Deception

Chapter Forty-Six RACHEL

Awareness creeps through me as if a thick fog is slowly lifting from my thoughts. I’m lying on my back, and something soft cushions me. I feel . . . disconnected. Like my brain and my body aren’t talking to each other yet.

“Almost three days,” a voice says somewhere above me.

Someone else replies, but I don’t catch the words. My head is heavy with sleep and something else. Something that dulls my thoughts and makes it impossible to lift my eyelids.

I feel like I’m floating underwater beneath my skin.

“. . . not normal, is it?” the same voice asks. It sounds familiar, but holding on to the voice long enough to put a name to it takes more effort than I can give.

My thoughts spin away from me, but it’s not unpleasant. I don’t have to think or remember or make any decisions. I just have to lie here.

I should float underwater more often.

“. . . both exposed to the smoke for longer than anyone else,” a different voice says. This voice is higher than the other. Calmer. A woman.

I don’t think I know her.

The woman says, “They breathed in a great deal of smoke, Logan, but look. Quinn woke up several times today and his breathing has improved. He’ll be walking around by tomorrow.”

“What about Rachel?” Logan asks.

Logan. My thoughts spin faster until pieces of memory fly through my head in rapid disorder.

A little girl by a white stone. Familiar eyes. Thick billows of noxious smoke rushing down my throat and burning my lungs.

Burning.

White-gold flames. Explosions. Pain.

As soon as I think the word, I realize a dull throbbing reverberates through my right arm, from my shoulder to my fingertips. Trying to move my arm gives the pain a set of vicious teeth.

I moan and my eyes flutter open. The room I’m in tilts and wobbles, and I close my eyes again before the motion makes me sick to my stomach.

“Rachel?” Logan asks, and calloused fingers stroke my cheek.

I try opening my mouth to answer, but my lips feel sewn shut.

“Here,” the woman says, “give her some water.”

The woman is a stranger. But the hand belongs to Logan. The room—I have no idea how I came to be inside a room instead of a wagon, but my mushy brain refuses to tackle this conundrum.

Something cold presses against my lips, and water trickles over them and into my mouth. It feels like my throat is the size of a small canyon when I first swallow, but the second and third swallows are easier. After five swallows, the cup is removed from my mouth, and I risk opening my eyes again.

The room remains unfocused. A wash of soft green and white. I turn my head, and a blurry Logan crouches beside me.

“I can’t see you,” I say, and my voice sounds like that time I caught bronchitis from Sally Revis, who coughed right in my face during Social Etiquette class.

“Are you . . .” Logan’s clothes rustle, and when he speaks again it sounds like he’s stepped away from my side. “Is she blind?”

“My ears work. You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not here,” I say, and he crouches back down.

“I’m sorry. I’m just worried. It’s been . . . you’ve been asleep. For days. And it’s fine if you’re blind! I mean, it isn’t fine. Of course it isn’t, but it doesn’t matter to me. I love you just the same—”

“You babble when I make you nervous.”

The woman laughs. “Want more water?”

“Yes.” I drink a few more sips and risk opening my eyes again. Still blurry, but it’s getting better. “I’m not blind, Logan. Just having a hard time focusing my eyes. Where are we?”

Instead of answering, he leans down and presses his forehead to my chest. His hand tangles itself in my hair, and his breathing sounds unsteady.

“I’ll give you two some time alone,” the woman says, and leaves the room.

“What did she give me to make my brain feel so disconnected?” I ask.

“Pain medicine. I thought you were going to die.” He lifts his face, and every sleepless hour he’s endured while waiting for me to wake up is carved into his expression. “I thought I’d lost you.”

His voice breaks, and he lays his face against me again. I should comfort him. Say something soft and understanding. Reach for him, because I know my touch soothes his ragged edges.

I should, but suddenly, I don’t know how. I’m not just disconnected from my body. I’m cut off from my emotions, too. I’d forgotten the price I’d paid to be free of the terrible pain of Sylph’s death.

Not a real person.

Not anymore.

I didn’t realize my choice would also cut me off from Logan.

But I don’t have to feel soft and warm inside to offer comfort. I know what’s expected of me. I can mimic the emotions.

I can’t lift my left arm to embrace him because he’s pinning it to my side with his chest. And trying to lift my right arm sends sharp spikes of pain up my shoulder and into my jaw. I hiss in a breath, and Logan lifts his head again.

“I can’t move my arm,” I say. Only after the words are out do I remember I was going to offer him sympathy and softness.

His eyes shift toward my arm, and then back to my face. “You were burned. Do you remember?”

The white stone. The little girl. And pain like nothing I’ve ever felt burrowing down below my skin like it wanted to light my bones on fire.

“I remember. How many did we lose?”

“Seventeen.” The loss of those seventeen lies heavy in his voice.

I push with my left hand, trying to sit up. He leans forward to help me.

“Take it slow. You’ve been lying down for three days.”

The agony of those three days lies heavy in his voice, too, and I don’t know what to say. He gently fluffs the pillows I was lying on and arranges them behind my back.

Wait.

Pillows?

“Where are we?” I look around the room again, and this time most of the details are clear. The floor is covered in a beautiful white rug that fills every corner of the room. The walls are the green of pistachios, and sunlight pours in from a window framed with starched white curtains.

