the only time in my life that I’d feel any sort of safety and control. And for someone whose life had been out of her hands practically from the moment she was born, it was no wonder I craved the feeling. How it became everything to me once I’d found it.
The only other place I’d felt like that was when I was surrounded by my friends.
Which meant right now, with Daisy by my side, I felt that feeling in buckets.
“I still don’t know how you roped me into this,” Daisy groaned as we walked up the stone steps to the entrance of theTate Britain, showered in morning sun. “I feel like I’ve been run over by a freight train.”
I slung my arm around her shoulder, carrying her up the last few steps. “And have I mentioned that you’re my new favourite now?” I squeezed her a little. “It means a lot that you came with me.”
She tugged her cardigan—with the little green stars on the elbows—around her tighter. “Like you had a choice. Goldie is still throwing up, Rory is nursing Finn back to his usual sarcastic self, and Tristan has tour rehearsal. I was the only one sober enough to let you convince me that this would be fun.”
My hands slipped into hers, clutching them between us. “And it will be. I promise!” I set them down as I turned to her, making our way through the entrance along with the other eager tourists. “I could have brought Jess and let you wallow in shame at your table dancing—”
“Please never mention that again—”
