hadn’t blamed himself for it. He probably blamed himself now.
Sloane turned her face toward Matt’s and spoke into the small space that separated them. “It wasn’t the same,” she said. She ran her hand over his short hair. “No one hurt me. Okay? I’m fine. Just . . . really smelly, probably.”
A gurgle of a laugh—somewhat hysterical—was Matt’s response. He relaxed his grip on her, and she offered him a small smile. She felt the first flicker of hope since she had returned the ring to him—hope that one day, when the pain dulled, they might be friends again.
Esther was waiting a few feet away. She had discovered Genetrix textiles, and she was wearing them all at once, a paisley scarf around her shoulders draped low enough to reveal her throat siphon; a checkerboard blouse; pinstriped pants; orange herringbone socks. When Matt and Sloane separated, she came forward and hugged Sloane a little more delicately than Matt had.
“Kyros?” Sloane said as Esther pulled away. The name came out soft. She could hardly stand to say it.
“Alive, but not conscious. They’re not sure he’ll ever wake up. I did a working. The breath. Got his lungs going again,” Esther said, a sharp glint in her eyes that looked like pride.
An ache in Sloane’s chest eased a little. She hadn’t been able to think of Kyros since she was taken, but the sight of him falling at the Resurrectionist’s hand hadn’t left her.
“You’re hurt?” Matt said, pointing to her bulbous ankle.
“Jumped out a window to escape,” Sloane said. “Pretty sure I need a doctor. Or maybe a new leg.”
“Cyrielle went to get one. A doctor, not a leg,” Matt said. Sloane hadn’t even noticed that Cyrielle was gone, but there was no orange haunting the edges of her vision. “She said someone could come to you.”
“Good.”
Esther stood on Sloane’s left, Matt on her right. Both wrapped their arms around her waist to support her as she hobbled toward the elevator bank; she hardly even needed to put her feet on the ground. Esther sang the right note to summon the elevator.
There was relief in this too—that despite what she had kept from them and despite what they had all been through, they were still with her.
Not all was lost.
That night, she dreamed about stumbling barefoot across a field, her arm wrapped around Albie’s waist as he wheezed in her ear. Her arm was slippery with his blood. She stopped, adjusting her grip on his body. Albie screamed into his teeth.
It was dark, but she knew it was morning by the dew on the grass. It wet her ankles.
She woke with a throbbing jaw, from gritting her teeth, and swallowed her last benzo.
Two days later, Sloane found herself in Aelia’s office with crutches tucked under her arms.
The doctor had set up his equipment in Sloane’s sparse room the night before and crouched at the foot of the bed with her foot in his lap. He had an elaborate whistle between his teeth, a modified oscilloscope that told him the frequency of the sound he made to the third decimal place, and a siphon over his eye that looked like half a visor. He’d used all three in concert, puffing the whistle to find the pitch on the oscilloscope and then gesturing to begin the working that let him see the break in her bone. In the haze of her sleep deprivation it had felt like a holy ritual.
He had set the bone with strong, cold hands and little apology and promised a cast the following day—and a siphon that would speed the healing of her bones.
Now both siphon and cast were wrapped around her leg, and she’d been told to use crutches for two weeks.
She was scrubbed clean of the soot and dirt of the Drain, but the feeling clung to her still, like a lucid dream.
Aelia’s office was, in a word, clean. Wood floors, white walls, a single shelf with color-coded books. There were white orchids in large white planters by the window. The door closed behind Sloane with a heavy thump.
She had passed by Nero’s workshop on the way to Aelia’s office, and his doors were the same: thick and wooden, with heavy metal hinges and knobs, locked by magic. Their intimidating appearance made her wonder what was kept in the two spaces that required such tight security.
Sloane still caught phantom whiffs of sulfur every few minutes, even though her hair now smelled like the rosemary shampoo Cyrielle had brought them.