Jack flinches (flinch? Jack? Never.) but doesn’t break his gaze on mine.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
“I know I’m f*cking shaking! I’m a lot of things right now, and shaking is the least homicidal of them! You left all of us! You just…disappeared! Your Mom, Wren, shit – everyone. You left everyone behind!”
Jack’s frown deepens. I catch a glimpse of his hands at his sides – strong and spidery as ever. I want to hold them, I want to hold him, to lunge in and hug him until he can’t breathe or leave again, to tell him it’s okay, to tell him I forgive him, but the fury and Nameless’ words mush together in my head and come out as acid on my lips.
“You left me behind.”
“Isis, please, let me –”
“No!” I interrupt his soft, pleading voice. It’s so unlike him, it scares me. Almost as much as Nameless’ hands shooting out to grab me. Almost. “Did you think a f*cking ticket to Europe would make me forgive you? On what f*cking planet is a ticket a substitute for a proper goddamn goodbye, and how can I avoid said planet for all conceivable time?”
***
She is fire and rage, all claws extended, her hair swirling around her in the gentle night-summer wind and her cinnamon eyes ablaze with light from the hall. She shines in the velvet darkness, a little thinner than I remember, and a little sadder, but burning all the same. Always burning. I warm myself on her fury, embracing the searing hot-sweet feel of her wrath and all the vibrant life behind it.
She is here, she is within reach. She is real and corporeal and angry with me. Maybe she’s never not been angry with me, and that’s why it feels right. We have always been at odds. We have always clashed. After months of feeling wrong, this - staring down my hellion (mine? No, I threw the chance to call her mine away.) – is the only thing that has felt right. The planets are in place, the last clockgear snaps into motion, and the world begins to turn again, as is proper and right.
“I thought you were going to Stanford,” I try. She bristles.
“Don’t change the subject, buttlump.”
“You should’ve gone to Stanford. It would’ve challenged you.”
You would’ve been happier there. You would’ve bent the whole world to your will. You would’ve met smarter, kinder boys, there. Boys who aren’t me.
“Wow,” She scoffs. “I didn’t think it was possible, but you’ve somehow gotten even better at pissing me off. Call the pope, because we have a bonafide f*cking miracle on our peasant hands.”
Through the anger I can see her shoulders trembling. I didn’t think it was her, at first. She was so quiet, her purple streaks all by faded. But I recognized Will Cavanaugh. How could I not? I studied his face in the dossier for nights on end, memorizing every line and curve, planning out where and how I would hurt him most. The docile girl talking with Will couldn’t have been Isis. But then came the kick to his spleen, wild and furious and all reaction, no forethought, and I knew instantly it was her. Here, of all places. My heart stuttered, the color and warmth flushing in where months of training and guilt had drained it out to grays and blacks.
“What about you?” She spits when I don’t say anything. “Harvard get too snooty for you? Who am I kidding, the Queen of England is less snooty than you.”
“I’ve transferred here. I never went to Harvard.”
“Then where. The f*ck. DID. You go?”
Her words are slow venom, her eyes narrowed. I can’t tell her. She wouldn’t understand. No – she would. She would understand best of all, and that’s why I can’t tell her. It would draw me closer to her. I was thrilled to take this job at first, if only for my planned retribution on Will, but now that she’s here I regret it. This school brings us close. So close. Close enough for me to hurt her all over again, hurt her to the point of no healing, like I did to Sophia.
I savor the cuts her fury makes, the pain letting me know that yes – I’m still alive. Even after trying to kill the old me, the hurtful bastard me, to leave him behind buried in guilt beside Sophia and Tallie, a single flame from Isis’ lips and I’m reminded of our war, our words, our bond. I want to kiss her. I want to kiss her as she turns me to ash. I want her to kill me like I haven’t had the guts to.
But she is trembling. So I settle for words.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” I say. She scoffs. Her armor is out in full force, tougher and spikier than ever, thanks to me. Thanks to Will. Thanks to bastards like the two of us.
“Did you get that line from one of Sophia’s trashy romance novels –” She covers her mouth instantly, but it’s too late. Sophia’s name rings in the open, tearing apart the stitching on both our wounds. But where pain stops most mouths, it fuels Isis’.
“I hate you, Jack Hunter.”
I want to hold her until she can’t stand me anymore, until she runs away to somewhere safer. Somewhere without me.
I nod instead.
“I know.”
“No. You don’t know. You think that immature war was hate. But this – this is –” She squeezes her eyes shut. “You left me. You left me like everyone else, and I can’t forgive you for that.”
“You don’t have to,” I offer. “You don’t owe me anything.”
She laughs, the harsh front breaking for just a moment, her old self spilling through the cracks.
“And you don’t owe me anything, obviously. Not even a call. Not even a single goddamn text saying, oh, I don’t know, ‘I’m not actually decomposing in a river somewhere after throwing myself off a bridge, still breathing, don’t wait up for me’.”
And that’s when I see it. It’s not anger because I’ve hurt her. Sophia’s anger was always because I’d hurt her. This purer, brighter anger is because I made Isis worry. Because she thought I was dead, or rather, because she didn’t know whether or not I was alive. She is too kind, too motherly for this fury to be anything but a protective instinct denied its full course. I held that sort of anger once, too. I took it out on Isis after I’d caught her in my room looking through my letters – in my mind, trying to get to Sophia.
I’ve known Isis long enough (not nearly a year, but it feels like centuries) to know that when she shakes, she is far gone. When she trembles, her past is rearing its head, throwing shadows on her mind. I’d always considerately refrained from touching her, from making it worse, and though I scream at myself to remain that way, I can’t.
I can’t.
I step into her, wrapping my arms around her weakly and resting my head in her neck.
“I can’t do it anymore,” I breathe. “I tried, and tried, god I tried to be the strong one. To do the right thing for everyone.”
Isis goes stiff, and for a split second I realize what I’m doing, and frantically try to pull back. Something desperate and dark is eating away at my core, held back by Gregory’s brutal training and my own dam of denial. And, like the bomb she is, just seeing Isis again blew cracks in that dam, and she’s going to see me through the cracks, the real me, she’s going to see me like no one else has, like I’m pretending not to be, broken and dead inside and I have to leave, have to compose myself, but she doesn’t let me pull away, wrapping her arms tight around my waist and keeping me pressed against her, against her warmth and smell and her understanding silence.