I lunged forward to catch the woman before she fell.
Blood spurted from her open neck, spraying my face, my chest, my clothes, as I caught her and cradled her against me. Her eyes were wide, her fingers clawing at her ruined throat. Her lips opened and closed but only blood bubbled out between them.
“Are you insane?” I cried, looking up atKleio.
His lips were set in a grim line but I could see the aversion in his expression. It was clear he didn't necessarily enjoy employing such tactics. But he made no move to help either.
“Heal her,” he repeated, a sense of urgency entering his tone. “She doesn’t have long, Dante. Seconds, not minutes.”
“I don’t know how!” I screamed.
He blinked down at me, unsettled for the first time.
“You didn’t study your Blessings?”Callidoraasked from the table behind us. “You were given the gift of healing and you never used it?”
“We could only heal each other,” I explained quickly. My hands were coated in blood now that I was applying pressure to the girl’s neck, trying to keep her alive for as long as possible. The warmth had leeched from her skin already. Her eyelids were drooping, her lips opening and closing far less frequently.
CallidoraandKleioexchanged a glance, but I didn’t have time to figure out what that might mean.
I flexed my fingers, pressing them into the wound. I'd never done this before, never healed anyone, but Adrian had. And she'd described it to me in great detail while I remainedbed boundfor days after losing my arm in the fifth Trial. I closed my eyes, trying to remember her words, pushing past the pain I felt at even thinking her name once more. I could hear her voice in my mind, the way she'd described what she'd done and how incredible it had been. I could hear her, see her, almostsmellher.
“Dante—” Kleio started.
“Quiet,” I snapped, concentrating.
My fingers were shaking, my breaths coming in heaving gasps, but I heard it all the same. The heartbeat. Faint but there, growing fainter every second. I could feel it as well, in my fingertips, the steady thumping of her heart. It was exactly how Adrian said it would be.
I reached for that beat, wrapping my magic around it, strengthening it. Then I plucked at the threads of flesh and vein I could see in my mind’s eye, weaving them together with a lightmental touch. It felt right, this magic. It felt good. My fingers twitched with the movements I was completing in my mind. Reconnecting the artery, knitting the muscle and flesh back together. I'd never had the best grasp on human anatomy but I didn’t need it. I could see when something was broken which needed healed and the magic itself seemed to guide my hands in an effort to fix it. Because itbelongedthat way, I realized. Because itwantedto be whole.
I didn't open my eyes until I could sense the skin was whole again, until I felt the girl’s heartbeat, strong and thumping wildly against her chest, until the blood dried on my hands and my fingers ceased their shaking.
When I finally raised my gaze to the girl, I found her watching me with wide eyes, hands around her healed throat, staring back at me in wonder.
I pulled my hands away from her, leaving her where she laid onKleio’sblood-stained rug. My eyes snapped up toCallidoraandKleiowho were both watching me with wide eyes, jaws slightly unhinged.
“Dante—”Kleiobegan, but I didn’t wait to hear the rest.
I turned on my feet and stormed to the door, wrenching it open and striding into the midday sun. I only made it three steps before I bent over and heaved the contents of my meager lunch over the garden gate and onto the white lilies below.
Chapter Eight
Adrian
“What are they going to do? If they kill every last one of us, who will serve them at their tables? Who will shine their shoes and launder their luxurious fabrics? Whose backs will they step on to rise into their own superiority? Let them come. I, for one, would rather die a free man than live as a slave.”
– Rebel Leader Marsh Ackley in his Speech of Unity during the Uprising of 1897
Isee Darius with that horrible black bar branded into the center of his forehead, feel the hopelessness that comes with his sentence, and then I’m walking him to the twelfth tunnel once again.
We pass by strangers who stare at us just as we did before only, this time, they aren’t strangers at all. My mother watches us from the crowd lining the stairs to the Deck. Warren and Maurice are beside her. Further down, Milo andBriawatch until we grow close and then they turn away. Olympia is there as well, smug smile on her face as she waves goodbye. Dahlia kneels before the tribunal, her hands bound, her eyes blazing as they meet mine. Graham and Sophie hold each other, tears streamingdown my friends’ cheeks. Harrison shakes his head from beside them, placing a comforting hand on Sophie’s shoulders as she turns her face into Graham’s chest and sobs. A whole host of other figures follow, watching in varying degrees of disappointment and disgust. Jack andLiam,Luca, Felix, Noah, and countless others. Even the ghost of Cyrus and, at the very end of the line,Orsonand Dionne.
Darius’ parents stand huddled together, eyes gleaming withunshedtears as they watch us pass.
Why didn’t you tell us?I can almost hear them pleading in my head.We could have seen him one last time. Why didn’t you tell us?
I turn away from them and follow Darius down the stairs to the Deck, to the twelfth tunnel where the others are already gathering. I see them all there again, the ones from before. The First Ringers I can't remember the names of, the Second Ring girl namedZyawho didn't say a word before she stepped into that gathering abyss. They go through it again, one by one, none of them speaking, all of them completely expressionless, as if carved from stone. One by one, they disappear until it's Darius’ turn. I know it is. But when I turn to say goodbye, it's not Darius who stands behind me.
It's Dante.
