Because of this broken woman, my sister might die. Maybe she killed, but would she have been put in that situation if Mia had been stronger?
There’s still no proof of my sister’s innocence or guilt, I have to remind myself. The forensics report was only one way it could have happened. She might have had to defend herself. I still cling to the hope that there was someone else in that room. Somehow. But if she killed to protect me … how would I ever be able to accept that? Especially if I can’t save her?
My false sister is dead. The blood flows until she’s enveloped in the black, oily muck. The demons with the faces of the people we grew up with open their mouths impossibly wide, the coals in their throats glowing as they devour her. Our parents are among them. I see their twisted faces slurping up the muck in euphoric delight.
Screaming, I launch myself up and leap on Mia again. She has another scalpel in her hand. I manage to dodge it, knocking it to the floor. The demons pull on my ankles but I ignore them. My hands are around her throat and I’m squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. Mia gasps, purpling beneath me. I can’t calm down enough to try and affect the dream in any other way.
“Lucid dreaming, my ass,” I gasp.
If this was a straight Zealscape, I know that if I killed her in the dream, she’d wake up, strapped to the Chair, knocked out of her hallucination. That’s dangerous enough. But I have no idea what happens in a Vervescape. What if it’s more of a shock to her weakened body, and I kill her in the real world?
I should care. But my hands don’t slacken.
Strong hands grip my shoulders, yanking me back. “Let go of her,” Nazarin says. “Let go. You’ve learned all you can from her.”
His deep voice snaps me from the iron vise of Verve. My hands jerk from her throat, though a red imprint remains.
“It’s the drug,” he says. “Happens to everyone who takes it. Everyone has a darker side.”
“Zeal or Verve?” I ask.
His brow furrows. “What?”
“This batch has been contaminated. We’re in a Vervescape, not Zeal.”
“Shit,” Nazarin says. “We need to get out of here.”
“Where have you been?”
“Mia found a way to trap me in a different part of her dream. It disappeared when she was too distracted to control it anymore.”
He means when I was half-strangling her. I flush in shame at what I’ve done.
Mia has already stopped paying attention to us, like I never interrupted her. Mana-ma has returned, whole and shivering in her black robe. Mia is engrossed in a grisly task involving one of Mana-ma’s hands, peeling back the skin and picking out the tendons one by one. Simulacra of the hands that once rested on our heads, giving us benedictions, asking us to purge the darkness within.
“Mia,” I say. She looks up, eyes distant.
I gather that stillness within me again. “You don’t need to do this to live. You can be free of it. Try to live your life in the real world again. I loved you so much, and you were so good to us for those years we needed you most. You can be good again.”
Her breath hitches. She gives me a long, unblinking stare, and a flash seems to pass between us, before she turns her head back to Mana-ma, her shoulders heaving with silent sobs.
I turn my back on Mia and her phantom, letting Nazarin’s hands remain around my shoulders, reassuring in their realness. It’s only as we’re leaving I notice that Nazarin is also covered in blood, cuts marring the skin of his arms and his left cheek. He’s wearing the same dark clothes from Zenith as well, fitted close to the muscles of his chest and narrow waist. He looks dangerous. What nightmares has he endured, over the past few years?
Or what nightmares has he enacted?
We trudge silently down the abandoned corridors of the apartment complex, the dead leaves whispering underfoot. Outside, we look up at the building again, the rain drenching us through. The sky still boils red, blue, black and purple, an endless, wounded expanse. Even though the bloodlust of Verve still sings through my veins, I am comforted by the fact that I can’t imagine how anyone would do this willingly.
Nazarin rests his forehead against mine.
“Wake up.”
TWELVE
TILA
I remember dreaming of trees after we fell.
The redwoods towered above me, the branches criss-crossing like dark lightning against the blue sky. Taema and I were lying on our sides, staring up. There was no birdsong, and barely a rustle of wind. I felt like we were the only two people in the world.
“Are we dead?” I asked my sister.
She leaned close, pressing her forehead against mine. “Not yet.”
*
It was our heart.
We’d always known it was weak. There’d been a few scares when we were little. Thinking about it, it’s pretty crazy that we had as few health problems as we did, without proper medicine and all that. That day, at the age of sixteen, we had a heart attack.