I’ll be able to get away soon. I promise… When we’re together again, everything will be all right.
He knows Lyda’s scared about the future. She has to be. Everything is so unknown. He imagines the people out there who’ve tried to kill themselves and the attack on the wretches and the babies lined up in incubators awaiting his father’s New Eden, the people in suspension, and all of those survivors out there—scattered around the globe.
It all weighs on him until he feels incredibly small.
Tonight he sneaks the newest letter to Beckley as usual. Beckley stands guard near the front door, and Partridge asks if she’s written anything back.
The answer’s the same as always.
Beckley shakes his head. “Not yet.” He tucks the letter into his breast pocket.
“And how’s she doing?” Partridge asks.
“She stays in the nursery most of her days. She’s decorating it to surprise you. She won’t let anyone in.”
Partridge imagines her painting the walls, decorating the crib, keeping herself busy. That seems like it should be a good thing, but he knows Lyda well enough to assume she’s feeling caged too.
Another guard shows up, and Partridge goes back to the couch. He grips his hands together so hard that they start shaking. This isn’t what he wanted. This isn’t his life. Power—he has all this supposed power, and yet he’s powerless.
He remembers asking his father once if God was real. His father told him that it didn’t really matter, in the end, if God was real or not. “Religion holds us together. Church is important. It gives us order and structure. It’s the best place to legislate policy—from on high. It teaches the masses the difference between good and evil.”
There were so many policies—whom you should and shouldn’t fall in love with, how and when you should marry, what you should and shouldn’t discuss or question in the home, how to raise your children so they never break any policies, and entire books on how to be a good wife and mother.
No, Partridge thinks now. Policies are man-made. God is important. People know the difference between good and evil in their hearts—if they search them. Religions twist good and evil. Their differences are the kind that need to be taught because they aren’t natural. Why else would people think his father was a good man and mourn his death unless someone had shoved the idea of his goodness down their throats? Religion was one of his father’s many tools. He used it well.
Partridge whispers, “God.” It’s all he has. Just one word.
B
y nightfall, she’s made it to the woods that lead to the barren terrain surrounding the Dome—what was once home to shepherds and pickers of berries, morels, tubers. There were farmers too, but so little grew—and never quite the way they expected—that it was hard to think of them as farmers. Some called them tinkerers. They’ve all been flushed out by fire. Pressia feels the trunk of a burned tree, its wet bark peeling like a charred layer of skin. The light rain is ticking against the ashen forest floor.
It’s quiet out here now, and she wishes it were still light. She needs to find a place to sleep before she heads toward the Dome in the morning. She knows how hard it was for Partridge to escape. Will it be that hard to enter? She intends to walk to the door by the loading dock where Lyda was escorted out. She remembers the maps that Partridge and Lyda made. She knows where to look for the Dome’s seams.
It also crosses her mind that she won’t make it to the door at all. There’s a good chance she’ll be devoured by a Dust or a Beast hoping to slaughter fresh prey, or she could get shot as she approaches. It’s strange how used to this idea she’s gotten.
Will someone answer the door? She plans on telling them that she’s Partridge’s half sister, and she has no idea how they’ll react to that. Things could be volatile in the Dome now, in the aftermath of Willux’s death. People might be resistant to let Partridge take over. They should be. He only happens to be Willux’s son. Why should that grant him automatic authority?
The air smells of burned-pine smoke and metal. She finally comes to a stretch of woods that, surprisingly, doesn’t look like it caught fire. Most of the limbs are bare because it’s winter. But she looks closely at a scrubby pine with its twisted branches, spiked limbs, and bulbous roots shouldering up from the ground like buried knees. Its needles are sticky to the touch. She picks up a leaf from the ground; it’s dusty with rust as if the tree has been tinged with iron. New hybrid species keep popping up. Could it possibly be seen as a good thing—a land and its creatures trying to adapt?
She stops and checks the vial and formula again, opening her backpack, popping open the metal box, touching them. They’re fine, and this gives her a little courage. They remind her of her mission here.
