TWENTY-NINE
WHEN I AWOKE, MALACHI was sitting on the chair next to my cot, his head resting beside mine. It looked incredibly uncomfortable, but he was asleep.
I took a moment to watch him, remembering when he’d been unconscious and how badly I’d wanted him to wake up. Now I wanted him to sleep. Shadows lay beneath his eyes, bordered by the dark fringe of his lashes. He probably hadn’t had a decent night of sleep since I’d come into his life. His cheekbones looked sharper somehow, and even though his cheeks were suffused with healthy color, they were hollower than when I’d first met him. I wondered if he’d started losing weight. If his body was telling him it was time for him to get out of the city. If he’d already started to weaken. He’d always seemed indestructible, but looking at him sleeping there, I could see the truth. He was human, just like me.
I ran my fingers through his stark black hair and kissed the tip of his nose.
Malachi’s eyes snapped open. “You’re awake,” he whispered.
“Did you find her?”
He nodded. “I got her in time.”
My heart stopped. “What do you mean, ‘in time’?”
He sat up and looked at me with that guarded expression, and now I understood what it meant. “I found her on the roof of a high-rise a few blocks from here. It was a near thing.”
I sat up stiffly. “Are you telling me she was going to try again? Is that what you’re saying?”
He hesitated a moment, then nodded.
My friend killed herself. I went to hell to rescue her. I killed someone, nearly got killed myself. A very good person died helping me save her. Then, after all that, my friend tried to kill herself again.
I waved my arms in the air like an idiot. “I can’t believe this! What the fuck is wrong with her? I don’t understand how she could do this. I came for her. I did all of this for her, and she fucking ran away from me.
“And you,” I shrieked as I pointed at Malachi, who’d been sitting very still as I lost my mind, “you told me she was better. Why did you say that?”
He sat up a little straighter. “Because she is better. Just not recovered. That would take a lot longer.”
“How on earth can being actively suicidal be better?”
“Because depressed people sometimes do stupid things when they have more energy. She was getting better and had more energy.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yes, it does.”
“How can you defend her?” I yelled.
He stood up suddenly and his chair crashed to the floor, which shut me up for a moment. “Because I was her! I understand her! You don’t understand,” he growled as he stepped away from me. “You’ve forgotten. You’re so much stronger now, too far past it. But remember, Lela, what made you try to take your life that night. Some people can’t keep fighting. Some people want to escape. Some people are not ready—are not able—to find a way to deal with what’s in front of them. Sometimes there’s no one to help them. Sometimes they don’t know how to ask for help. Sometimes it feels like there’s no choice but to end it. No other way out. And sometimes it’s impossible to see past that.”
His expression changed from frustration to fear—like he knew I was going to look at him differently after this conversation. He stared at the floor for a moment, took a deep breath, and raised his head. “Nadia is not ready to go before the Judge. She will never be allowed out of the city in her condition.”
No. No. Stop saying everything I already know.
“She can stay here,” he said. “We’ll have someone watch over her until she’s ready—”
“You’re wrong,” I sobbed. “You saw her, how much she was hurting. She can’t stay here. She deserves mercy. She deserves to get out.”
His eyes widened and he shook his head. He approached the cot and sat next to me. “You talk about mercy like Nadia has a right to it. Like she’s earned it with her suffering. But that’s not the way it works.”
I pushed his hand away as he reached for me. “If anyone deserves mercy, it’s her. She’s a good person, Malachi, the best. She’s kind. She’s gentle. She never did anything wrong!”
He leaned until his face was inches from mine. The look in his eyes was deadly. “Tell me then,” he said slowly, annunciating every word in his clipped, precise accent, “when in your life did you ever receive mercy? Don’t you deserve it as much as Nadia does? Did that foster dad show you mercy? Did the people in the detention center? And what about me? What about my family? What about my people? Didn’t we deserve mercy?”
He laughed bitterly. “Mercy is not a right. Mercy is a gift from one to another. It can’t be earned. You can’t claim Nadia has a right to it any more than the millions of other souls who reside here.”
