by Kyla Stone
As after her worst seizures, she was weak and thick-headed, like her brain was stuffed with cotton, and suffered moments of confusion.
But those weren’t the worst moments. The worst moments were every time she woke and was forced to remember anew that Silas was dead.
In the hospital room, Benjie refused to leave Amelia’s side. He climbed right on the bed and buried himself beneath the covers. He wrapped his thin arms around her ribs, rested his chin on her shoulder, and gazed up at her with those huge eyes, his thick hair sticking up all over his head making him look even younger than he was.
“It’s okay to cry, Miss Amelia,” he whispered, his breath hot against her ear. “Remember?”
“I do,” she managed to whisper back. She remembered the night in the art museum after her last seizure. How Benjie had snuggled inside her sleeping bag with her, how she’d sung Brahms’ “Lullaby” to him as they’d both wept long into the night, grieving for all the things they’d lost.
“Crying doesn’t mean you’re not strong,” Benjie said now, repeating what she’d told him. “Feelings are part of what makes you, you and me, me. When you miss someone, tears help you get your feelings out. Like how I cry when I miss my mom and Zia.”
“I know, baby.” She pulled him close and kissed the top of his soft head. She looked into his sweet face, his dark eyes so filled with love and sadness. Her heart cracked open.
Tears leaked down her face and dripped off her chin. She let them come. She let the sorrow come, let it break over her in waves. And then she was gasping, sobbing, clutching Benjie to her like a lifeline.
She’d lost her brother and her father on the same day. Her father whom she’d loathed and adored and feared. And her brother, whom she’d adored ever since she could remember, every part of him, even his sharp eyes and smirking smile and snark.
“I miss him,” she choked out. “I miss him so much.”
Silas had died a hero. Someday, that would give her immense comfort. Today, it meant little beside the towering mountain of her grief.
Her brother, who used to stick out his tongue and make silly faces when the tension in their house threatened to break them both. Her brother, who chose to bear the brunt of their father’s wrath to protect her. Her brother, who always defended her, who always had her back, who—beneath his tough, spiky armor—only longed to be loved.
She wept for that boy. She wept for a world without him in it. She wept for herself, for Benjie, for her friends, and all that she’d lost.
Losing a person you loved meant you lost a chunk of your heart, raw and pulsing and elemental. You weren’t yourself after.
You had to learn to live without that person, like learning to live without a limb. But you also had to learn to live within your own skin again. You were the same and not the same.
You were less, somehow. Diminished. Colors weren’t as bright. The sun wasn’t as warm. Everything was dulled, dimmed, lessened. But it wasn’t the world that changed. It was you.
When her tears finally subsided hours later, Benjie was sleeping. He slept curled up in a ball, his small hand clutching Amelia’s, his mouth slightly opened, his sweet breath warm against her cheek.
Benjie refused to leave her side, except for when Willow forced him to eat or go to the bathroom. The heat of his tiny body nestled next to hers was the only thing that kept her tethered to the earth those first few days.
That and Micah’s constant presence in an armchair at her bedside, as loyal and faithful as ever.
After three days of staring blankly at the ceiling tiles, the doctors released her with strict instructions to rest.
Her mother was waiting to see her. But Amelia wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
Instead, she only wanted to be alone. She fled to the quiet of her quarters in the capitol, to the butterfly garden on her terrace. Here, it was quiet. Here was the closest thing to peace she’d found since her sun-warmed music room.
It seemed a lifetime since she’d stepped foot in that place. There were too many heart-wrenching memories back there. But here on the enclosed terrace, there was light and beauty and life.
Among the green and verdant plants, yellow lilies strained toward the artificial sun, while lavender and burnt-orange orchids entwined like long-lost lovers. Delicate bride-white honeysuckles bloomed along a trellis to her right. Glazed ceramic pots at her feet held sprays of bleeding hearts, their heart-shaped, pale pink petals as fragile and easily bruised as her own.
Her legs felt heavy as lead, but she didn’t sit. Her hands felt strange, aching and shaky, but she refused to let that deter her. She was desperate for the release she found only in her music.
Amelia picked up the violin from the mosaic table with trembling fingers. She felt the familiar heft and shape of the instrument, from the chinrest across the lower and upper boat to the fingerboard to the scroll, each part more familiar than the curves of her own body.
She began to play her favorite song—Bach’s Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D Minor.
The bow scraped and screeched against the strings. She made sounds, ugly and raw—not notes. Not music.
Her fingers wouldn’t work properly. They wouldn’t make the correct forms. They were rigid and quivering, alien appendages she didn’t recognize. A strange feeling pulsed through her hands. Shivering vibrations traveling through her nerves when her brain ordered her muscles to obey her commands.
She couldn’t play a single note correctly. The bow felt bizarre and foreign in her hands, no longer a part of her.
For several moments, she played shrill, anguished notes to match the anguish in her heart. But she couldn’t bear the horrible sounds. It was wrong. It was all wrong.
She set down the violin, her hands quivering. She stretched them out in front of her in growing horror. In the hospital, Dr. Ichpujani had said the tremors might never go away. They could be permanent.
