Luka tangled his fingers in Aran’s curls, and I held her hand.
The kings also sat around her still form and kept their hands on her like they were afraid she would disappear.
The shifters were similarly gathered around Jinx and Sadie. The boy named Warren staggered into the room and shouted.
A doctor announced that it was good that they were all in a healing sleep, and Corvus screamed flames into his face.
I agreed with his sentiment.
Sixteen hours, twelve minutes, and fours second after we’d found her, Aran woke up. One eye was a darker blue than usual and highlighted the gray tone in the other.
She didn’t smile when she saw us.
She didn’t frown.
She stared blankly forward with a shell-shocked expression.
Her head whipped to the side where Sadie and Jinx were hooked up to fluids, still asleep. Ripping a needle out of her hand, she staggered over to them while we tried to stop her.
She ignored us.
Pushing the shifters out of the way, she stood between their sleeping forms and grabbed their hands.
She fell to her knees.
Bowed her head like she was praying.
And laughed.
Chapter 57
Aran
BONDS THAT CAN’T BREAK
Acatalepsy (noun): an ancient Skeptic doctrine that human knowledge amounts only to probability and never to certainty.
DAY 38, HOUR 12
I was covered in ice and it felt like a hug.
The bottom of the bunk above my head was also iced over.
After everything that had happened, weirdly, I didn’t feel any sadness.
I was overwhelmed with gratitude that all three of us had survived against unmistakable odds.
When we’d gotten back to the camp, immense relief had bowled me over.
It was over.
All three of us had beaten horrible odds and lived.
It felt like a miracle.
On top of surviving, for the first time in my life, I had closure over why I’d started suffering when I was fourteen years old.
Most of all, I was grateful that my entire soul wasn’t missing like I’d initially thought. A small piece I could handle. It made it a fixable problem.
I’d successfully processed my grief (I was delusional).
The body draped across me like a blanket shifted, and I grunted as they kneed me in the crotch.
“Are you still crying?” Sadie asked as she sniffled and buried her face in the blankets near my head.
“Uh—yes,” I lied, just so she wouldn’t feel alone.
Sadie sobbed, “Me too.”
“I didn’t notice,” I replied. She’d been wailing for hours straight, and I was concerned about how she was still going.
Her labored breathing was loud in the mostly empty bedroom.
She was safe and alive.
In my arms.
Sadie’s mates and the rest of my legion were waiting for us outside in the blizzard. They stayed away outside out of respect for us—Sadie had also threatened to enslave everyone with her blood if they didn’t leave us alone.
The latter had played a big part in them giving us the room.
“Can I leave now?” Jinx asked from the floor beside the bed. She was wrapped in blankets and had bandages around her head. Sadie was holding her hand, and I had my free hand on her shoulder.
Jinx complained but didn’t pull away from our touch.
When I’d woken up after a restful sleep, I’d had startling clarity that Jinx was as much a victim as the rest of us. She’d been beaten and abused by the leaders for years. She’d lost a leg in the Legionnaire Games, just so I could earn my wings.
Jinx was a pawn as much as any of us.
If I could try to forgive Lothaire for abandoning me as a child, then I could do the same for the woman who’d been tortured worse than any of us.
When we needed her, she’d saved us.
A few weeks ago, I would have spiraled at her revelations and moped. I would have refused to forgive her and would have punished us both.
But I wasn’t an empty shell anymore.
A necklace and bracelet pulsed warm against my skin, reminding me that my soul wasn’t as empty. I was connected to the twins.
There was a bit of color in my life, and the cold didn’t feel as pervasive with my best friend lying in my arms.
I’d slaughtered too many infected. I’d spent too many hours slicing people to pieces because they were unlucky enough to be taken over by monsters. I wasn’t going to cut Jinx out of my life.
It was messed up, but war had given me perspective.
I just wanted the killing, the hate, the violence to stop.
I wanted peace for all of us.
And sun god, for the first time in my life, I understood why I was the way I was. I no longer felt like I was going insane.
Sadie let out a long dramatic wail, and I grimaced as I patted her head. She was taking the death of the twin girls and mutilation of my soul extra hard. I wanted to join her in grieving, but since I had no memories of the girls, I couldn’t find the emotions.
All I could focus on was the three of us were alive.
It was a miracle.
For a period back in that room, I’d been certain that Sadie was going to die.
I’d been a few seconds away from losing her.
Jinx shifted and I patted her head. She gave me a death glare, but didn’t pull away or say anything mean.
For her, that was a declaration of love.
Back in the settlement, after Jinx had finished confessing everything, she’d started to crawl away from us. She’d thought we’d blame her. She’d thought we wouldn’t want her to be a part of our family anymore.
She didn’t understand how this family worked.
We’d all been used. We’d all been mutilated, each of us in different ways. We’d all been treated as pawns.
“So,” I said conversationally. “How do we stop the leaders?”
“I’m going to tear them to shreds,” Sadie said as she punched my pillow.
Jinx sighed loudly and shook her head. “I’ve told you both, we don’t. They have an entire institution behind them, and the leaders are insanely powerful. They are more.”
“What does that mean?” Sadie asked with confusion.
Jinx looked back at us, midnight-black eyes wide and haunted. “Some things in life are beatable. Some are only survivable. This is the latter.”
“I don’t accept that,” Sadie said.
Jinx stared blankly.
Her pale features were stark and slightly uncanny. It finally made sense; they were too sharp to be from these realms because she wasn’t.
She was a class six creature.
A trafficked child.
She was a monster soulmancer.
She was my sister, and I wanted to gut the people who’d hurt her.
“Here I opened wide the door—” Jinx closed her eyes. “—darkness there, and nothing more.”
Ice spread across the sheets, and Sadie shivered but didn’t complain.
Sadie trembled against me. “Is that also from Nietzsche?”
“No, a genius named Edgar Allan Poe.” Jinx leaned into our touch and rested her head against the side of the bed. She whispered, “I thought for sure you’d both hate me. I thought”—her voice cracked—“that I’d be completely alone.”
I whispered, “You’re stuck with us.”
Sadie laughed weakly. “We all have our problems.”