by Monty Jay
It’s a shot of motivation, knowing if I can reach the flag, all of this will be over. One of the other guys heads towards me, and it’s then I begin running again.
“Don’t let her get the flag!”
I pump my arms, forcing my legs to work faster, to move past the burn in my lungs.
I run up the side of the pool, climbing over the gate that places me on the side only employees are allowed. I hear his footsteps approaching, his hands moving against the gate as he closes in on me. I look around, trying to figure out my next move, what I’m going to do next.
“Where to now, girl?” he mutters darkly.
“Up,” I breathe.
I grab the wall, lifting myself up onto it, seeing there is enough space for me to stand with both feet, but only in this area. I’m going to have to walk sideways, my back to the wave pool beneath with nothing to hold on to.
I turn back to the man closing in on me and back towards the sludge-filled pool. The water is dark, black as coal with pieces of ice floating at the top from the cold weather. Either lose and get beat to death or risk falling in.
The fall won’t kill me—it’s not high enough to do that—but my fear of water makes everything worse.
Chills run along my arms as I place my right foot on the ledge, pressing my hands and face into the cold sign. It burns my warm skin, but I don’t dare move too hastily. The wind hits me hard, making me lean into the sign more, trying not to let it push me away.
My throat is so dry, making it impossible to swallow, to breathe really.
My other foot wobbles, but it follows, and I’m soon shimmying across, my heels dangling over the edge as my toes try to keep me balanced.
Don’t fall. Don’t fall. Don’t fall.
I work my way closer to the center where the flag dangles, flapping around wildly.
My heart slams against my chest the closer I get, pressure weighing heavily on my shoulder, trying to work on nothing but instinct and not about Briar, about Lyra.
Reaching the center of the sign, I glance up, the orange material directly above me. The finish line is right there, victory so close I can taste it. My fingers tingle as I lean up on my tippy-toes.
Inside my head, I’m lagging. Everything is delayed—I feel sluggish like I’m moving in slow motion.
My hand curls around the material, feeling it in my palm. I pull it from its fixed spot, bringing it to my chest, holding it there like it’s a newborn baby.
I did it. We did it.
“Goddammit!” someone shouts, just before a hand is slammed into the sign, making it shake. It dislodges my balance, and there is nothing I can do to stop myself from falling backwards. My arms flail, desperately searching for something to grab onto.
But there is nothing.
The fall isn’t gradual like in the movies.
No, I fall fast, hard, crashing into the freezing water like a star from the sky at a million miles an hour and burning alive when I land.
Pieces of solid ice slam into my back before the water takes me. It submerges me almost instantly, swallowing me up like a hungry beast.
I’m wrapped in the frigid hands of death, curling around me like an unwanted hug, and am overwhelmed by the intensity of the cold. It’s all around me, sinking into my skin, penetrating my bones, and it just keeps sinking deeper every second.
And there is nothing but darkness. Even as I open my eyes beneath the surface, it’s just filled with nothing but inky black.
I want to swim to the surface. I want the stinging in my lungs to go away, but my extremities…I want to fight, to do something, but nothing is working. My brain has stopped, and my body has no clue what to do. There is no feeling anywhere.
I’m paralyzed. Too frozen to move, to save myself.
Fear has taken over.
The fear of dying and not being able to prevent it. It’s out of my control completely.
Fear of not knowing what is coming for me next. The fear of the unknown.
Suddenly, I can hear music. Rosie’s music.
The songs she used to play in her room when she was working on a sculpture, and I wonder if this was what she felt right before she died.
I want to cry for her because I hope she didn’t feel afraid, but I know she was. She was alone, wondering when we’d show up to save her, but we never came, not in time. She died thinking she was going to be rescued, and we weren’t even aware she was missing.
Not until it was too late.
She died alone and frightened.
Left the earth in the exact opposite way of how she lived.
She was always the brave one, the one surrounded by happiness and people who loved her.
And now we would die the same.
Alone with no one to save us.
I’m taking in too much water through my nose and mouth. There’s comfort in knowing I’ll see her again. Spots fill my vision, everything suddenly becoming hazy, and I feel high. I’m losing consciousness, falling further and further away from myself.
Finally giving in to the pain, into the water that I knew would come for me eventually.
Warmth coils around me, and I think this is it. I’m dying.
But I brutally meet with the vicious air. It snaps against my skin, this abrupt sense of energy coursing through me, and a violent urge to cough takes over.
My body trembles from my wheezing and the cold.
I’m not sure if I’m happy to be alive or just shocked.
I cling to whatever it is that’s holding me, my hands grasping at it, clinging to it with everything I have because it feels like the opposite of death. It feels like life, like air.
“You don’t get to die,” I hear. “Not that easily.”
Even through my muddled senses, even bogged down with water, I can smell him. Like cannabis and smoke. Gasoline and old leather. He feels firm beneath my fingers, warm below the layer of moisture that’s covering both of us.
My eyes crack open, and through my murky vision, I see him.
Rook.
His wet hair is stuck to his face, cheeks flushed and square jaw tight as he tries to stop shivering.
