We watch the sunset together. The windows are open just enough to let the evening air in, and I shiver, pulling a blanket over my bare legs. He notices, and without a word, he tucks theends of the blanket around me like a little burrito. It’s such a small thing, but it means everything.
As the last of the sun disappears behind the skyline, his phone buzzes. He groans, then checks it. His brow furrows, then smooths out, and when he looks at me, there is something new in his face.
"That was Rhett," he says.
I sit up, trying not to look too eager. "Are they okay?"
He nods. "Isolde had the baby. It’s a boy."
The words knock something loose in my chest. I press my palm to my heart, as if to slow it down.
"What’s his name?"
"Maverick," Julian says. "He’s already got more hair than Rhett supposedly."
I try to picture it—a new life, clean and untouched, nothing to inherit but what they choose to give him. I wonder if he will ever know about the blood and fire that made his world possible.
Julian slides his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close. I let my head fall onto his shoulder, let myself feel happy for someone else for the first time in forever.
For a long time, we just sit. We don’t talk, we don’t move. The sky goes from orange to indigo to black, and the city flickers on in a million points of light.
"I never thought we’d see it," I murmur.
"See what?"
"The world after. The one we made."
He turns to me, takes my chin in his hand, and kisses me so soft I want to bottle this moment forever.
"We deserve it," he says.
He’s right. We do.
I let my eyes drift shut, the sound of the city like a lullaby, and for once, I don’t dream about the past.
I dream about all the mornings to come.
Chapter 20: Julian
Ihatehospitals.Notbecause of the possibility of death or the possibility of pain—they never scared me, not even as a child—but because of the smell. Hospitals reek of defeat, a mixture of bleach and boiled skin and the black mold they can never fully eradicate, no matter how much they try. The walls are always white, the floors always shining, but the air is rotting with the flesh of people who weren’t strong enough to survive.
Yet here I am, guiding Amara through the east entrance of St. Matthews, shoes tapping perfectly in sync along the pristine marble. She walks beside me, head down, her hair damp from the shower, the back of her neck still red from where I bit her. I want to bite it again, want to drag her into a janitor’s closet andfuck her until she forgets why we came, but she’s fixated on the sign for the Maternity Suite, so I let her lead.
The elevator is glass and steel, open on one side to a view of the city, and I catch our reflection as we rise: she’s in a basic T-shirt and jeans, I’m in a black button-down with sleeves rolled to the elbows. Her hair is mussed and her eyes have bags under them, her lips chapped and red. We look like a couple of deviants, barely cleaned up from the night before. I like that. I like that we don’t belong here.
She touches the glass with her fingers, tracing the skyline, and I watch the light chase the veins under her skin.
“Are you nervous?” I ask, voice low.
She shakes her head. “Not about the baby.”
“About what?”
She hesitates, then sighs. “I dunno, I don’t really know how to hold a baby.”
I don’t know how to answer that without sounding parental so I just take her hand and rub it with my thumb.
The elevator pings, the doors opening onto a hushed corridor lined with fake ferns and framed certificates. The staff at the desk wear pastel scrubs and forced smiles, but they go silent when they see us. I ignore them and walk straight to room 1208.
