“Claire,” he said. “Do you think you could get a message to him?”
“To who?”
“Álvaro.”
“Sounds dangerous. Didn’t you say Lehrer could read his mind?”
“So we do it when he’s not around Lehrer.” Dara shook his head. “But believe me, Álvaro’s a loose thread we can’t afford to leave hanging.”
Claire narrowed her gaze at him, like she was trying to pick apart his words and ascertain his real motives. Good thing Dara hadn’t gotten chatty when he was fevermad. If she knew the truth about Dara’s relationship with Noam—or even about Lehrer—she’d never have brought him back to Carolinia.
He barely remembered most of those months of fevermadness, especially toward the end. Just moments and images, the prick of the vaccine needle sliding into a vein. Then an emptiness as complete as death.
At the time, he hadn’t wanted the vaccine to work. That was another secret he’d kept hidden, like a pill under his tongue. He’d wanted to slip into that darkness and never emerge. He was ...gratefulfor it.
But he did emerge. And then he’d had to figure out a way to go on living—without Noam, without his magic, and with Lehrer just out of reach.
Claire left him, eventually, with promises to get Dara’s message to Noam and a series of colorful threats as to what she’d do to him if he left the apartment. Of course, that meant that the moment she was gone, all he could think about was slipping out that door, down two flights of stairs, holing up in the pub, and asking the barman to leave the bottle.
He didn’t, of course.
But he wanted to.
For the past six months, when Dara thought of Noam, he’d remember him as he last saw him: a figure diminishing in the rear window, framed by brick and concrete. The heat waves rising off the asphalt had blurred Noam’s features too quickly. Dara didn’t have time to memorize them.
But that quickly became the least of his worries.
Noam’s friend Linda couldn’t go into the QZ with him—she’d never been infected; she’d probably die there—so Dara had to continue past the wall and into the woods on foot. It was summer, but the setting sun shining through the leaves was so red it looked like blood on the forest floor. But maybe that was just magic. Or hallucinations, creeping back into his mind as the last of Lehrer’s steroid drip metabolized and wore off.
The trees grew close together, root systems tangling up and knotting underfoot. It wasn’t the kind of forest one saw in movies. The underbrush was thick and full of thorns, nearly impassable in some areas; a hole got ripped in Dara’s trousers fifteen minutes in, and his flesh was next.
Infection,Bethany’s voice said in his mind, the perennial healer.You’re going to get an infection.
He’d get worse than that if he didn’t put enough distance between himself and the border before Lehrer got an antiwitching unit out here.
He didn’t even know what he was running to. Not Atlantia—Atlantia was full of Carolinian soldiers; he’d be caught in no time. York was too far. The quarantined zone, it seemed, was a destination in and of itself.
Dara wasn’t under any illusions he’d survive fevermadness. But if he was going to die either way, he wanted to die here—on his own terms—and not by Lehrer’s magic. Not anywhere Lehrer could find his body and make a pretense of mourning over it, somehow twisting Dara’s death into a political weapon.
He’d walked all day and well into the night, stumbling over fallen branches and angry roots, until the fever rising hot in his veins was smoldering in his mind so bright he couldn’t see straight. So he found a patch of ground blanketed in soft and earthy-smelling mushrooms, curled up there, and fell into a fitful sleep.
He’d thought the fever would break in a few hours. It usually did, those waves of sickness coming and going like an inevitable tide.
Only it turned out fevermadness wasn’t the biggest threat. Not at all.
Dara woke while the sky was still gray, dawn light not quite filtering down through the branches. He felt like something had seized his chest, a giant’s hand clenching around his heart—and he managed to push himself up on trembling arms in time to vomit all over the mushrooms and twigs and rotting leaves.
Oh. Right.
He’d been here before, that time—sixteen years old—he’d tried to get sober. He’d spent days shivering and puking in his bedroom at Lehrer’s apartment, until at last he couldn’t stand it anymore, and he drank down three glasses of Lehrer’s best bourbon while Lehrer sat there in his armchair and didn’t say a word. At the time, Dara had seen it as a small mercy.
This time, there was no bourbon.
The shaking got worse. Dara tried to keep walking, to put more distance between himself and Carolinia, but he didn’t make it far. Better, he decided eventually, to hole up in a defensible spot and wait it out until the withdrawal or the fever finally took him for good.
He’d found a tree with large roots that curved around a sunken trough of earth and curled up on the damp black soil. It was only after he’d been lying there awhile, staring at the sun tracking its way across the distant sky, that he realized he’d never found any water.
Sooner rather than later, then,Dara remembered thinking, and that was his last coherent thought before the delirium took him.