He looks so ruined yet so beautiful.
Such a pretty boy, but even Lucifer was pretty once upon a time.
The most beautiful.
An angel.
Rook
I knew her coming back would be nothing but a hazard.
It would do nothing but distract us and put us more at risk. Sage had always been a wild card. A slow poison that corrupted you before you even knew you were infected.
Trouble.
“Alistair, wait, Alistair, please, I’m fine—” Briar begs, trying with no luck to slow him down. Blood drips from his hands, his knuckles split and oozing. The damage he’d done to that dude’s face will be permanent.
Sage is sitting on the pavement, a jacket wrapped around her shoulders as she tries to fight the cold. Her wet hair brushes her chin as she lifts her head to the freight train headed in her direction.
Alistair pulls Sage up by the front of her jacket, hands squeezing the material tightly as he presses her into the side of his car aggressively.
“What the hell were you thinking,” he growls, shaking her body as she speaks. “You’re nothing but fucking selfish. You almost got her killed.”
Her blue eyes are so washed-out, lips the same color. She probably doesn’t even understand what’s happening right now, still dizzy from the lack of oxygen. And now she has an out-of-control monster in her face.
When Briar wasn’t in her dorm like she’d told Alistair, he went into warfare mode.
After everything that happened last semester with his brother Dorian and Briar being kidnapped, he assumed the worst. Alistair is never afraid, ever, unless it has to do with losing Briar. That’s the only thing he fears in life. Not even death takes precedence over her.
Thankfully Silas put a tracker on her phone for Alistair’s peace of mind, and when he saw where they were, there was n
othing stopping him from finding her.
We’d shown up just after Briar took a hockey stick to the back of her legs and a right hook to the mouth. It had been brutal to watch, not only for myself but for my friend. I was planning on grabbing one of the assholes who’d hit her to help him, but I’d gotten distracted.
By a girl with torn wings.
She’d fallen hard, so quickly I wasn’t even sure I’d seen it.
I watched, my fist clenched, waiting for her to resurface, and when she didn’t, I went after her.
She looked so pale when we broke the surface, so broken. Like she’d already given in to death when she’d sunk into the water. And that pissed me off—she’s not allowed to die. Not like that, not without a fight.
I couldn’t watch her die, not at that moment. Because all I saw were false moments.
All I could see was the girl she’d pretended to be when she was with me, underneath me, all around me, and not who she actually was. I gave in to that weakness, to her weakness. I gave in to the temptation of her all over again and stupidly dove in after her.
I’d given in just like I did when I found out she was committed. When I drove haphazardly to Monarch Mental Health Institution and made sure she was there. That she was alive and wasn’t dead.
I was pathetic.
A pitiful excuse for a man, because I couldn’t let go of the lie. Even when she’d shown me her truths, every nasty, ugly truth, I still wanted those lies. All those pretty poisonous lies—I wanted them, and I couldn’t let them die.
And fuck did I hate myself for that.
“I’m sorry. I-I didn’t expect—”
“You didn’t expect what? My girlfriend to get the shit beat out of her while you worried about winning a game?”
“Alistair!” Briar yells, pulling at his leather jacket. “Put her down! It was my fault. I was the one who wanted to go! It was me, it wasn’t Sage.”
His jaw goes solid, the muscle ticking a few times. His dark eyes bore into Sage’s empty blue ones.
“If you ever put her in danger again, I’ll kill you.”
My feet move before my brain can really catch up, and I step closer to them. The threat isn’t a light one—Alistair never says anything he doesn’t mean.
And I don’t like the way it makes me feel right now.
Making me feel something other than respect for my best friend.
Making me feel hostile towards him.
I step to the side of him, placing a hand on his chest. “Chill out. Briar is fine. Focus on your girl.”
He looks at me, tilting his head suspiciously. I hold my ground, pressing into his chest so he gets the message that he needs to let her go.
With one last heated glare at Sage, he releases his grip and immediately turns to Briar, stepping away from the car and scooping her face in his hands. There is still so much anger rolling off him that I can practically see steam coming from his ears, but he softens just a little when he looks at her. Lifting his bloody thumb, he swipes at her swollen bottom lip.
“This is not over, Little Thief.”
She nods, accepting his wrath before wrapping her arm around his waist and sinking into his body. “I’m sorry,” I hear her whisper before her voice fades into something only they can hear.
I turn to Sage, who is slumped against the car, looking at the ground.
I shove my hands into my wet jeans, hoping the sticky material will prevent my fingers from doing something I don’t want them to do.
Something idiotic like reach for her.
The way she clung to me in the water, how she was desperately seeking me, stealing my energy. Like she would die if I let her go.
It fucked me in the head.
The months of celibacy I had endured were nothing compared to the pain of that moment.
I just have to keep reminding myself and my birdbrained heart that it’s all a mirage. She had been engaged to another guy the entire time I was fucking her, learning her, inhaling her. I’d been an experiment.
You were a game, Rook.
That was it.
“Looks like you had all the fun without us.” Thatcher slams the door of Silas’s passenger door, walking towards us.
