Prisoners are shouting. But even then I hear the wet thwop, thwop, thwop before we make it to
Antonia’s cell and see her hunched over Thistle. Her hands through the bars that separate their cells, drenched in blood. Fingers gripping Thistle’s curly hair. The shattered remnants of the top of the Howler ’s skull bend around the bar as Antonia jerks Thistle’s head toward her and against the bars between them one last time. Victra shoves open the magnetized cell door.
Antonia rises, grisly deed finished, bloody hands held in the air innocently as she bestows a little smirk upon her older sister. “Careful,” she taunts. “Careful, Vicky. You need me. I’m the only one left with information to sell. Unless you want to stumble into the Jackal’s maw you’ll…”
Victra breaks Antonia’s face. I can hear the brittle snap of bone from ten meters away. Antonia reels back, trying to escape. Victra pins her to the wall and beats her. Machinelike and eerily quiet. Elbow pumping back, driving from her legs, just as they teach us. Antonia’s fingers claw at Victra’s muscled arms, then go limp as the sound becomes wet and muddy. Victra doesn’t stop. And I don’t stop her,
because I hate Antonia, and that dark little part of me wants her to feel the pain.
Sevro shoves past me and launches himself at Victra, pinning her right arm back and choking her
with his left. He sweeps her legs and takes her backward to the floor, locking his legs around her waist, immobilizing her. Released from Victra’s hold, Antonia flops sideways. Mustang lunges forward to keep her head from cracking on the sharp edge of the welded metal bed pallet. I kneel and reach through the bars to feel Thistle’s pulse though I don’t know why I bother. Her head is caved in. I stare at it. Wondering why I’m not horrified at the scene.
Some part of me has died. But when did it die? Why did I not notice?
Mustang is shouting for a Yellow. The guards picking up the call.
I shake myself.
Sevro’s letting go of Victra. She coughs from where he restrained her, shoving him away angrily.
Mustang bends over Antonia, who’s now snoring through her shattered nose. Face a ruin. Bits of teeth littering mashed lips. Except for her hair and Sigils, you can’t even tell she’s a Gold. Victra leaves the room without looking at her, pushing through the Gray guards so hard two of them fall down.
“Victra…” I call after her like there’s something to say.
She turns back to me, eyes red, not with rage, but a fathomless sadness. Knuckles frayed open. “I
used to braid her hair,” she says forcefully. “I don’t know why she’s like this. Why I am.” Half of one of her sister ’s broken teeth protrudes from the meat between her middle and ring knuckle. She pulls the tooth from her knuckles, and holds it up to the light like a child discovering sea glass on the beach before shivering in horror and letting it clatter to the steel deck. She looks past me to Sevro. “Told you.”
—
Later that day, as the doctors tend to Antonia, the Sons go through Thistle’s personal effects in her suite aboard the torchShip, the Typhon. Under a false bottom in a cabinet, they find the stinking, cured fur of a wolf. Sevro chokes up when Screwface brings it to him.
“Thistle cut her down,” Clown says as the remaining original Howlers loiter around the room.
Mustang gives them space, watching from the wall. Pebble, Screwface, and Sevro are with us. “When
Antonia was crucified by the Jackal at the Institute, Thistle cut her down.”
“I’d forgotten,” I say from her desk.
Sevro snorts. “What a world.”
“Remember when you had her fight Lea when Lea couldn’t skin the sheep? Trying to make her tough,” Pebble says with a little laugh. Sevro laughs too.
“Why are you laughing?” Clown asks. “You were still off eating mushrooms and howling at the moon back then.”
“I was watching,” Sevro says. “I was always watching.”
“That’s creepy, boss,” Screwface says drolly. “What were you doing while you were watching?”
“Wanking in the bushes, obviously,” I say.
Sevro grunts. “Only when everyone was asleep.”
“Gross.” Pebble wrinkles her nose and tucks the Howler cloak in her pack. “Howl on, little Thistle.” The kindness in her eyes is almost too much to bear. There’s no recrimination. No anger.
Just the absence of a friend. Reminds me how much I love these people. Clown and Pebble leave hand in hand, Screwface taunting them all the while. I smile at the sight as Sevro and I linger behind.
Mustang still hasn’t moved from her place at the wall.
“What did Victra mean when she said ‘told you’?” I ask.
Sevro glances at Mustang. “Ah it doesn’t matter anymore.” He acts like he’s going to leave, but hesitates. “She called it off.”
“It?” I ask.
“Us.”
“Oh.”