I went back to sleep.
A hand brushed through my hair, occasionally getting tangled in my curls. When the fingers snagged for the fifth time, I managed to whisper, “Quit it.”
The hand disappeared. “Jo.”
I opened my eyes to the chandelier I’d come to know in the brief waking moments between what I imagined were very long stretches of sleep. Or unconsciousness. Or near death, judging by the way Ezra looked down at me. Candlelight cast shadows across his face, but even in the dim light, I could see the pinch around his eyes, the bruises of exhaustion beneath them.
I remembered everything in a terrible rush.
“Julian,” I croaked. The wounds on his forehead. The absence of recognition. The terrible fear that had driven him to hide his face from us.
“He’s in the next room over. His condition … hasn’t improved. We’ve been drugging him so he can rest.” Ezra spoke the words like a miserable confession.
“What about the others?” I asked.
“Nikola is letting all the Generators stay here for now. More have been arriving from other Missions. Former Missions. Word has spread that we’re sheltering them, but none of them are getting better. We don’t know how to help them. Julian—I’m sure he would know what to do. Nikola has been improvising, giving them opportunities to useradiance. Small things. Powering the lights, mostly. It seems to calm them, at least.”
“She’s smart,” I said, wishing my mind didn’t feel like a ball of cotton in comparison.
“Stars, Jo.” Ezra bent over me, brushing his lips against my forehead as he spoke shakily. “Everyone thought you were going to die. I’ve never felt so helpless. What good am I if I can’t heal the people I … my people?”
“I didn’t die.” No one was as surprised by that fact as I was. With Ezra’s help, I sat up gingerly. It took me a moment to catch my breath as my injured thigh screamed at me. “Take me to Julian.”
After I whimpered my way through a few failed steps, Ezra scooped me into his arms, allowing me the dignity of ignoring the sounds I made. “You’ve been feverish for days. You almost lost your leg,” he told me, easing me out the door and across the hall to the room where Julian lay on the center of a bed, his hands folded over his middle. By the rumpled sheets alongside him, it was clear Ezra had been spending time at his side.
Very carefully, Ezra deposited me beside Julian, helping me roll slightly onto my good side so that I could see him. He tucked pillows around me, bolstering me, and I mumbled my thanks, my attention drawn to the healing sores on Julian’s forehead. Whatever they’d done to him, it had clearly taken radiance to do it. Those were burn marks.
Ezra looked at Julian like his heart was shattering. “Jo is here, love.”
I touched the unblemished skin between the marks above Julian’s brow, and his eyes fluttered open. Snatching my hand back, I exhaled. “Sorry. Don’t be scared.”
Julian looked from me to Ezra, who had gone to the other side of the bed. His hair was unkempt, and that, along with the wariness in his eyes, made him look much younger. Ezra and I bracketed him, and I belatedly realized that it likely made him feel trapped.
“We won’t hurt you,” I tried to say. But Julian was already growing more distressed. With a quiet sob, he extended his hands. They glowedwith radiance. Radiance that he needed to expel. He didn’t speak, but I heard his plea anyway. He was confused and in pain that he didn’t understand, but he somehow knew that using radiance would offer him relief.
Generating. All it had ever been was a helpless attempt to make never-ending pain stop. Not a conscious contribution to Progress. Not a purpose or a vocation. Torture.
The cruelty of it took my breath away.
There was nothing in this room that he could properly conduct. Feeling powerless in the face of his desperation, I offered him my hand. He’d told Nikola that he believed in the potential for currents of radiance to alternate, that he’d test it out with me. What better time to try than now? “You won’t hurt me,” I said, “if you let only a little out. Go ahead. I have radiance like you.”
“Jo,” Ezra said, sitting cross-legged beside Julian, “is that a good idea?”
“When has that ever concerned me?” I asked, shrugging one shoulder, which I immediately regretted. Evidently no part of my body had escaped being battered in one way or another.
“I don’t have a better plan,” Ezra acknowledged with a sigh.
Julian stared at my hand for so long that I lost hope he’d try to conduct. But just before I withdrew, his fingertips touched my skin—and itburned.
I bit back a cry, more startled than anything.
Ezra gasped, almost wrenching our hands apart before clearly thinking better of it. “What’s happening?” he asked worriedly.
“I’m all right,” I said tightly. “I think.”
It wasn’t agonizing, but it didn’t feel particularly pleasant. Julian’s radiance tried to flow up my arm, resonating in my nerves. Belatedly, it occurred to me that he could have killed me if he’d unleashed the full extent of his power. But he hadn’t. He was staring at our joined hands, sweat on his forehead, concentration creasing his brow in a way that was painfully familiar.
“That’s good,” I told him. “That’s better.”