Four beds line the walls, two on each side. I’m sitting on a bed with a comfortable mattress beneath me and thick white blankets covering me. Directly across from me, Quinn sleeps on a similar bed. The other two beds are empty.

“We’re in Lankenshire,” Logan says. “They’ve offered us temporary asylum while our injured heal. I’m hoping I can convince them to make the asylum permanent once they hear my case against both Rowansmark and the Commander.”

“But the killer . . .” Familiar eyes. Cruel laughter. “He had me.”

“Pain is such a useful thing. Don’t you feel alive?”

“Rachel, I’m sorry,” Logan says, and the raw grief in his voice scrapes against the silence within me. I flinch and look down at my bandaged arm. What will I find when I peel back those layers? Ruined flesh? Destroyed muscle? An arm that will refuse to hold another weapon?

“Are you listening?” Logan asks. I jerk my gaze up toward him and then let it skitter away before he can see that I don’t know what to do with his apologies or his grief.

“Of course I am,” I say, and hope he doesn’t ask me to repeat anything he’s just said.

“Quinn found you. The killer had you by the arm . . .” He swallows. “Quinn found you—and the others in the western quadrant—by following your screams.”

Fury, sharp and lethal, lives beneath his regret. I used to understand that. Respond to that. I used to be that. Now I can’t find my regret. I can’t work up any anger. I can’t do anything but stare at the boy lying in the bed across from me and wonder if he’ll die, too. If I’ll have to add his face to the list of those who tear my throat raw every night while I scream the things I no longer allow myself to think about during the day.

The silence between me and Logan has gone on for too long. I feel the prickle of his unease even before I see it in his face. I should be saying something. Offering something. Acting like the horror, rage, and pain he feels are mirrored inside me as well.

“I’m okay,” I say, though we both know that can’t possibly be true. I look back at Quinn, at the rise and fall of his chest, and wish he would wake up.

Logan follows my gaze and says quietly, “He saved your life. You were already unconscious when he reached you. He crawled across the entire field with you on his back.”

When I don’t say anything, Logan turns my face toward his. “Rachel, something’s wrong. What is it?”

I try to dredge up concern. Fear. Anything that will make it look like I still know how to feel something when I should.

The effort exhausts me.

“Are you worried about the killer?” he asks. “Grieving Sylph? Upset that Quinn is taking a while to recover?”

I nod. Yes. All of those. And none of them. Not really. A girl who isn’t quite real anymore can’t worry or grieve or feel upset.

“I can’t make losing Sylph any easier on you, though I wish I could.” His fingers gently run through my hair. “And Quinn breathed in a lot of smoke, just like you, but he’s gaining strength quickly. As for the killer, we’ll catch him. Even if we don’t know what he looks like.”

What he looks like. I raise my face and stare into Logan’s dark blue eyes. “His eyes reminded me of you,” I say.

A little line digs in between his brows. “Is there anyone in camp whose eyes have reminded you of me before the fires?”

I scroll through a mental list of the Baalboden survivors and shake my head. “I don’t think so. But maybe that’s because on the night of the fire, all I could see were his eyes. Maybe if the rest of his face is visible, the resemblance disappears. Or maybe I was delirious from pain, and we should throw out everything I just said.”

“I don’t think we should discount anything. Even in a crisis, you know how to keep your head and pay attention to details. We’ll discuss it more when you feel stronger. For now, I’m just grateful that you’re getting better. I don’t ever want to come so close to losing you again.” He holds my gaze for a moment, and I can see the uncertainty growing in his eyes as I fail to respond.

I can’t bear to tell him that a part of me wishes I wasn’t going to get better. That I could join Sylph, Oliver, and Dad and find peace.

“Rachel? Is something—”

“I’m tired.” My voice sounds too abrupt, and I make an attempt to soften it. To smile a little, because he needs it. “I’ll be okay. I’m just so tired.”

He leans forward and kisses me gently. “I need to make the rounds now and check on some things. Nola and a few of the others are working our medical rooms in shifts, but the woman you just met is Elim. She’s the Lankenshire nurse in charge of this wing of the hospital. If you need something, just call out. Someone will hear you.”

I nod.

“I love you,” he says as he leaves. His voice is distant, as if a host of worst case scenarios are begging for his attention and somehow one of those makes him wonder if loving me is still worth it.

I can’t blame him. I’m broken in ways I have no strength to fix, and even though he doesn’t know the cause, he feels the results. The cost of my choice to push my pain away from me lies between us like a mountain neither of us knows how to climb.

“Pain. It teaches us that we’re alive. Don’t you feel alive?”

The killer’s voice echoes inside my head as I slowly pull my right arm onto my lap. I don’t feel alive. I feel like a shell walking around with something else beneath my skin. I can’t access the pain that sliced my heart to ribbons, but maybe I don’t need to. Maybe any pain will give me relief from the terrible void that lives within me.

Slowly, I unwind the bandage that covers my burned arm until the final, sticky layer peels away. I stare at the jagged line of blackened, split flesh that stretches from my inner elbow nearly to my wrist. The damaged skin is several layers deep, and beneath it, where fresh skin is trying to grow, thin pearls of blood glisten.

Maybe the killer told the truth. Maybe pain, any pain, makes us feel alive.

I grit my teeth and reach forward with my left hand until my fingers find the broken seam along my forearm. And then I press down, as hard as I can, and do my best to prove the killer right.