“Yes, but he wanted Paris dead before that. This power struggle didn’t start with you, but it’s nearly gotten you killed on more than one occasion. What if the next hit is successful? What if you don’t survive it? What if I lose youandEllie?”
It’s the first time Poppy has come even remotely close to admitting what Shea has long suspected: that no one is bothering to look for Camellia because she’s already dead. It feels like a light has guttered out. On the table, the fetus stares blackly up at Shea.
“I’m not saying Egor was in the right,” says Poppy, “but it’s clear he’s intelligent. If he says we’re on the cusp of causing some sort of catastrophic chain reaction, don’t you think we should at least try and figure out what that is?”
Outside the RV, Shea can just make out Lys in the dark. He’s seated against the stone, his hood pulled up and his knee bouncing. Restless, the way she’s restless. Electric, the way she’s electric. Her heart tithes a beat, and it’s as if he’s heard it. His knee stills. His eyes find hers through the glass. Quickly, she ducks down into the booth, tugging Poppy with her as she goes.
“God.” She buries her face in her knees. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Do you want me to say it,” asks Poppy, “or was that rhetorical?”
“Rhetorical,” Shea grumbles into her kneecaps.
Everything feels suddenly unendurable. If Camellia was here, she’d force them to grin and bear it. To dump it all out into the open, and then laugh themselves sick over how sideways everything has gone. But Camellia isn’t here. Camellia is gone. And so Shea stuffs it away.
“One of us needs to talk to him,” says Poppy. “You know what they say about ignorance.”
Shea lifts her head from her knees. “It’s bliss?”
“Isthat what they say?” Poppy drops her head onto Shea’s shoulder, nestling in close. “My mom always said it was the root of misfortune.”
•••
Eventually, Poppy climbs into the cab to sleep. Shea stays awake a while longer, loading and reloading the crossbow until it’s a reflex. Until her finger callus and her knuckles ache. She’s conscious, all the while, of Lys watching her through the window.
He’d promised to Turn her. That was the deal they’d struck—a cure for her mother in exchange for a lifetime in the dark. She’d resigned herself to her fate, back at Mercy Ridge. She’s ready. She’s willing.
And she can’t figure out why he keeps yanking the offer away.
Maybe he doesn’t want this anymore. Maybe he finally sees that it wasn’t courage that drove her to his doorstep that first fateful night, but desperation. Maybe he’ll leave her behind the very first moment he can.
Everyone else has.
She spends the better part of an hour trying to garner the courage to go out and confront him. It’s near midnight when she gives up. Rising into a stretch, she heads for the bedroom. Asher is already there, fast asleep on his stomach, one arm draped off the edge. Doing her best not to wake him, she crawls tentatively into bed. He doesn’t stir. She lies there, restless, staring out into the open cabin.
She’s still awake when Poppy takes over the watch, sliding bleary-eyed from her perch. Lys appears a few minutes later, taking in the sleeping arrangements through a shuttered gaze.
“I hope you don’t expect me to be a martyr like Thorley. I’m not built for the floor.”
He collapses onto the bed before she can answer, rolling onto his back alongside her. He lies there quietly, massaging the skin around his horns like he’s rubbing away a headache. She thinks of the man at Van Haut’s, his dying words staining the air:From the fount of the forest comes the age of the beast.She watches Lys in silence, wrestling with indecision, Poppy’s voice urging her on.Ask him. Do it.
“None of the other Mercy Boys are like this,” she starts. “Like you, I mean.”
His mouth sharpens into a wry smile. “Perfect?”
“No.”
“Pretty?”
“Lys.”
“Prodigious?”
“A pain in the ass,” grunts Asher sleepily, and Lys grins into the dark. With Asher awake, the opportunity dissipates. Irritable, he mutters, “Both of you shut up and go to sleep. We have another long drive tomorrow.”
•••
Shea wakes in the predawn dark to the smell of something burning. Panicked, she tries to sit up, and finds herself trapped. In the shuttered dark of the little back bedroom, it takes her several seconds to make sense of her surroundings. She freezes, swallowing around her heartbeat. Her head is nestled against Lys’s sternum, her hand splayed flat against his stomach.
