All three of them burst into laughter, and I cannot help laughing too. For so long, they were the ones with the upper hand. Now the balance has shifted, and it feels almost unreal.
I’m fucking awesome. That’s it. It does not get cooler than that.
Bring those goddamn wraiths on. I have a feeling I will not even break a sweat when they come.
That night, I go to the edge of the warded area and call out to Rhea and the girls, but I get no answer. I try again later, and then again at different hours, telling myself they might need time to think it through. Maybe they will circle back once the anger cools, crows and all, still trying to haunt us, just from a slightly safer distance.
It never happens.
It is as if they gave up completely and decided to let us go.
I wish I could say it feels good. It doesn’t. It makes me nauseous with guilt. I can’t even begin to imagine what’s going through their heads. All I know is that it’s a lot of bad.
So when I come back to the hospital for the fourth time in a row, turning the whole thing over in my mind and wondering if I did the right thing by acting first and hoping to talk second, I find Hailey and Lila in the main hangout area. They’re standing shoulder to shoulder at the kitchenette, rummaging through the dry supplies.
The moment they notice me, they turn, and an awkward quiet settles in.
“Oh, hey…” Hailey says. “No luck again?”
Lila pauses with her hands inside a cabinet, then slowly pulls them back. She braces herself against the countertop behind her, and her gaze flicks from Hailey to me and back again, like she’s weighing whether she should say anything at all.
I rake a hand through my hair. “Why would you say that?”
I never told them what happened between me and the Grim Reaper girls. I never told them I’ve been slipping out of the hospital just to stand at the treeline and call into the woods, hoping they’ll come back and talk to me.
“We saw you through our window,” Hailey says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You keep trying to do something out there, but we don’t know what.”
“But we hope you succeed anyway,” Lila adds, her voice quiet.
It’s sweet. It really is. I just don’t know if I can pull them into this. Telling them about the wraith and me was one thing, but Rhea’s story feels like something that was placed in my hands. I don’t want to betray it. I already feel awful for how I must have looked to her after she helped my guys reunite with me.
“Thanks,” I say. “But honestly, I don’t even know if I want to succeed anymore.” I nod toward the cabinets. “What are you looking for?”
I step closer and glance into the open one. Flour and sugar stare back at me, along with the last few small packets of salt that didn’t go into the wards.
“Snacks,” Hailey answers. “We wanted something to snack on while we…”
“While you what?”
“While we watch a movie,” she says, and the rest comes out softer, like she doesn’t really want to admit it. “Talon gave us a DVD player, one of the ones that doesn’t connect to the internet, and a wall projector. We thought we might snack on something while we watch.”
Lila looks at me. “Would you like to watch with us?”
The question catches me off guard. When was the last time I watched a movie, let alone got asked to watch one with someone? My first instinct is to say no, not because I don’t want to, but because it feels strangely intimidating, like I won’t know what to do with something that normal. Then I stop myself.
Aren’t they the same, the two of them? They were locked away from a normal life too, and yet here they are, trying so hard to carve out something decent anyway. Trying to find a little nice in the middle of all this.
Maybe I should take note of that.
“Um, yeah,” I manage. “Sure. Why not?”
I open the cabinet farthest to the left and pull out popcorn and a couple bags of candy Talon stashes there, hidden from Cassian. You’d never guess it, but the soldier is a serious snacker.
I barely register it when the girls trade a look, like they’re holding back a laugh, and I tell myself it’s just excitement.
“What are we going to watch?” I ask as we head toward the ICU side of the hospital.
“We don’t know yet,” Hailey says. “Talon gave us a lot to choose from. Maybe you can help us pick?”