He looked away from me, focusing on the gas lamp at my bedside. “When I came here, I think I was like her. I don’t know how long I was here before I started to snap out of it; my memory of that time is quite hazy. But when I became more aware, I was angry. So angry. After all I had been through, after what I had suffered, how could I be in this hellish place? My only crime was escaping.”
The look on his face, that sad, helpless expression, killed my anger in a second. I laid a hand on his arm.
He sighed and kept his eyes on the lamp.
“How old were you?”
“I was almost nineteen.”
“Where were you?”
“Auschwitz,” he whispered.
“How did you do it?”
He took a breath. “Electric fence. They surrounded the camp, keeping us in, helping some of us escape in the only way that was possible.”
Oh my God. I scooted forward and put my arms around him, and as always, he leaned into me. It hurt to think of him doing that to himself, but I still wanted to understand. “Why?”
“I hadn’t been there very long. I was sick. We were all sick. The train ride to the camp killed my father. He was already so weak. And my mother, she…they took her away as soon as we got to the camp, with all the older ones and the very young. But I had Heshel. We were together, and he was strong. He said we could survive. We would work, and eat whatever they gave us, and adapt, and live, and when we got out we would escape to Palestine. It was a dream—one we could have realized if we’d gotten out of Bratislava in time. Imi, my brother’s friend—he got out. But my family stayed while the noose closed around us.”
Malachi wiped a sleeve across his face and closed his eyes. “Heshel was such a believer. Every moment, he encouraged me, encouraged others. He would have been a great leader. That’s what he was meant for.”
My heart began to beat faster as the tension built in Malachi’s body, drawing his muscles tight.
“We were at roll call one morning, and the guards were angry because someone stole something. I can’t remember what. They decided to teach us a lesson. They started randomly shooting people from the line, just to create terror and show they were in charge. I was swaying, sick and weak, and I knew they would choose me. Heshel did too, so he, he…”
Malachi stopped and seemed to be trying to catch his breath. I closed my eyes and breathed with him. “He made a commotion, coughing and heaving, and he distracted them, drew their attention. And they…”
In the moments before he spoke again, I held onto him. His eyes were dry, but his expression echoed the pain of his memories.
“Afterward, I could not imagine going on. My death seemed inevitable anyway. I knew all of us were going to die. I was angry. It was not where I was supposed to end up. I was strong. My brother was strong. We were educated. We had money. We were good boys. But there we were, being slaughtered like cattle. I could not see a way out, and without my brother, I had no strength to continue. I threw myself onto the fence two days after Heshel was killed.” He laughed sadly. “I thought I would see him again. I thought he would be waiting for me in Olam Ha-Ba, the afterlife.”
He rose abruptly and walked across the room, leaving my arms to fall to my sides. “When I became aware of myself here, I was shocked. Obviously, this was not Olam Ha-Ba. So where was I? Sheol? Gehenna? A place for the wicked? But I had never done anything wrong! How could I be anywhere but in a good place? I was furious that my naive expectations had been violated. There I was, awake, aware, just like Nadia is now. I had more energy, but I had not recovered. The only difference between us is that she is suicidal, and I was homicidal. So here’s the stupid thing I did: I stormed the Sanctum.”
My jaw dropped. “You…what?”
“The Sanctum is hard to miss. I asked one of the Guards what it was. He told me about the Judge. I decided I would go before the Judge and demand my right to get out and see my brother. To go where I deserved after all I had suffered.” He bent over and picked up the overturned chair. He set it down next to the cot and gripped the back of it tightly. “When I attempted to go in, one of the Guards got in my way. I dropped him and kept going. I took out three Guards before they could stop me, and by then I was in the Judge’s chambers, running up the aisle.”
“Did you see the Judge?”
He grimaced. “Yes, the Judge was waiting for me. He congratulated me for getting past the Guards. Then he asked me if I was ready to receive his decision. Of course I was—I expected to be freed! Who could hear my story and not have mercy?”
I gave him a sad smile. “I’m guessing the Judge?”
Malachi nodded. “He sentenced me to serve. He sentenced me to this.” He gestured at the walls, at his own body.
“For how long?”
“Until I am ready to leave. Ana was the same way. Takeshi as well. All of us, sentenced to lead the Guards of this city for decades, maybe centuries, maybe until another death, because we were powerful enough to fight our way into the Judge’s chambers and stupid enough to expect that we would be handed a free ticket out once we got there.”