She had still been dazed from grief and the after-effects of the seizure. She hadn’t understood what it meant.
Now she did. The seizures had finally taken something precious, something irreplaceable.
A kaleidoscope of butterflies took flight. They fluttered in the air around her, their wings glimmering in spectacular shades of aqua, cobalt blue, black, teal, scarlet, and sunflower-yellow.
Tears pricked her eyes at the startling loveliness of it all, so beautiful it hurt.
She felt her already cracked heart shatter inside her chest.
Maybe it was wrong to grieve for her music, surrounded by so much death, with her father and her brother gone. But she did.
She grieved for them all.
35
Amelia
Someone knocked on Amelia’s door. “Elise Black is here to see you,” the AI said. “Shall I let her in?”
Amelia stiffened. Her gaze dropped to the violin lying on the mosaic table beside her, already gathering dust. It had been seven days since she’d attempted to play, seven days since she’d isolated herself in her quarters and refused to see a soul.
She hadn’t left her suite since she’d been released from the hospital a week ago. Her legs were still wobbly, her brain aching from the seizure. Her hands still quivered like they were electrified by some invisible force.
Her friends had attempted to visit every day—Micah, Willow and Benjie, Gabriel, Finn, and Celeste. And her mother. But she’d turned them all away. She was running out of excuses.
Three days ago, she’d opened one of the glass windows of the butterfly garden and listened to the world outside the screen.
Once the shock of the battle had worn off, the reality of the cure had set in. Fear gave way to hope, to joy, to life. She couldn’t be a part of that joy, that life. Not right now. It felt like not ever.
A black-and-teal butterfly landed on the violin’s chinrest. Its satiny wings undulated slowly, iridescent in the artificial sunlight. She watched it for a long moment. So much beauty in such a tiny creature.
She couldn’t keep h
iding from the world. She knew that.
“Yes,” Amelia said. “Let her in.”
A moment later, she heard her mother’s graceful steps behind her. “I know you’re angry with me,” her mother said. “I know I deserve it. Please, don’t hate me.”
The artificial sunlight warmed her bare arms. Her silk evening robe rustled against her skin. Outside the glass, the sun was setting. The mountains loomed purple against the gold-and-scarlet-striped sky.
“I’m sorry.” Sorrow and regret choked her mother’s voice. “If I hadn’t done what I did—maybe Silas would still be alive.”
Don’t act like you loved him. The thought was a bitter, ugly one. She turned around to face her mother. “He’s dead. My brother is dead.”
Dark shadows like bruises pooled beneath her mother’s red-rimmed eyes. Her normally shiny auburn hair hung lank and dull around her wan face. “I’ve had a lot of time to think over these last few weeks. You’re right, Amelia. You’re right about everything.
“My son had his father in him, and because I loathed his father, I couldn’t love him, not like I should have. I tried. Please believe me, I tried. I—I love him now.”
“It’s too late,” she whispered.
A tear slipped down her mother’s pale cheek. “I know, honey. I know that. I’ve done so many things I regret. I failed Silas. I failed the people who trusted me. In the end, I even failed you. You’re all I have left, Amelia. You’re all I have.” She gazed at Amelia, her hands clasped, her eyes beseeching. “Please, forgive me.”
Amelia couldn’t bear any more ugliness. She couldn’t bear the hurt and sorrow and regret weighing her down like chains. Her father was gone. Silas was gone. Her music was gone. Could she bear losing her mother, too?
There was too much hate already in the world. Too much anger and bitterness. It had to end somewhere.
She spoke each word with precision and care. They were fragile as spun glass. “I will forgive you.”
Her mother sucked in her breath.
“But not today.”
“I—I understand. I love you, Amelia. No matter what, at least know that.” After several beats of silence, her mother turned and swept from the terrace, her back straight, her movements fluid and graceful. Only the slightest slump to her shoulders betrayed her grief.
Amelia collapsed into the wrought-iron chair, her legs no longer able to endure her weight.
Amelia didn’t know how long she sat there. The glass walls of the terrace were black with night when the AI chimed, “Micah Rivera is here to see you.”
She blinked. “Let him in. Dim the lights to dusk, please.” The sunlight switched off, replaced with a soft bluish light. Now she could see the stars, sharp as diamonds against the dark expanse of sky.
Micah sat in the chair opposite her, her violin on the table between them. “I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice contorting. “For Silas, for everything. If I had been faster, aimed better—”
She shook her head.
His eyes behind his glasses held an ocean of sorrow. “I tried to save him.”
She hated to see such pain on his dear, kind face. She folded her own hand over his on top of the table. A part of her wanted to hold on and never let go. “Never take an ounce of the blame for this. Never. This wasn’t you. My father and Sloane killed Silas. No one else. You were a friend to him. You and Willow and Finn—and Jericho. It was making a difference—being loved. He was changing.”
“He was,” Micah choked out. “He really was.”
“I miss him every second of every day,” she whispered.
“I know. He was my friend. He sacrificed himself for us. He died a hero.”
For a while, neither one of them said anything. They just sat, taking comfort in each other’s presence. Butterflies glinted in the shadows, the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle thick in the air.