She walks deeper through the trees, hoping to find a clump of brush to hide in, a rock or fallen log to block the wind.
But then there’s a rustling.
Birds or rodents? A fox? She remembers the stitched arms of the blind creatures that Kelly set loose—their roving eyes, the way they touched her hair. She shivers. It’s not them. She knows that, but she can’t shake the feeling of them touching her. What would they have done if she hadn’t gotten away? She draws her arms in across her chest and stares into the darkness, hoping for something small and harmless to reveal itself.
Please be a bunny
, she thinks.
A little bunny. I could really use a bunny.
The last bunny she saw was years ago, and instead of fur it had thick scarred skin, dark and wrinkled, its ribs poking through in warped slats. But it was still a bunny, with long ears and sharp front teeth, and it scampered off, afraid of her.
Scamper off
, she pleads with the bunny that’s probably not a bunny at all.
Please scamper off.
The cold night sky shifts with dark clouds, thick with smoke. She wants to get out of the wind and sleep. That’s all. She’s tired—deep in her bones and joints. It’s a fatigue that seems to have crashed down on her.
More rustling. She crouches. Her adrenaline starts to kick in, but it’s not enough. She doesn’t have the strength to fight. She doesn’t want to be eaten here, mauled to death—not now. She pulls the backpack off and holds it to her chest. She looks down at the doll head, its glassy eyes glinting in the dull light, as if pleading with her for protection. She failed Wilda and the others—the doll head seems to know, and it’s as if it has lost some faith in her.
More rustling, footsteps. She grips the doll head and backpack and freezes.
And then she hears her name. The rough voice of Bradwell. She sees him, between two thin trees. He opens his wings, streaked dark with rain. “Pressia,” he says.
She stands up slowly. He came after her. She’s angry that he doesn’t have enough faith in her, but then she’s relieved to see him. Her heart kicks up.
“Look at me,” he says.
And she does: the meat of his shoulders, the long spokes of his collarbones, the twin scars on his cheek, and his eyes, his lips—all wet with rain. His skin, like hers, has lost the golden tinge from their time in Ireland. But the wings—that’s what he wants her to look at. Some of the feathers shine. Others are tattered. The quills are thick and strong. She says, “I see you.”
“All of me.”
“I see all of you.” He’s like a dream. He’s staring at her as if really seeing her for the first time in so long.
“I had to try to find you.” How did he track her down?
“I had to go,” she says.
“I know, but I didn’t get to say what I needed to.”
“And what’s that?”
He runs his hands through his wet hair. “You think I don’t imagine being inside that Dome, inside those academy classrooms, in the dance halls with you? I do. But not the way you do. You see yourself fitting in.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You think it’s possible. You can imagine what it’d be like to have your hand back, to have your scars gone. Me? I don’t have that kind of imagination. I can only see myself as I am. And every time I imagine myself there, I see how they would look at me. To them, I’m sick. I’m diseased. I’m a perversion of a human being.”
“You’re not any of those things to me.”
He rubs his knuckles together. She knows this is hard for him—excruciating. “We were born to die, Pressia. We’re the ones no one really expected to survive. So my life is a mistake; it’s only something that was given to me by accident. It’s not mine. It’s borrowed.” He walks up close to Pressia. He whispers, “Sometimes I think I’d go back if I could. I would bleed to death, bound to my brothers. But then I know I’d rather go back further than that. If I could, I would die with you on the frozen forest floor. We were wet and cold and naked. That’s how we came into this world. We could have gone out like that together.” He touches his forehead to hers. He closes his eyes. “I know why you did what you did. But now I’ve got that stuff in my blood, and I’m no longer who I am. You can’t love me.”
“But I do.”
He says, “Don’t.”
She says, “I’m trying not to.”
She reaches up over his shoulder and lets her hand run down one of his soft, wet wings. It feels silken. He touches the crescent-shaped burn curved around one of her eyes then cups the head of the doll in his hands.
“I can’t let you go,” he says.
She leans in toward him, close, the rain beading on her eyelashes. She puts one hand on his heart and can feel it pounding. “I have to.”
“I know.”
