Unraveled (29 page)

“She’s staying with you?”

“I’m looking after her,” she says, “until Jost gets better.”

“I promised to take care of her. We’ve been looking for her for weeks. You disappeared
before you told me where she was,” I say.

“She’s safe here,” Alix says, but I shake my head.

Even if Jost recovers, this is my promise to him.

“Ad.” The nickname is spoken so impossibly quietly that I think I must have imagined
I heard it slip from his lips.

“I’m here.” I lean down to Jost, placing my other hand over the one clutching mine.

“You have to take care of Sebrina,” he says.

“I told you I would,” I remind him softly.

“I don’t think I can do it,” he says. His hand begins to tremble in mine and a seizure
rolls through his body. A medic rushes over and gives him a shot.

“I’m sorry, but he’ll go back to sleep now,” he explains.

“It’s okay. I’ll be here awhile.”

“He’ll sleep for a long time,” he warns me.

“Will he get better?”

“His injuries are severe, and some of the work is extensive.”

“Work?” I ask.

“It looks like a Tailor tried to heal some of his wounds,” Alix says, stepping in.

“A Tailor?” I ask in horror.

“We’re not all bad,” the medic says with a wink, and I realize with some embarrassment
that of course this man would be a Tailor. “Your friend will be fine.”

“Thank you,” I tell him.

“We should let him sleep,” Alix says, placing a hand on my shoulder.

I pull away from her.

“I need a few minutes alone with him, okay?”

The medic and Alix exchange a look, but they do as I ask.

“I’ll be with Alix,” Amie says. She leans down and kisses me on the forehead.

Once they’re gone I turn my attention back to Jost. Some of the scars are barely visible
while others streak angrily across his shoulders. I pull the sheet down to examine
his chest. The marks extend there. Whatever happened to him, it was serious. Despite
the medic’s reassurances that he will live, dread steals through me. How had he survived
this? How exactly was he altered?

“Sebrina.” Her name barely escapes his dry lips.

“She’s fine,” I say to him. “Alix is watching her.”

“Promise me like you promised him,” Jost mumbles.

I’m not sure what he’s trying to tell me. The drugs they’ve given him must be making
him delirious.

“Promise you’ll care for her,” he repeats.

“I promise, Jost.” The weight of the vow is heavy on my chest, but he seems to relax,
his hand loosening over my own.

“But you have to fight, Jost,” I say. “For her. For me.”

“Never stop…” His words are a maze of sounds, losing me in his drugged haze. “You.”

“Rest,” I command, placing a gentle kiss on his bruised cheek. He goes to sleep then,
and I stand to leave him, wondering what he meant by “never stop you.”

But the thought that haunts me can’t be possible.

TWENTY-NINE

N
IGHT FALLS, STEALING AWAY
E
ARTH’S SUN UNTIL
another day dawns. It always feels like the darkness settles too soon over this healing
planet, but I’m grateful that the camp grows quiet. People return to their makeshift
homes and tents. Amie falls asleep in the one loaned to us by someone with a kinder
heart than mine, and I sneak out to the edge of the camp where the world is still
and the air hangs like a heavy black blanket. This is where I can see the stars.

Alix appears, moving so softly through the darkness that I’m unaware of her until
she’s nearly by my side. She thrusts a tattered bag into my hands.

“What is this?” I ask her, tired of her lies and secrets.

“Open it.”

“I don’t want it.” There is nothing she can give me anymore. Not answers or guidance,
and certainly not hope.

“You aren’t the only one with a broken heart,” she says in a soft voice.

I don’t look at her. It doesn’t take much to know when someone is in love, especially
when that person is in love with the same man as you. It doesn’t soften my feelings
toward her, though.

“Is that why you won’t tell me how he died?” I ask her. “Because you can’t share his
last moments?”

Alix takes a step toward me, and when she speaks her voice is low. “Do you think that
he would want you to share that? He died for Jost, so that his brother could live.”

Her eyes are heavy as she confesses this, full of a burden that I don’t quite understand.

“Then why not tell me where Jost was? Why keep it hidden?”

“I’m sorry that I was presumptuous about Jost and his wishes,” she says, skirting
my question.

