When the quiet became too heavy, she slid her hand across the distance to touch mine. I grasped hers like it could keep me from being swept away. We became each other’s anchor.
“What will they do to him?” I asked her.
“They’ll want the box opened,” she told me. “They’ll do things to him until he tells them where you are.”
I looked down, feeling my heart sink.
“If he dies before I do,” I asked, “what happens?”
Silence. Her breathing was sporadic, heavy, labored.
“He’ll be gone,” she said. “If one of your Chosens dies before you, they don’t come back the next time. Wyck made sure we knew…one of us was always dispensable.”
Her hand quivered in mine. I couldn’t lift my eyes from the expanse of rock around my feet, the grass that brushed up and down my leg like fingers.
“You know he won’t give us up,” I said, choking. “He’d die before.”
And at that, Callista’s tears began to fall. She leaned over and laid her head against my shoulder, and I held her up as best I could, a tiny cry escaping before she forced it back down. I couldn’t bring myself to wrap my other arm around her because I was just as heartbroken as she was.
“I’m sorry,” she said into my shoulder. “I did all this.”
She sounded so guilty—more than she should have. I wanted to counter her remorse, to say that she’d had no choice at alclass="underline" that really, this was on my conscience, that I was to blame for all our lives being lost. But there was something different than that behind her voice, something that went much deeper than her hurt. She sniffed and tried to regain control of herself but only ended up pushing from me, wiping her eyes with her wrist.
“There’s stuff you don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t tell you and Thad because I knew you’d hate me. But all of this is my fault.”
“Why would we hate you?” I said in disbelief. My first meeting with Callista had been after she’d taken down a plane to keep me safe. Of all of us, she’d been the safest, done the most planning, held Thad and I back when we were going to do something stupid. What could she possibly be talking about—hating her? That was impossible.
She shook her head.
“I—I was caught by the Guardians before you or Thad,” she blurted. “I didn’t know what was going on. They just…they just killed my whole family.”
Her shoulders slumped even further. “And I couldn’t take it. So I just told them where you and Thad were. That’s how they found you in the first place. I told them.”
The guilt she’d been feeling and hiding all this time was finally out in the open, but it burned like a splinter being drawn from a deep wound. What was I supposed to say? I wanted to comfort her, to tell her that it was alright, that she’d just made a mistake, that it wasn’t that bad after all. But to say those things would have been an insult to everything we’d lost. That it was alright that Thad had lost Sophia, that I had lost my family, that we had lost the Blade, and now that we’d lost our friend.
So I said nothing. She said nothing. The silence meshed with our grief, with Callista’s guilt, with my failure. We were empty, hollow, and futureless.
“Kiss me,” Callista said suddenly. She hadn’t turned, hadn’t looked at me, just continued to stare ahead at the edge far away through her glassy eyes. I didn’t move.
“Please,” she said, voice cracking. “Make me feel happy again.”
So I turned and kissed her.
All at once, every other thought and fear and melancholy misery that had been around me vanished. She moved closer, leaning in so that the back of my head was pushed against the heavy stone, my hands sliding to keep myself supported, hers running through my hair. She moved my lips for me, and my conscious mind—whatever part of it still existed—was swept away.
Everything around us—the net of trees, the tornado of wind, and the people who wanted us dead—disappeared. I could feel her warmth radiating against my skin. This was what I’d wanted without knowing. This was the dream I’d wished I could have had all those nights ago, when instead I’d been fed nightmares about Callista instead.
It crushed the pain out of me like there was no room for the both of them. Callista or the sadness. Callista or the horrors. I chose Callista.
She breathed sharply, her hair a canopy over my face as she leaned over me on an incline, blocking everything out save for her now-opened eyes. It was a rare second when both of our gazes met, when I was able to stare into hers without feeling like we should have been running, or planning, or saving someone else. For a moment, it was just us. I couldn’t have said my own name if someone had asked.
Callista pulled away.
Tears had come up in the edges of her eyes again, running down her face. She looked at me, and then her face fell with regret, with shame, with absolute remorse.
“I’m sorry,” she said, pushing away from me, curling back into her ball.
“No,” I whispered without meaning to say it aloud, my tone hoarse from having not spoken in so long. She shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I shouldn’t have done that. It was selfish. I broke our promise.”
How could she think that I even cared about the stupid promise anymore? I shook my head. I wanted to tell her all the things that I’d been wanting to say. With her, I had someone else. With her, I had something left to live for that before, I hadn’t even realized was worth it.
I just couldn’t say any of the things I wanted to. Her kiss had taken all my words.
She wiped her eyes. “I didn’t mean that. I just did it to make me feel better.”
Her tears had stopped. She was hardening again. So I sat on one side of her wall and she sat building and mortaring it on the other, until we were safely separated again. Merely allies. I pushed my legs in front of me and took a deep breath.
“You know I have to go back for Thad,” I said.
She drew a breath sharply: the reaction I’d expected but hoped to not hear.
“That’s suicide,” she said callously.
“I know,” I replied. “But Thad already did the same for me. Twice.”
It didn’t seem to make a difference to her. She pushed her teeth together, squeezing herself even tighter. My mind was already made up though. To leave Thad behind would mean that I was unfaithful, a coward, a failure—to be everything that Anon believed of me.
The end wasn’t a fear of mine anymore. I could live with dying.
Even though I hoped she would, Callista never relented. So with no other choice, I stood.
She lashed out, scaled hands catching me like a net and slinging me back into the corner. The rocks bruised the skin against my spine painfully but I sprang back. In the next second I was standing across from Callista, claws out, facing her as she growled at me viciously.
“You’re not leaving!” she shouted, ready to knock me again if I tried. I tested her with a mad dash in the other direction, only to have her claws slice through the air in front of me, slamming so hard into the stones that they tore deep chips away. My hand flew up to push hers out of my way. My fist was met with the back of her hand, scales colliding so powerfully that I was thrown off my feet.
“I have to go!” I yelled just as loudly. “You want me to leave Thad to them? You know what they’ll do!”
“If you go, everything he’s done will be worth nothing,” she told me, sliding to corner me again, spreading her fingers and claws menacingly.
“So you want me to leave him there?” I said. “You’re just giving up on him?”