Passenger (Passenger #1) - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,149

simple as choice.”

Did people not die of fever in her time? Truly?

“You sound like you’ve already half given up,” she said. “You have things to do for yourself! You’re not going to die here—I won’t let you!”

The breath wheezed out of him, into him, but his tongue couldn’t form the words. He was fighting now to stay above the silver, silky call of oblivious sleep. His strength ebbed, pulling him back, past the point of choice. There was no choice. As much as he wished to strike back, to cling to this life until he wore his fingertips down to the bone, he had seen too much death to believe he could escape. Even with trickery and luck, a man only survived so many fevers before one finally claimed him in the end. But surely, if ever there were a reason to try, it would be her.

Exhaustion crept over him, banished only for a moment as she kissed him fiercely.

“I won’t leave you here,” she swore. “Promise me that you’re going to fight.”

“I love you.” For whatever small comfort it was worth, he would have the truth between them now. “Most desperately. Bloody inconvenient, that.”

“Promise.” He felt the first of her tears fall, slide down the length of his cheek. Panic made her tremble, so he drew her close to him again, hoping to steady her. He’d never felt time’s grip so acutely; there was so much he wished to say to her, and his chance was slipping away.

“You will live.…You must live,” he continued. “I think you know…the truth of it is…I wanted to go with you. I wanted to see your home. I wanted to find that place for us, the one you spoke of.…”

“It’s waiting,” Etta told him. “We just have to go.”

She could shatter him with so few words.

“When you play your violin, will you think of me?” he asked softly. “Sometimes…not always, or even often, but perhaps when you hear the sea and you remember…I should like to have heard you…just once.…”

“Nicholas,” she said sharply, holding his face between her hands, drawing him back from that steep, dark edge again, “if you die, I’ll never forgive you. I don’t care if that’s selfish—I don’t. Fight.”

Love was selfish, wasn’t it? It made honest men want things they had no right to. It cocooned one from the rest of the world, erased time itself, knocked away reason. It made you live in defiance of the inevitable. It made you want another’s mind, body; it made you feel as if you deserved to own their heart, and carve out a place in it.

You are mine, he thought, watching her, and I am yours.

“Tell me…just one thing…about your time?” he managed to get out.

“Of course,” Etta said.

“Do you remember…that couple in London, in the station?”

“The ones who were dancing?” she asked. “What about them?”

“Would we…be able to dance…that way?” he said, finding it harder to catch his breath. “In your time?”

Etta pressed her lips together, clearly fighting to offer him a smile. “Yes.”

“Thought so. Will you stay…until I sleep…?”

She kissed his cheeks, his eyelids, his forehead, leaving behind a burning trail across his heart. His breathing slowed, his heart seemed to murmur an apology in response…a slow thump thump thump in his ears that reminded him of a ship’s rudder changing course. A gradual slowing, and then…

Not like this.

Not a whisper, please God, but a roar. He needed to finish this journey before beginning the next.

“Fight,” she whispered one last time, breath warm against his ear.

For you, his pulse throbbed back, for me.

NICHOLAS WAS ONLY DIMLY AWARE OF ETTA AS SHE PULLED AWAY; he was locked somewhere between sleep and the fiery hell of fever. There was no feeling left in his arms to reach for her, and his legs might as well have been cut away for all he could shift them. All that was left to him was pain, alternating between the agonizing row of stitches in his side, and the beating inside his skull.

He slept hard, his dreams scalding and bright. He dreamt of the house on Queen Street, that path he took between the kitchen and the hidden door in the dining room to serve the family their meals. Stay out of sight. Stay in the dark. Stay silent. He dreamt of his mother’s hands—how strange it was to remember their shape and weight and touch when her face was so far away. The pink scars and burns that covered the back of them, evidence