I stop her. “You weren’t presumptuous. You were purposeful. Deliberate. You knew what
he wanted. You knew I was alive. I know that. The only thing I don’t know is why you
kept the truth from me.”

Alix opens her mouth but then shuts it again, turning back toward the camp.

“Take this,” I call to her, holding out the bag.

“I have no claim to that,” Alix says. “I’ll be gone by morning. Take care of Sebrina.
Jost will be strong soon.”

I should argue with her, try to stop her, but instead I let her fade into the night
while I consider her words. She felt she had a claim on Jost. That’s why she kept
him from me, but I’m not sure why. Except that he’s the last piece of Erik left. I
consider the growing ache that only exacerbates the hollowness inside of me instead
of filling it. That’s why she kept Jost from me and why she won’t tell me about Erik’s
final moments.

Moments that are as much mine as they are hers. So what can she possibly give me now?
What doesn’t she have a claim on? I tip the bag upside down and let its contents fall
to the earth. It nestles there catching moonlight and reflecting it like a beacon,
unwanted but undeniable in its potential.

A small crystal box.

THIRTY

B
UILDINGS ARE BORN FROM SCRAPS AND FOUND
materials. Babies are born to mothers. Earth blooms into a world of promise instead
of mere potential as each of us rebuilds from what’s been left behind. I expected
to find myself more alone than ever before. But there are people who fill my time
with emergencies and concerns and even laughter.

I find a hodgepodge of rooms that I build into a home and I open it to my strange,
collected family.

Sometimes in the crowded streets of our fledgling metro I think I spot my mother watching
me. Other times whispers follow me. I don’t go out for weeks at a time after those
days, but I’ve started telling my story to Amie. She listens in our cramped living
room, without questions. But every now and then she gasps at a revelation, and I’m
taken back to our bedroom in Romen. To two sisters whispering gossip in the dark.
I leave nothing out, because she deserves to know everything.

A day will arrive when others come for this story and I am determined to remember
it.

I will face that moment to protect my family—Sebrina, Jost, and Amie.

And when I’m finally ready to believe again, I will pull a relic of a former life
from the high shelf in my closet. A small crystal box—a gift from Pryana, the girl
who gave me everything that I took from her, and salvaged by Alix, the girl with a
broken heart—that holds the very humanity of my mother.

Maybe one day I’ll seek the answers I haven’t found—from the woman who spies on me
from the outskirts of life. I’m certain she has those answers, just as I am sure that
she watches Amie and me when she thinks we’re not looking. But I’m not quite ready
to hear that story from my mother.

But I share other stories—less dangerous ones. I read stories of heroes who don’t
wear faces I know. Stories captured by people long since dead. I slide into books
and lose myself in pages.

“Read more,” Sebrina begs as I shut the worn book. She could listen to stories all
night.

“You have to sleep sometime, little night owl.”

Sebrina makes a hooting noise and I grin at her, brushing her hair back and giving
her a soft kiss on the forehead. We’re settling into this quiet life at a rate I wouldn’t
have thought possible. It has its difficulties, but given the choice between tilling
soil to plant food or facing the Guild, I’ll gladly choose this life.

“Ad, when will Jost be better?” she asks me, and my heart skips a beat. She still
doesn’t call him
Dad
. I wish she would.

“I’m already stronger,” Jost calls from the doorway, leaning against its frame.

“You two will have your own home soon,” I tell her, “because your dad is healthier
every day.”

Sebrina screws up her face. “I like living with you. Don’t you like living with Adelice?”
she asks him.

There’s a pained pause.

“Yes, I love it, but she might want her own space,” he says.

“Do you want us to leave?” Sebrina’s eyes are wide and bright. I think they look more
like Erik’s eyes than Jost’s, and I shake my head.

“I want you to stay as long as you like.”

I pull the covers up to her chin and tuck them tightly around her like a cocoon. Then
I sing my mother’s lullaby, aware that Jost is still here. I close the door softly
behind me when Sebrina’s breathing slows into a rhythmic snore.

“I’m sorry about that,” Jost says when I step into the living room.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” I tell him, moving past him to sit down.