The thoughts I’d been pushing back since Nadia ran away bubbled to the surface. Malachi watched me carefully. “Lela, don’t take this lightly. There could be dire consequences for Nadia if you send her before the Judge in her current state of mind.”
Those thoughts exploded into my consciousness like a volcanic eruption.
He was right. He was completely right.
This was what I’d already realized but hadn’t wanted to admit. There was no other way around it. I was certain Nadia needed to get out of the city, that it was the only thing that would make her better. But if I wanted to get her out, I couldn’t just send her before the Judge and hope for the best. I would have to do better than that. And I would have to do it soon, because I wouldn’t be around much longer.
Malachi sat down on the cot and took my hand. This time I didn’t resist; I was too numb with disbelief and sorrow. Then he looked at me with this incredibly hopeful, vulnerable expression, and I almost moaned aloud as my heart tore right down the middle.
“I’m going to go before the Judge again soon,” he said quietly. “I think I’m ready. And…and I thought maybe…I wondered if—”
I leaned forward and kissed him, unable to hear the words come out of his mouth. I’d never be able to say no if he actually asked. He was going to leave the city. He wanted me to go with him. He wanted to be with me. He wanted us to explore whatever was out there together. But I had to take Nadia before the Judge. I was going to offer myself in her place. I was going to beg for mercy and give myself as payment. It was the only way to get her out.
I pushed him onto his back, desperate to feel his body against mine, eager to let him distract me from my grief, from my torn heart. Ana was right, as always—I had gotten needing and wanting completely mixed up. What I wanted was to fix Nadia, to be her knight in shining armor, or whatever the girly equivalent of that was.
What I needed was to be with Malachi, to let him protect me and know me, and to do the same for him.
But it was too late. I had already committed to my plan. I’d made my decision before I’d ever met him. I would not fail the only friend I’d ever had a second time. Which meant I would have to fail Malachi.
I nearly started crying again, but instead I parted my lips and tasted him, and let that sensation carry me away. He tangled his hands in my hair and groaned. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much I love your hair,” he breathed.
I started to laugh. “Are you serious? It’s an out-of-control mess.”
“It’s wild, like you. It fights back, like you do.” He chuckled. “Like you, it cannot be stopped.”
We spent a few moments giggling, chest-to-chest, as he pulled my hair around our faces like a curtain. It was like having a little clubhouse. Members only.
“Does being in here make you want to tell me secrets?” I asked playfully, blinking back tears.
“You know what?” he said as he peered up at me with that killer smile. “Sure. Here’s one: if I hadn’t locked you up in that cell the night we met, I would have kissed you then. I wouldn’t have stopped kissing you. If you’d asked, I’d probably have handed you the keys and let you club me over the head. I’d have thought it worth it just for the chance to kiss you.”
“So why did you stop me?”
“Because I could tell you didn’t really want it. I saw how scared you were. It made me realize how much I wanted you to feel differently about me.”
You have no idea how differently I feel. And how miserable I am to feel this way right now.
I nipped at the underside of his jaw, and he gasped and pressed me closer. I ran my tongue along his neck, and he moaned. He was mine. He would not refuse. “Malachi. Stay with me tonight.”
He froze. He stayed quiet long enough for me to get nervous. But then he said, “Are you sure? I thought—”
“This is what I want. Please, stay with me.” Because tomorrow when you go out on patrol, I am going to the Sanctum. I will be trapped here for years just when you are about to get out.
Malachi slid his hands down my sides and held me tight as I kissed him breathlessly, relentlessly. It all felt out of control, and I wasn’t really ready to do any more than this. I needed more time to get used to the idea of letting another person touch me like that. But time was something I did not have.
His heartbeat pounded against my chest. He looked like he was bracing himself for something. “Lela…you are the most beautiful, stubborn, amazing, frustrating, powerful girl I’ve ever met.” He took a deep breath. “I—”
I pressed my lips to his. I thought I knew what he was going to say, and again, I couldn’t let him. I couldn’t let him to say it and then discover I was gone.
Instead, I would have this last memory with him, because this was all we had left.