Bea’s body was so still. So...
“It’s okay,” he told her.
Bea made a strident noise in the back of her throat, wrists jerking awkwardly. Noam fumbled with her hand for a second, staring down at Bea’s pale face and wishing...he wished he knew healing magic, even though it wouldn’t work on something like this. Even if he knew how, the magic he would use to heal her was the same magic that was killing her. The thing that made Noam a witching would ensure Bea never was.
He brushed damp hair from her forehead, sweeping it behind her hot ear. “It’s okay to let go,” he whispered. He chose to believe she understood.
A nurse took over eventually and sent Noam to hang fluids and bathe sweaty brows. He kept checking on Bea every chance he could, even when nothing changed, until at last, late in the afternoon, when the setting sun cast red light into the tents, he looked over, and her bed was empty.
Dara found him that night out by the boardwalk. The wind had picked up sometime in the dusk hours, and it whipped sea-smell off the ocean, briny and fishy, tangling Noam’s hair and blowing sand up the back of his shirt. Off duty, Dara had changed out of his greens into something gray and fitted, the whites of his eyes flashing in the lights from the pier.
“I thought I’d find you out here,” Dara said when he reached Noam’s side. He was close enough their shoulders almost touched.
“I’ve never seen the ocean before.”
Noam gazed out at the black water, the moonlight glancing off the crests of waves as they crashed into shore. And past that, where the sea blurred into starless sky.
Dara kicked at a few broken shells in the sand, scattering them toward the dune grasses. Silence unspooled between them, Dara’s tension drawn in his posture and the wordless line of his lips. Noam felt it too; he’d been feeling it ever since Bea died.
“This is Lehrer’s fault,” Dara said.
Noam looked at him, heart stumbling over a beat, but Dara was focused on the horizon, as if he’d temporarily forgotten Noam was there.
“And how do you figure that?”
As Dara turned away from the sea, his hair blew across his face, dark and wild. “If Lehrer cared about stopping the virus, don’t you think he’d sendrealdoctors? Don’t you think he’d spend tax money on vaccine research and supportive care, not...not these pointless wars in Atlantia, fighting for territory that was never ours to begin with?”
“Don’t get me wrong—I think the Atlantian occupation is fucked up, and of course I support vaccine research,” Noam said. “But Sacha’s the one running this country, not Lehrer.”
Even saying Sacha’s name made him feel like he’d been poisoned.
Dara’s face twisted in disdain. “Sacha doesn’t have any actual power. He does exactly what Lehrer wants him to do.”
Noam knew that wasn’t true, having read Sacha’s emails and witnessed him disregard Lehrer’s wishes to commit horrible crimes. But Dara didn’t want to hear that. Dara didn’t want to hear anything that wasn’t what he already believed.
“Why do you hate Lehrer so much?” Noam said, exhaling heavily even as he glanced back toward the barracks; if they were having this conversation, he didn’t want to be interrupted. Dara made a face, and Noam rolled his eyes. “I mean it. You can barely look at him. Do you really think there’s some conspiracy? Or do you just hate him for personal reasons?”
Dara snorted and dropped down onto the sand, his legs stretched out toward the sea, heels digging into the bank of shells rolled in by the last tide. After a moment Noam joined him. The sand was cold beneath his elbows and uncomfortably damp.
“There are a lot of reasons,” Dara said. He’d lowered his voice even though no one was nearby; maybe he thought the wind would carry it back to the barracks. “You’re right, many of them personal. I’ve been his ward a long time. I know him. And as soon as I would feel close to him, he’d pull away. Every time I thought he could be like a father, he proved he wasn’t. I don’t know what you’ve been imagining about our relationship—I suppose you think we had Shabbos dinner every Friday night, and he helped me with my biology homework and told me about his childhood. Well. You have no idea what our relationship was like. And, of course, it makes no difference to you.”
Noam opened his mouth to argue, but Dara shook his head, cutting him off.
“I know it doesn’t. You wouldn’t understand. But I doubt Lehrer’s capable of loving anyone—and especially not me.”
Noam chewed his lip, quiet.I’m not sure my father loved me either, toward the end.The words scratched at the inside of Noam’s chest. He didn’t dare say them out loud.
Dara might know Lehrer, but he didn’t understand him. He’d never experienced the kind of loss that Lehrer had.
He’d never experienced much loss at all, as far as Noam could tell.
“For the rest of it, I know you’ll think this is me being evasive, but I can’t tell you. Not because I don’t want to, but because Ican’t.” Dara held Noam’s gaze. “For one, you wouldn’t believe me—don’t give me that look; I know you wouldn’t. But even if you would, I still couldn’t tell you. For your own safety.”
“This isn’t Stalinist Russia, Dara. You’re not going to get arrested for criticizing the defense minister.”
“Who said anything about arrested? But suffice to say, things are going to change in this country, Noam. Sooner than you think. You don’t have to take my word for it. Ask one of the soldiers. They’ll tell you just how often they have to fend off riots. These won’t stay skirmishes for long, and Lehrer knows it.”
“No shit,” Noam burst out. “Because Sacha is rounding everyone up and throwing them into refugee camps, where they’re pretty much damned todiejust like we saw today. How can you be so fucking blind? How can you stand there and talk about how bad Lehrer is when Sacha’s doingthis?”