“What happened?” Silas questions, glancing at Briar, then pauses to stare at Sage. Staring for a lot longer than I would say is necessary.
Her coming back was hard on me, but I also know it was hard on him for an entirely different reason.
Sage and Rosemary were twins, so the likeness is there. It had always been there, but when one of them is dead and had been for almost a year now, the similarities are more obvious.
“They played the Gauntlet. Sage fell in the wave pool, and Briar got hit,” I inform them both, grinding my teeth. How naive were they? They had to have known better. Every single year, people leave the Gauntlet injured. It’s not something you play with no experience.
We would know. We’re usually the ones doing the injuring.
“And you?” Thatcher directs towards a sitting Lyra. Tucked away on the asphalt with her head sitting on her knees, she flinches when he speaks to her. His voice yanks her from her own little world she’d been inside of, and his eyes penetrate hers. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing. Uh,” she stutters. “I’m-I’m fine.”
He continues to stare before giving a curt nod and sucking his teeth. “Did we at least win?”
“Thatcher, shut the fuck up.”
“Yes,” Briar and Alistair answer at the same time, proving yet again why they make such a good match.
“Good.” Thatcher walks towards Briar, hovering above her frame. One icy hand moves forward, grabbing her chin and tilting her head to the left and back to the right. “Ice that and you should live…unfortunately,” he adds for good measure.
Their conversation fades into the background because it’s at this moment that Silas walks up to Sage. He looks down at her, staring for a moment too long, and starts to remove his hoodie. Once it’s off his arms, he pauses.
“Lift your arms,” he grunts.
Uneasiness settles into my stomach as she finally lifts her gaze to him.
Why the fuck is he looking at her like that? I know he’s probably doing it out of respect for Rosie, but it’s making me anxious.
It’s making me angry.
At myself. At her. At him.
“I don’t want it,” she responds, staring blankly.
“You’re going to freeze to death. Put it on.” He shoves the hoodie into her chest, insisting. Yet, she refuses to react.
I’m only able to watch this. I can’t say a single word as my best friend speaks more to her than he has to anyone in a year.
Jealously bumbles in my gut.
See what she’s doing to me? Wrecking my life all over again. Turning me against my own goddamn friends. Because of her, I’d been angry with Alistair, I’d lied to Thatcher, and now I’m jealous of Silas.
Envious that they have a connection I’ll never be able to understand, and there’s nothing I could say about it.
What am I supposed to do? Walk up to them and piss all over her like some territorial dog?
Sage Donahue had been a lot of things, but mine was never one of them.
I have no right to speak about what I’m watching, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to.
“Why? So you can save me? Make yourself feel better?” she says coldly with no trace of emotion in her tone at all. Here she is, the cruel-hearted bitch I’d come to know so well. The one that could break you just after building you up. “So you can make up for not being there for Rose?”
“I’m just trying to make sure you don’t die,” he replies.
“Yeah? And why didn’t you do the same for my sister?”
I knew what she was capable of when it came to that silver tongue. How reckless she was with her words when she was upset. How easily she could hurt someone with only her voice.
I’m not going to let that happen to him. Not when he
doesn’t deserve it.
“Sage, stop,” I warn, making my way closer to their space, standing close behind them.
“No.” She ignores me. “You were supposed to be there, but you let her walk home from the library alone.”
Here she comes dragging up broken memories, ones that Silas doesn’t need to be reminded of because he never forgets it. When Sage hurts, she has to make everyone else hurt around her.
“You were supposed to be there!” Her voice has upgraded to a shout as she pokes him in the chest. Yet, he stands hard like a statue, unmoving, letting her words pellet his hard exterior.
“We were supposed to protect her!” The first tear streams down her face, pain leaking from her eyes that no one can heal.
And if anyone understands that, it’s Silas.
They could find common ground in their grief, having lost the same person. They would be able to comprehend each other’s emotions, something I’ll never be able to do for either of them. Especially Silas.
It doesn’t matter how close I was to Rose; I didn’t have a bond with her like he did. I can’t help him the way I want to. I can’t make this better for him, no matter how many times a day I check-in.
There is nothing I can do to help him heal from her, but what I can do is make sure he gets his revenge for it.
“And now look, she’s dead! She died, Silas, all alone! Why didn’t you protect her? Why couldn’t we save her?”
His armor breaks—one of the harsh bullets penetrates through the metal and sinks through the bone. I see it in the way he cringes like it’s more than emotional trauma. It’s a physical discomfort that circulates across him.
Closing his eyes for a brief second before reopening them, he reaches forward to touch Sage.
“Rosie, I—”
“What?” She flinches, struck by his words. “Did you just call me Rosie?”
A distress signal is sent to my brain. A universal panic.
I try to push the dread down. Try to tell myself it was an honest mistake, a mix-up. He’s been taking his meds—I’ve watched him every single day.
He is fine. It was just a fuck up. That’s it.
But with his diagnosis, it’s hard to brush things like that off when I’m constantly aware of his symptoms and when things are getting worse. I want this to be a coincidence. I want to believe it was a mistake.