“How long will you give me before you use the bacterium?”
“Not long. Anything could happen to you in there. Cap was right about that too.”
“It’ll take me a day to get there at least. So how long will you give me?”
“I don’t know.”
“If I get to Partridge, I can get a message to you.”
“Within three days?”
“I can try.” She wants to kiss his wet lips. She misses him so much her chest aches.
Tell me you love me
, she wants to say.
Tell me you love me like you used to
.
And then he dips toward her and kisses her on the mouth, the rain still coming down. When he pulls back, she’s breathless.
“Three days,” he says. “Okay?”
“Okay,” she says and then, even though her legs feel numb, she takes a step back.
“Hastings has come after you too,” he says. “I’m surprised he hasn’t found you already. He only wants to help.”
She nods.
“Pressia, what if we don’t see each other again? What if this is the last time?” He’s scared. She’s not sure she’s ever seen him look this way.
“I’ll be fine,” she says.
“I know you will,” he says. “It’s just…”
“What?”
“In case there’s a heaven…”
“Don’t talk like that,” Pressia says.
“In case there’s a heaven, I want us to be together there. Joined. Forever.” His eyes search hers. “I’ve never seen a wedding,” he says.
Is he asking her to marry him? She whispers, “I’ve heard they were held in churches or under white tents.”
“What if the forest is our church?”
“Are you asking me to marry you—
here
?
Now
?”
“I’ve loved you since the beginning—since the first time I saw you. Why not get married—yes, here and now?” He lifts her hand up and places it on her heart. He then slips his hand between her arm and chest and puts his hand over his own heart. He leans down and puts his cheek to hers. He says, “Will you be my wife forever? Here and now and beyond all of this?”
She closes her eyes. She feels her arm entwined with his, his cheek against hers—both rain-wet and cold. She nods. “I will. Will you be my husband forever?”
He says, “I will.” And he bows his head, kisses her neck, her jaw, her lips.
“This isn’t the end,” Pressia says. “We’re just starting, Bradwell.”
He tips her up off the ground and kisses her again—she feels his lips, his tongue, his teeth.
And she feels so alive that she can barely breathe. She’s happy. This is what happy feels like—it doesn’t have to be about this moment. Happiness can be a promise.
When he sets her back down, she feels heavy.
He turns then and heads back through the woods; the rainy wind gusts his wings a little. She’s going to keep going. But now she knows what she wants: to make it back to Bradwell, to find a beginning.
She walks quickly now, shaking with relief and joy, marching with purpose. She has to find that safe place. She walks for a while, and then a whirring sound zips through the air—a taut
zing
that ends in a
thunk
just over her head. She looks up at the tree behind her, and there, lodged deep in its bark, is a thick blade, sharp on all sides.
There are mothers out here. That’s probably why this part of the woods hasn’t burned. It’s been heavily guarded.
Pressia stays low but calls out, “I’m just a girl! I’m friends with Lyda! My name is Pressia, and I’ve met Our Good Mother! I’m alone! No Deaths with me!” But she’s not just a girl—she’s a wife. She’s not alone, even if it seems that way. She has Bradwell, forever.
The forest is silent. She moves behind a tree. Another blade whirs through the air, pinning her coat to the tree behind her. She wants to rip her coat loose and make a run for it, but the mothers aren’t to be messed with. If you defy them, they can retaliate brutally.
She puts the doll head in the air. “What do you want?” she calls into the woods. “I surrender! Okay?” She hopes Bradwell is long gone, that he can’t even hear the echo of her voice. “I surrender,” she says again, and as she says those two words, they seem like the truest thing she’s said in so long.
I surrender. I’m tired. Take me in.
Finally, there’s a woman’s voice, sharp and clear. “Get her,” the woman says. “She’s ours now.”
L
yda is hidden in her other world. The orb—which is set on the outside world—exists in the nursery now. It’s where she keeps the ash of the burned baby books and the row of cylindrical slats from the baby crib that she’s sharpening into spears. The door stays locked. If anyone asks, she says, “It’s a surprise! For Partridge!”