“She’s getting attached to you.”

“And you don’t like that?” I ask him.

“No, I do.” He dares a glance at me. There is a mournful sadness in his eyes. “I don’t
want you to feel trapped, Adelice. You aren’t the one who’s responsible for her.”

“A lot has changed, Jost,” I say.

But we don’t talk about the gulf between us or the loss we’ve endured. There can be
no moving forward for Jost and me. The past has left a wound in both of us that can
never heal. We both know that.

And yet, things have changed. Jost has changed. He’s quick with his smile and silly
with his jokes. But the fire has gone out of his eyes. He’s no longer consumed by
guilt and duty. Now a calm wisdom reflects from them. Perhaps he’s more like Erik
than I realized. Maybe he needed Sebrina around to show me. But there’s something
else. Something I don’t let myself think about even though it niggles into my dreams
and lodges in my unconscious mind, playing tricks on me during the waking hours when
I catch Jost looking at me.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks. He stretches out his hand and runs a finger
along the outline of my techprint. The scarred skin tingles and something pushes against
my mind—a thought I refuse to acknowledge even as it trembles through me.

I draw my hand away. “Ghosts.”

Our eyes meet and a chill creeps up my neck.

“No ghosts,” he says, extending his hand again. “Dance with me?”

“There’s no music.”

“I know,” he says.

I take his hand, curiosity getting the better of me and something shivers through
me at his touch. A familiarity. An instinct. I stare into his calm blue eyes and swallow
the question that wanders onto my lips as he leads me into a sweeping waltz. He meets
my gaze and I know him.

Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.

THE END

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I need to thank the readers for seeing this through to the end.

As this is my last chance to thank the people who saw this trilogy from beginning
to end, this is going to be a long one. I have to begin by thanking my editor, Janine
O’Malley, for being my literary doula through this adventure. We birthed one big baby.

Special thanks to the entire team at Macmillan for their enthusiasm and support of
my books. Thank you, Simon Boughton, Allison Verost, Elizabeth Fithian, Ksenia Winnicki,
Caitlin Sweeney, and the rest of the team. You are truly like family!

This book wouldn’t be in your hands without Mollie Glick, who picked this story out
of the slush, fought to represent it, and held my hand through the whole whirlwind.
A big thank-you to Katie Hamblin, former assistant and forever genius, for many wonderful
notes on all three books.

We wouldn’t have shelves for books if not for bookstores. My utmost thanks to the
many booksellers who have welcomed me into their stores, especially my hometown shops:
Rainy Day Books and Liberty Bay Books.

Growing up, I got my books from the library. Now that I’m an author, I have even more
love for libraries, particularly the Johnson County Library system. Here’s looking
at you, Joshua Neff!

If it weren’t for friends, I would live in my own made-up world. Thanks for getting
me out of my head: Lindsey Barjenbruch, Ashley Fuller, and Bethany Taylor.

I’m especially grateful for my writing friends, who understand that characters can
break your heart and frustrate you to no end. Thank you, Michelle Hodkin, S. J. Maas,
Lissa Price, Josephine Angelini, and Jen Armentrout, for words of wisdom and shoulders
to cry on. I was incredibly lucky to go on this wild ride with some Fierce Sisters:
Jessica Brody, Anna Banks, Ann Aguirre, Emmy Laybourne, Marie Rutkoski, Caragh O’Brien,
Marissa Meyer, Lish McBride, and Leigh Bardugo.

To my inner circle of critics and cheerleaders, thank you: Bethany Hagen, Robyn Lucas,
Laurelin Paige, Tamara Mataya, Kayti McGee, and Melanie Harlow.

And finally, I wouldn’t be writing this at all if not for my family. Thank you to
my parents for letting me read and providing me with transport to the library. Jessica,
I think I’m responsible enough to check books out from your private library. Elise,
I see amazing things for you. Josh, pop the question already! Thanks, Aunt Kristi,
for sneaking me books and CDs under the radar. I’m blessed to have the best in-laws
in the world. Jim and Robin, thank you for welcoming me as your daughter. To my oft-neglected
children—James and Sydney, you are my world. And to Josh, who always believes. You
are my patronus.