Then it all came together.
Lili clutched the face at the top of the board, Loto’s expression frozen in death, skin sagging, eyes missing. No body.
Just his head.
They werealljust heads.
The entire crew of theAkias…this was all that remained.
A spot of royal blue drew Augustus’s attention.
He dragged his entire body toward it as if weighted by an anchor.
He trudged by Dominik and Maria and Peter and Riley?—
Heads.
Heads.
Heads.
Following that spot of color as if it were his only lifeline.
Each step quieter than the last. The creak of the floor a whisper. Only the color remained. Blue and gold.
His father’s waistcoat.
They’d nailed it to the plank just where a head should have been. And just above that, pinned by a glinting, bloodless blade, was a piece of parchment. Scrawled across the middle wasAugustus’s name.
Augustus yanked the paper free and skimmed the words.
Blaze appeared at his side and read over his shoulder: “‘Come and get me.’”
Augustus balled up the note, his voice like steel across stone. “With fire and blood, then.”
In the end,
When our eyelids
Find their
Infinite darkness,
You will know
That our bodies
Were tiny universes,
And I loved you
With a thousand
Seas.
- Christopher Poindexter
Part Three
