Deception

Chapter Forty RACHEL

“Oh, Sylph.” I breathe her name out and the pain rushes in. A knot in my chest sends bright shards of hurt into my veins with every heartbeat. My hands shake as I grab another rag and try to capture the blood as it spills out of her nostrils, curves around her lips, and streams toward her jaw.

“Please,” Smithson whispers, and Sylph tries to smile.

The rag can’t contain the blood. It gushes from Sylph and coats my hands.

Blood pouring from the sky. Puddling at my feet. Biting into my skin.

A shudder works its way up my spine, and I barely keep myself from screaming.

I can’t stay here, confined in this wagon while another person I love bleeds to death in front of me. I can’t stay here, confronted with my impotence and helplessness. I can’t, but somehow I have to. Sylph deserves to be surrounded by those who love her.

The shudder seizes my arms, my legs, and my teeth, shaking me with merciless fingers until I drop the rag and wrap my arms around myself to keep from flying into a million little pieces.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” Smithson chants the words softly, rocking back and forth while Sylph grows pale and begins to tremble.

I slowly slide onto the wagon bed and curve my body next to hers the way we used to when we’d spend the night gossiping about our dreams. Hers were simple and sweet. She wanted a home of her own with blue curtains and white walls. Children and family dinners. A husband who wanted nothing more than what she could bring to him.

My dreams were bold and bright and impossible to articulate beneath the shadow of Baalboden’s Wall. I wanted freedom. A place to live where I could wear what I wanted, say what I wanted, and challenge everyone as my equal. A crusade to lead if that was what my freedom cost.

My dreams are simple now. I don’t want to change the world. I don’t want to save it either.

I just want to save Sylph.

Wiping my hand clean on the blanket beneath me, I lace my fingers through hers and squeeze gently.

She doesn’t squeeze back.

“Sylph. Please.” Smithson chokes on a sob and leans down to press his cheek against hers. “I love you.”

Her hand is cold in mine, and her body shakes as I stretch until I can rest my mouth next to her ear. “Thank you,” I say, and swallow against the suffocating grief that stuffs my throat with cotton, “for everything. You loved me when no one else my age would. You accepted me. You stood up for me. You’re brave and kind, and I will spend the rest of my life missing you.”

Her lips move, but no sound comes out. I don’t need to hear the words, though. I know Sylph would spend her dying breath telling us she loves us.

“I love you, too,” I say, and stay pressed against her. With every faint beat of her heart, my pulse pounds harder. Faster. It feels like a metal vise is slowly squeezing my chest until I have to fight for every breath.

She moans, and I whisper, “Shh, it’s all right,” but it isn’t. I’m a liar, and every tiny, shaky rise of her chest proves me wrong. Slowly, so slowly I almost believe she’s simply holding her breath, she sighs and goes still. Silent.

An anguished cry rips past Smithson’s lips, and he gathers her to his chest. The empty space beside me grows cool, and the blood soaks into the blanket. I sit up, shoving myself away from it.

“Rachel?” Quinn asks softly, but I can’t look at him. At any of them.

I only have eyes for Sylph.

Crawling across the wagon bed, I brush her hair from her face as Smithson rocks her back and forth. Her green eyes stare at nothing. Her skin looks like candle wax. The Sylph I knew is gone.

No spark in her eyes. No laugh hovering just behind her words. No love spilling out of a heart that refused to turn anyone away.

A bubble of panic swells inside me, pushing against my chest. My breath tears its way out of my lungs, and my head spins.

She’s gone.

Nothing I can do will bring her back.

The space in my heart reserved just for her is an aching void that threatens to slice into the silence and spill the blood of everyone I’ve lost, and I can’t let it hurt me. I can’t let it break me.

Scrambling away from Smithson, I slam into the wagon bench behind me.

“Rachel, wait.” Quinn holds a hand out to me, but I’m already up. Already moving. I grab the edge of the wagon’s entrance, rip the canvas aside, and leap for the ground.

The people walking behind the wagon shout as I roll across the forest floor, but I claw my way to my feet and start running. I shove the helping hands away from me, duck beneath the outstretched arm of the recruit guarding this edge of the line, and race into the trees.

Faster.

Stray branches whip my skin. Underbrush tangles around my ankles, threatening to bring me down. I dig my fingers into tree trunks for balance and push myself on.

Faster.

My breath burns my throat, my vision blurs, and something roars inside my head. The image of Sylph’s waxy skin and lifeless eyes slams into the wall of silence, and I shudder as a dark, terrible grief tries to rise to the surface.

Faster.

I can outrun this. I can push myself hard enough to leave it all behind. If I no longer see it, it doesn’t have to be real. It isn’t real.

It isn’t.

My feet slam into the forest floor. A branch tangles in my hair, and I rip it free. I don’t need to cry. I don’t need to feel. I don’t need anything but to run until I leave behind the gaping wounds that carve my spirit into something I no longer recognize.

Something wraps around me from behind, and I tumble to the ground. Twisting, I punch and kick, but every move I make is easily parried until suddenly I find myself held close, tucked up under someone’s chin.

“Where are you running to?” Quinn asks quietly.

My breath sobs in and out of my lungs. The longer I sit still, the faster the grief will catch up to me. “Let me go.”

“And let you fall headlong into the river?”

I lift my head and see a sheer drop just six yards from us. I shrug.

“Do you want to die?” he asks as if he really wants to know.

Do I? It would be easier. I could fade into silence and all the broken pieces in me wouldn’t matter anymore. I wouldn’t have to grieve, or think, or desperately stuff everything I can’t stand to face into the silence.

But Logan would grieve. And if Dad, Oliver, and Sylph are waiting for me on the other side, they’d be disappointed in me. I’d be disappointed in me. I’m not a quitter.

I slowly shake my head. No, I don’t want to die.

“Why aren’t you crying for Sylph?”

“Tears don’t bring people back.” Pain stabs from my chest to my fingertips.

“Tears aren’t for the people we’ve lost. They’re for us. So we can remember, and celebrate, and miss them, and feel human,” he says.

Feel human. I push away from him, and he lets me go. If allowing everything that wants to hurt me to rise to the surface and destroy me is what it takes to feel human again, then I’d rather feel nothing at all.

The silence greedily absorbs the shock of Sylph’s death until the dark, fathomless void consumes me—a stranger pressing against my skin from the inside out. I don’t feel human. I don’t feel grief, or pain, or fear.

I don’t feel anything at all.

Slowly, I climb to my feet and find Logan standing behind us. His eyes flicker from Quinn to me, and then he walks forward and opens his arms. I step into his embrace, but his touch is only skin deep. Inside me, the Rachel I once knew is gone.