If I were a house, I would be haunted.
“And I would remind you,” Nouria says, her brittle voice returning me to the present, “that you are not the only person on earth ever to have been married. I’m sorry you can’t bear to be separated from your fiancée long enough to have a single vital discussion about our failing world, but the rest of us must continue to move, Warner, even if it means deprioritizing your personal happiness.”
Her words strike a raw nerve.
“Too true,” I say quietly. “There are few, indeed, who’ve ever prioritized my personal happiness. I wouldn’t expect you to be the exception.”
I regret the words the moment they’ve left my mouth.
I steel myself as Nouria reels, processing my uncomfortable moment of honesty. She looks away, guilt flickering, fighting with irritation. Her anger ultimately wins the battle, but when she meets my eyes again, there’s a note of regret there, in her gaze, and I realize only then that I have been tricked.
There is more.
I take an imperceptible breath; the true purpose of this meeting is only now about to be revealed to me.
“While we’re on the subject,” Nouria says, sparing her father an anxious glance. “I—well. I’m really sorry, Warner, but we’re going to have to postpone the wedding.”
I stare at her.
My body goes slowly solid, a dull panic working its way through my nervous system. I feel multiple things at once— anger, grief, confusion. A strange sort of resignation rises up above them all, crowning a familiar pain, a familiar fear: that joy, like dew, evaporates from my life the moment I begin to trust the sun.
This is it, then. Par for the course.
“Postpone the wedding,” I say, hollow.
“Today is just turning out to be a bad day for everyone,” she says, rushing to get the words out. “There’s too much going on. There’s a major sewage problem we need to get under control, which is using up most of our manpower at the moment, and everyone else is knee-deep in other projects. We don’t have enough hands to set up or break things down—and we tried, we really tried to make it work, but we just can’t spare the generator tonight. Our electricity has been touch and go, and the temperatures are supposed to be brutal tonight; we can’t let the kids freeze in their beds.”
“I don’t understand. I spoke with Brendan, he offered—”
“Brendan is drained. We’ve been relying on him too much lately. Winston has already threatened to kill me if we don’t let him sleep tonight.”
“I see.” I stare at the table, then my hands. I have turned to stone, even as my heart races in my chest. “We’d need the generator for only an hour.”
“An hour?” Nouria laughs, but she seems unnerved. “Have you ever been to a wedding? Outside? At night? You’d need lights and heat and music. Not to mention all that we’d have to do to get the kitchen going that late, and distributing food— We never got around to making a cake—”
“I don’t need a wedding,” I say, cutting her off. I sound strange even to myself, nervous. “I just need an officiant. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
“I think it might be a big deal to Juliette.”
I look up at that.
I have no worthy response; I can’t speak for Ella. I’d never deny her a real wedding if it’s what she wants.
The whole thing feels suddenly doomed. The day after I proposed to Ella, she was attacked by her sister, after which she fell into a coma and came home to me nearly dead. We were supposed to have been married this morning, except that her dress was destroyed, and now—
“Postpone until when?”
“I’m not sure, if I’m being honest.” Nouria’s nerves and apprehension are growing louder now. I try to meet her eyes, but she keeps glancing at Castle, who only shakes his head. “I was hoping maybe we could look at the calendar,” she says to me, “think about planning something when things are less crazy around here—”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Of course I’m serious.”
“You know as well as I do,” I say angrily, “that there is no guarantee things will ever calm down around here, or that we’ll ever be able to get this situation under control—”
“Well, right now is a bad time, okay?” She crosses her arms. “It’s just a bad time.”
I look away. My heart seems to be racing in my head now, pounding against my skull. I feel myself dissociating— detaching from the moment—and struggle to remain present.
“Is this some kind of perverse revenge?” I ask. “Are you trying to prevent my wedding because I won’t let you bring in civilians? Because I refuse to put Juliette’s life in jeopardy?”
Nouria is quiet for so long I’m forced to look up, to return my mind to itself. She’s staring at me with the strangest look in her eyes, something like guilt—or regret—washing her out completely.
“Warner,” she says quietly. “It was Juliette’s idea.”
FIVE
The small velvet box weighs heavy in my pocket, the right angles of which dig into my thigh as I sit here, at the edge of a short cliff, staring down at our very own graveyard. This area was built shortly after the battle—a memorial to all the lives lost.
It’s become an unexpected refuge for me.
Few people come through here anymore; for some, the pain is still too fresh, for others, the demands on their time too many. Either way, I’m grateful for the quiet. It was one of the only places to escape while Ella was in recovery, which meant I spent quite a bit of time acquainting myself with this view, and with my seat: a smooth, flat stretch of a massive boulder. The view from this rock is surprisingly peaceful.
Today, it fails to calm me.
I hear a sound then; a distant, faded trill my mind can only describe as birdsong. The dog lifts its head and barks.
I stare at the animal.
The dirty little creature waited for me outside the war room only to follow me here. I’ve done nothing to inspire its loyalty. I don’t know how to get rid of him. Or her.
As if sensing the direction of my thoughts, the dog turns to face me, panting lightly now, looking for all the world as if it might be smiling. I’ve hardly had a chance to digest this before it jerks away to bark once more at the sky.
That oddly familiar chirp, again.
I’ve heard birdsong more often lately; we all have. Castle, who’s always insisted all was not lost, claims even now that the animals had not died out entirely. He said that traditionally, birds hide during severe weather, not unlike humans. They seek shelter when experiencing illness, too, during what they believe to be the last moments of their life. He argues that the birds went into mass hiding—either from fear, or from sickness—and that now, with Emmaline’s weather manipulations gone, what’s left of them have come out of hiding. It’s not a foolproof theory, but lately it’s grown harder to deny. Even I find myself searching the sky these days, hoping for a glimpse of the impossible creature.
A cold wind barrels through the valley then, pushing through my hair, snapping against my skin. It is with some regret that I realize I left my coat in the war room. The dog whimpers, nudging my leg with its nose. Reluctantly, I rest my hand on what is no doubt its flea-infested head, and the dog quiets. Its thin body curls into a tight ball at my feet, tail tapping the ground.
I sigh.
The day had dawned bright this morning, the sun unencumbered in the sky, but each passing hour has brought with it heavier clouds and an inescapable chill.
Nouria was right; this night will be brutal.
Anxious as I always am to be apart from Ella, my impulses were blunted after meeting with Castle and Nouria. Confused. I wanted nothing more than to seek out Ella; I wanted nothing more than to be alone. I ended up here, in the end—my feet carrying me when my head made no decision—staring into a valley of death, circling the drain of my mind. This morning had been agitating but rewarding; full of irritation but hope, too. I hadn’t resented the ticking clock against which I’d been marking time.
In the end, the afternoon has proven empty.