Micah’s gaze slanted toward the violin resting on the table. “Do you want to play?”
She stared down at her traitorous hands, lying so innocuously in her lap. Saying the words aloud made it real. “My hands. Whenever I try to use them, they shake. I can barely use a fork and dress myself—” She swallowed. “I can’t play.”
“Could it come back, over time? Like memory after a trauma?”
She could still feel the music, could hear it soaring inside her heart, her soul, could imagine every finger position, every note and scale. But her clumsy, quivering hands betrayed her each time she attempted to play.
The tremor wasn’t going away. She knew it in the marrow of her bones, in the deepest part of her. Some things you lose and can never get back.
“I know how much your music means to you,” Micah said gently.
She stared straight ahead. She couldn’t look at him. It hurt too much. If she looked into those dark, depthless eyes, she’d shatter.
Her eyes burned. She’d already wept a thousand tears. How could it be possible that she had more tears to cry?
He cleared his throat and pulled a small object out of his pocket, setting it on the table. “We found this in President Sloane’s pocket.”
Her breath caught in her throat. The thumb drive with her name scrawled on it in her father’s handwriting. “Do you know what it is?”
“Theo checked it out. It’s the formula for your epilepsy medication.”
She picked up the thumb drive and closed her fingers around it. Relief flooded her, followed by a fresh wave of grief. She blinked back the wetness gathering at the corners of her eyes.
She knew what it meant. This was a gift.
Her father had warned her about Sloane and Harper. And now this. In secret, he’d kept the formula she desperately needed to survive.
Her father had saved her again. He’d given her life back. She would live.
Her father. A mass murderer. A monster.
Had her father been capable of love? Had he truly loved her, after all? Did a deformed, twisted love from a deformed, twisted man still count as love? There was no one left to answer those questions.
She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter, but it did.
It always would.
36
Willow
“Why are we hiking again?” Willow asked, huffing ragged breaths, her legs aching. She and Raven were hiking up a steep incline clotted with clay and dirt, mud and snow, twigs and dead leaves. Towering oak, maple, pine, and spruce trees loomed all around them. The late February air was still cold, but within the shafts of sunlight piercing the canopy, the sun was almost warm.
“You’ll see,” Raven said as she maneuvered over a stump on her hoverboard. Shadow bounded somewhere ahead of them.
Willow unbuttoned her jacket and shoved her bangs out of her eyes. “I’m pretty sure I swore never to do this again after the journey from hell. We almost got eaten by a bear, you know.”
Raven smirked. “Almost.”
“The forest is very dangerous,” Willow grumbled.
“Everything is dangerous.”
Willow opened her mouth to protest but found she had nothing to say. Raven was right. She thought of Benjie, her friends, her family, Finn. Maybe most things were dangerous, in their own ways. If it was worth it, you did it anyway.
Two weeks had passed since the battle, since President Sloane had been unmasked as the tyrant and mass murderer she was. Sloane and Cerberus had been thrown into the Sanctuary prison.
Sloane’s trial was scheduled for next month, although Sloane’s filmed confession and the thumb drive evidence Declan had kept of their illicit dealings—the thumb drive she’d been attempting to steal when Amelia confronted her—was proof enough to seal her fate. Cerberus and Sloane could both rot in there forever, as far as Willow was concerned.
Silas’s funeral had been this morning. The pain was still fresh, white-hot and sharp as a scorched blade. It had broken her heart all over again to stand there before that awful hole as the coffin Micah and Gabriel had built was lowered inside it. Silas was in the ground, ly
ing beneath six feet of dirt and rock and clay, while someone like Sloane was still breathing. It was horrifically unfair.
Beneath all his prickly bluster, Silas had been a good person. In the end, he’d freely given his own life to save his friends. He’d died a hero.
He’d deserved to live a hero. He’d deserved more.
Now there was another hollowed space in her heart beside Zia, her mom, and her dad. Silas had been hard as hell to love, but she had. She had loved him like a brother.
There was no one to spar with for hours until they were both sweaty and bloody and spent. No one to exchange hurled insults or smash things with. No one else had understood the shame she carried like he had.
She would never forget him, like she would never forget Zia. Grief was a thing that stayed with you always, like a shadow. Like a hole that could never be filled or mended.
But life had a way of forcing its way in. There was simply too much to do, too many people who needed things from her.
Whether you wanted it or not, the world kept going.
Sanctuary citizens and Patriots alike were hard at work repairing the buildings damaged in the battle, removing the rubble, and burying the dead. Tension still rippled in the air. A few fights had broken out already.
This new society thing would take time. A lot of time, patience, forgiveness, and mercy. Things many people didn’t have a whole lot of practice at these days.
The leadership of the Sanctuary, the New Patriots, and the Settlement had been working to set up a provisional government. But instead of a single leader, the Sanctuary adopted the nine-member council approach of the Settlement—for now.
“Our founding fathers did an exceptional job creating a functioning government that worked for the people,” Senator López had said. “However, it was corrupted by greed, power, selfishness and hubris—and over time, the government became the monstrosity it was created to protect against. We will be mindful not to repeat the mistakes of our predecessors.”
