“Here.” Bram steps away from the fire and presses a bottle of whiskey into my hands. “You’ll want to drink some of this.”
I hate the taste of whiskey, but I uncap the bottle anyway, close my eyes, and take a big swig. The alcohol sears my throat going down, and I have to fight back the urge to gag. But five seconds later, a warmth radiates up from my stomach, numbing my throat and mouth and coating my tongue, making it easier to take a second sip, and a third.
By the time Bram says, “We’re ready,” I’ve polished off a quarter of the bottle and above me, through the smoke, the stars make slow revolutions, all of them glittering like pointed metal tips. My head feels detached from my body. I sit down heavily.
“Easy,” Bram says. His white teeth flash in the dark. “How you feeling, Lena?”
“Okay,” I say. The word is harder to get out than usual.
“She’s ready,” Bram says, and then, “Raven, grab the blanket, will you?” Raven moves behind me, and then Bram tells me to lie back, which I do, gratefully. It helps the woozy, spinning feeling in my head.
“You take her left arm,” Raven says, kneeling next to me. Her earrings—a feather and a silver charm, both threaded through one ear—sway together like a pendulum. “I’ll take her right.”
Their hands grip me tightly from both sides. Then I start to get scared.
“Hey.” I struggle to sit up. “You’re hurting me.”
“It’s important that you stay very still,” Raven says. Then she pauses. “It’s going to hurt for a bit, Lena. But it will be over quickly, okay? Just trust us.”
The fear is causing a new fire in my chest. Bram is holding the metal tool, newly sterilized, and its blade seems to catch all the light from the fire behind him, and glow hot and white and terrible. I’m too frightened to try and struggle, and I know it wouldn’t do any good. Raven and Bram are too strong.
“Bite on this,” Bram says, and suddenly there is a strip of leather going into my mouth. It smells like Grandpa’s tobacco.
“Wait—,” I try to say, but I can’t choke the word out past the leather. Then Bram places one hand on my forehead, angling my chin up to the sky, hard, and he’s bending over me, blade in hand, and I can feel its tip just pressing into the space behind my left ear, and I want to cry out but I can’t, and I want to run but I can’t do that, either.
“Welcome to the resistance, Lena,” he whispers to me. “I’ll try to make this quick.”
The first cut goes deep. I am filled with burning. And then I find my voice, and scream.
now
Lena.”
My name pulls me out of sleep. I sit up, heart careening in my chest.
Julian has moved his cot toward the door, pressed it against the wall, as far away from me as possible. Sweat is beading on my upper lip. It has been days since I’ve showered, and the room is full of a close, animal smell.
“Is that even your real name?” Julian asks, after a pause. His voice is still cold, although it has lost some of its edge.
“That’s my name,” I say. I squeeze my eyes closed, tight, until little bursts of color appear behind my eyelids. I was having a nightmare. I was in the Wilds. Raven and Alex were there, and there was an animal, too, something enormous we had killed.
“You were calling for Alex,” Julian says, and I feel a small spasm of pain in my stomach. More silence, then: “It was him, wasn’t it? He’s the one who got you sick.”
“What does it matter?” I say. I lie down again.
“So what happened to him?” Julian asks.
“He died,” I say shortly, because that is what Julian wants to hear. I picture a tall tower, smooth-sided, stretching all the way to the sky. There are stairs cut in the side of the tower, winding up and up. I take the first step into the coolness and shade.
“How?” Julian asks. “Because of the deliria?” I know if I say yes he’ll feel good. See, he’ll think. We’re right. We’ve been right all this time. Let people die so that we can be right.
“You,” I say. “Your people.”
Julian sucks in a quick breath. When he speaks again, his voice is softer. “You said you never had nightmares.”
I wall myself up inside. From the tower, the people on the ground are no more than ants, specks, punctuation marks: easily smudged out.
“I’m an Invalid,” I say. “We lie.”
In the morning my plan has hardened, clarified. Julian is sitting in the corner, watching me the way he did when we were first taken. He is still wearing the rag around his head, but he looks alert now, and the swelling in his face has gone down.