“I know what it’s like to not have hope,” Qhuinn said roughly. “But destiny can surprise you.”
Luchas dropped his arms and laughed bitterly. “Not in a good way, I’m afraid. Not in a good way—”
“You’re wrong—”
“Stop—”
“Luchas. I’m telling you—”
“I’m a fucking cripple!”
“So was I.” Qhuinn pointed to his eyes. “All my life.”
Luchas turned away, staring at the cream-colored wall. “There’s nothing you can say, Qhuinn. It’s over. I’m tired of fighting for a life I don’t want.”
Another silence stretched out. Eventually, Qhuinn cursed under his breath. “You just need to feed and get your strength back—”
“I will e’er refuse her vein. You might as well accept this now and not waste any further time on arguments I find unpersuasive. I am done.”
As Selena waited in the corridor, exhaustion cloaked her in heavy folds that were no less real for being invisible.
And yet she was antsy. Fidgeting with her robing, her hair, her hands.
She did not like time that was unconsumed by her duties. With nothing to occupy herself, her thoughts and fears became too loud to contain within her skull.
And yet she supposed there was a utility in this solitude. If she could stand to take advantage of it.
What she needed to do as she stood out here was practice her good-bye. She should try to compose the words she wanted to speak before she ran out of time. She should get up the courage that was going to be required to say aloud that which was in her heart.
She was going to follow through on the impulse to tell Trez good-bye.
Of the many people she would leave behind, the Primale and her Chosen sisters, the Brothers and their shellans, Trez was the one whom she mourned already. Even though she hadn’t seen him in . . . many, many nights.
Even though she hadn’t been alone with him in . . . many, many months.
In fact, after they had ended their . . . relationship, or whatever it was, he had all but moved out of the mansion. No matter what time she had come or gone, she had not seen him face-to-face, and only on occasion caught a glimpse of his big shoulders as he headed in an opposite direction from her.
That he was avoiding her had been a treacherous relief at first. It was going to be hardest leaving him, and harder still if they had continued their assignations. But lately, as her time grew shorter and shorter, she had come to decide that she needed to tell him. . . .
Dearest Virgin Scribe, what was she going to say?
Selena looked up and down the corridor, as if the perfect little monologue might obligingly march on by, at a pace leisurely enough so that she could memorize it.
For all she knew, he had forgotten their time together. By his own admission, he was well versed in finding female diversions of the human variety.
No doubt he had wiped the slate well clean.
And then there was the reality of him being promised to another.
She dropped her head into her hands. For her entire life, she had taken comfort and purpose from her sacred duty—so it was a shock to discover that as she drew closer and closer to her demise, the one thing she was driven to get right was her departure from a male who was not her own. With whom she had had an affair of the very shortest duration.
There had been many nights that she had spent in her bedroom up at the Great Camp, attempting to convince herself that what had happened with Trez was pure folly, but now, as time was running out? A strange clarity was focusing her. It mattered naught the why. Only that she accomplished the goal of telling him how she felt before she died.
She did not want to approach him too soon, however—rather embarrassing to pour out her soul to a potentially indifferent vessel and then linger for nights, weeks, months.
If only her expiration came with a date, as if she were a carton of milk—
Qhuinn emerged from the hospital room, and the tight expression on his harsh face cleared away her tangle of preoccupation.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “He is refusing again?”
“I can’t get through to him.”
“The will to live can be complicated.” She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “Know that I am here for you both. If at any time he changes his mind, I shall come.”
“You are a female of worth, you really are.”
He gave her a quick, hard embrace and then stalked off down the corridor, as if he were leaving the facility. But then he paused in front of the closed door to Doc Jane’s main examination room. After a moment, he pushed through.
As she prayed there was a solution for the two brothers, another wave of exhaustion, the bigger brother of the one that had swept her off-kilter in front of Tohrment, shambled through her body, making her throw out a hand to the wall lest she fall down.
Panic o’ertook her, her heart beating wildly in her chest, her head flooding with do this, do that, run away. What if this was an attack? What if this was her final—
“Hey, are you all right?”
Training her wild eyes toward the sound, she found that Tohrment was coming out of the exam room.
“I . . .”
All at once, the whirling sensation receded unexpectedly, as if she had been approached by a mugger who, having been confronted by the Brother, had reconsidered his attack.
Beneath her robing, she lifted one leg and then the other, finding none of the deadly resistance she was so terrified of.
“Selena?” he said as he strode toward her.
Leaning back against the wall, she went to brush over her chignon, and discovered that her forehead was damp with sweat.
“I believe I shall tender myself up to the Sanctuary.” She blew out her breath. “I shall refresh myself there. It is needed.”
“That is a great idea. But are you sure you’ll be able to—”
“I’m just fine.”
Closing her eyes, Selena concentrated and . . .
. . . with a twirl of the world and a spin of her molecules that her brain, rather than something in her body, initiated, she was relocated up to the Scribe Virgin’s sacred, peaceful place.
Instantly, sure as if she had taken a vein, her body was both eased and strengthened, but her mind did not follow suit—in spite of the lovely greens of the tree leaves and the blades of grass, the pastel colors of the tulips that were perpetually in bloom, the resplendent white marble of the dormitory, the Treasury, the Temple of the Sequestered Scribes, the Reflecting Pool, she felt pursued even though she was in arguable safety.
Then again, having a mortal disease of indeterminate duration made it difficult to tell the difference between symptoms that were on the “normal” spectrum, and ones that had greater portent.
She stayed where she arrived for quite some time, fearing that if she moved, she might trigger the expression of her disease. But eventually, she went upon a wander. The temperature of the still air was perfect, neither too hot nor too cold, and the sky overhead glowed a blue that was the color of a cornflower sapphire, and the baths gleamed under the strange ambient light . . . and she felt as though she were alone in a dark alley in downtown Caldwell.
How much time? she wondered. How many more promenades did she have left?
Shivering, she pulled her robing closer to her body as a familiar sense of sadness and impotence barged into her, crushing her chest, making it difficult to breathe. But she did not give in to tears. She had cried them all out some time ago, the why-me’s, what-if’s, and need-more-time’s over now—proof that even boiling water could be gotten used to if you stayed within it long enough.
She had come to terms with the reality that not only had she not been granted a full life, she had not really lived much a’tall—and so, yes, of course she must tender a good-bye to Trez. He was the closest she had gotten to something that was hers, something private rather than prescribed, attained, for however briefly, rather than assigned.
In saying farewell to him, she was acknowledging that part of her life that had been her own.