supernatural wind, more picking through rubble, torn curtains, shattered windows. More of all of this; more losing, more of having less.
I saw a picture of him standing next to a stop sign, golden hair, golden chain around his neck, golden band across his throat, lips pressed together, cheek dimpling, hand clasped in the mayor’s hand in greeting.
My first thought was I thought he would be taller.
27
SLOANE LIMPED INTO THE STREET, waving her arms. The taxi screeched to a stop and she opened the door before the driver could decide she wasn’t worth the trouble.
The driver, a clean-shaven, pale man in his early twenties, twisted in his seat to look at her. She propped her leg up next to her.
“Ma’am,” he said, eyes wide, “are you—”
“I need to go to the Cordus Center,” she said.
“I’ve gotta take you to the hospital, ma’am—”
“No,” Sloane said, teeth gritted. She didn’t want to navigate a Genetrix hospital by herself. “And if you call me ma’am again, I’m going to tuck and roll out of this car.”
Sloane stared at the charms dangling from the rearview mirror for most of the drive back—a saint medal, half of a heart, a tiny plastic whistle. The radio was set to a Christian station, and one song’s chorus—“Jesus, You did a working on my heart”—made her feel very far from home.
It was only when the car pulled up to the curb in front of the building that she remembered she didn’t have any money. She was bickering with the driver at greater and greater volume when Cyrielle ran outside. Sloane had never been more relieved to see bright orange lipstick.
“Oh my God,” Cyrielle said as Sloane stuck her swollen—very swollen—ankle out of the car. Cyrielle took a coin from the sack at her waist and thrust it at the taxi driver, then put an arm around Sloane to help her out of the car.
Sloane realized only then that she had done it. She had escaped.
She let herself relax once they were inside the Camel. Cyrielle sat her down on a bench near the main entrance, and Sloane watched orange diamonds scattered across the floor as the sun burned through the tiny panes of glass above her. The air was warm, and people rushed back and forth in front of her, stomping in heavy boots or snapping in fine, pointed shoes or squeaking in sneakers with marshmallow-white soles. Her right foot was bare—she had taken off the boot in the taxi upon realizing that the leather was pinching at her massive ankle—and turning purple. She hardly felt the pain anymore.
Something pricked at her attention. She lifted her head to see Matt half walking, half running across the lobby. His eyes were red—he had been crying. When their eyes met, he burst into a run, almost bowling over an old lady with tight gray curls. Sloane used the wall to push herself to her feet just in time for him to collide with her.
His arms wrapped around her middle, and he lifted her to her toes. It felt good to have his solid body against hers. The last time they had slept together, she hadn’t appreciated it enough. Not just because Matt was all lean, finely tuned muscle, but because he was warm, and familiar, and kind. For the past few years, he hadn’t exactly set her alight, but she had burned for him low and steady. She missed it, that fire, a pilot light that never went out.
Her hands had come up automatically to the middle of his back, which was damp with sweat. He set her down gently but didn’t let her go. It struck her, suddenly, that he was trembling.
“Hey,” she whispered into his ear. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“It was—all I could think was—” His voice was muffled by her shirt. He had buried his face in her shoulder. “All I could think was Not again.”
Not again. She had been thinking the same thing since they’d gotten to Genetrix: Not again, not another Dark One, not another kidnapping, not another escape. But she hadn’t thought about what it might be like for Matt to watch her taken away a second time, not knowing if he would ever see her alive again, not knowing what she was enduring.
She hadn’t actually thought about what he went through the first time either. Matt had been the leader of their group, unquestionably, and two of the people he led had been taken and tortured by their enemy. There was no way he