“Fuck, Willa,” I curse, but there’s no anger behind it as she stands above me, breathing hard. “I should have known you’d sleep with a weapon under your pillow, you vicious woman.”
Willa’s eyes flicker around the room, before settling back on me as she slowly comes back to herself. She blinks, her brow furrowing as she seems to finally notice me sprawled halfway across the overturned chair.
Thick silence envelops the space between us, and I understand suddenly she doesn’t yet trust the world around her as reality.
“You’re safe here, Willa. From the horrors of the world and the ones in your mind. You’re safe with me.”
Agony and desperate longing crash over her face, so at odds with the steel wall usually erected around her. Her fingers loosen, and the sword clatters to the floor. Then she does the most heartbreaking thing of all—she curls up beside the bed, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She begins to rock, like the movement will keep everything inside; like if she curls her body tight enough, she’ll be able to keep herself from breaking apart entirely.
The sight of it, of her sorrow and loneliness displayed so openly, sends another wave of violence surging through me. I will shred apart whoever is haunting Willa piece by piece. Peel the skin from their bones and decompose each nerve, each organ, bit by bit, until they beg me for death. There may not be imagination for cruelty on the mainland anymore, but mine—mine is endless.
I climb gingerly over the chair, straightening to brush off my pants. “Who were they?” I ask roughly, the grit of my teeth the only thing anchoring my anger. The only thing keeping it from spilling out and destroying everything in this room.
Willa doesn’t look at me, only tucks her head further into her knees.
“If you don’t tell me, I won’t be able to skin them alive and deliver their rotting corpses to you.” My voice is a dark stain. There is none of the peace death can contain, only the brutality.
But rather than rearing back from it, Willa finally raises her head. “They’re already dead,” she says huskily.
My anger doesn’t abate; it howls in pleasure at her admission. “Did you kill them?”
She nods, and there is no contrition. No regret. My death sings in my veins, crashes against my heart, vibrates in the ribbons around me. “Good,” I snarl, ceding a step closer toward her.
Her confession doesn’t soothe her. If anything, she appears even more lost. “I thought—I thought ending them would end my nightmares, my fear—” Her lip wobbles. “—but it didn’t. No matter how far I run, it never leaves me.”
I go still at her admission. It’s the first time Willa’s allowed me a glimpse of the softness hidden beneath the thorny armor she wraps herself in. There’s an addicting intimacy to it, one that has me wanting far more than the sliver she’s granted.
“The plague…it affects children’s minds the most. Steals everything good about the world and drowns them in despair until they can’t take it anymore.” Her eyes drop to where her fingers twist in her lap. “They hurt themselves to make the pain stop. The world governments couldn’t figure out how to prevent their deaths…how to protect them from themselves. They set up the Amelioration camps to hold them. Most of them die there. And if they don’t…if they manage to get released…they come out as shadows.”
I know all about what her world calls a plague. And even more, I know the reason for its existence. But I don’t say any of this, for fear she’ll stop speaking, and I’ll be denied the pieces of her I’m so desperate for. I hadn’t been able to find any evidence of her past on her body, but perhaps I hadn’t looked deep enough.Maybe all the scars are hidden beneath her skin, imprinted on her bones.
“My sister came down with the plague and was taken to one of the camps. And my father—well, he was desperate to get her back.” Her throat bobs. “He sold me to the doctors in exchange for her. They experimented on me for years trying to find a cure.”
My death spears out from me as fresh rage pummels my chest like a furious wind. At her father, at her government. At the whole fucking world for daring to touch Willa. I have no right to the sudden ferocity of my anger, not when I have my own plans for her, but it pulses through me nonetheless. It’s all I can do to mash my lips together, and ball my fingers into fists at my side.
If Willa notices my rage, she doesn’t acknowledge it. Her gaze is distant and numb, like she’s somewhere far from the Lunaedon. Somewhere memories reach up and tangle themselves around her ankles, pulling her beneath their thrall until she drowns.
“I was there for almost ten years.”
My ribbons jerk and reach toward Willa, their fury and mine mingling viciously. And though I don’t understand why, I know now they have no intention of hurting her. So, I loosen my grip, allowing them to swirl closer, to thread through the air near her. To be her protection against the haunting of memories in a way I cannot.
Willa sighs, watching my death with something like longing. “They never found a cure. And after so long in their labs, I couldn’t take the pain anymore. I knew it was either escape or end up a shadow like everyone else. I escaped. And left all the others to the plague. Left all the other children to die.”
She gnaws on her lip for a long moment, tightening her arms around her knees as shame presses down on her shoulders. “When I got out, I learned none of my pain or sacrifice had evenmattered. My sister killed herself when I was only in the camp for a year.” She meets my eyes. “She was thirteen.”
Willa tenses, almost as if she’s waiting for me to berate her. To shame her for her self-preservation as I have so many times prior. But if I’m honest, I’ve never despised her willingness to do whatever it takes to survive—I envy it. She sees her fierce drive as a flaw, as a reason for contrition, while I see it for the strength it truly is.
“You could have stayed there for centuries,” I tell her softly. “They were never going to find a cure for the plague.”
“You don’t know that,” she replies, though a wary hope edges her voice.
“I do, actually.”
I situate myself on the floor beside her, careful to maintain a healthy space between us as I lean against the bedframe with a stifled groan.
“I told you that Letum and your world are connected…that your plague killed imagination. But imagination dyingisthe plague, Darling. Nothing they find in science will ever be enough to cure it.”
Her lips part, and I force myself not to look at it. To examine my fingers, the wall, anything else, really, aside from the way she’s looking at me, eyes wide with relief.
