Dear X: Here is a letter for you. You’re probably thinking that (a) I have no way of sending it and (b) you don’t know how to read anyway. So, yeah, this isn’t a totally practical letter. I get it. Can we move on now, please? I have to get these words out of my brain—they’re killing me. I don’t care if they never go farther than this piece of paper. Maybe that will help. Anyway, here’s the main thing I want to say (I’m taking a superdeep breath—picture me taking a superdeep breath, okay?) … The minute you left, I realized I loved you. Crap, I’m already running out of paper. I should have written smaller.
Ripper broke off suddenly.
“I must say, she is a very unconventional correspondent,” she said.
“Is there no more?” said X desperately.
“Yes, yes, there’s more, my lovesick boy,” said Ripper. “Restrain yourself.”
She continued:
The minute I wake up now, my thoughts go straight to you, like gravity pulled them there. You tried so hard not to take Stan. You trusted me when I said it was wrong. Watching you suffer for what was right was the first thing that made me love you, I think. Then there were a ton of other things that I don’t have enough paper for. I hate your sadness, X—even more than I hate my own. When you come back (please come back), let’s get rid of our sadness, okay? When you come back (please, please come back), let’s bury our sadness under 15 feet of snow. Love, Zoe.
X said nothing. Zoe’s words faded into the air, and he leaned forward, listening hard, as if he could pull them back into being.
“Would you read it again?” he said.
“Of course,” said Ripper, “for even I think it is lovely in its way. But might I ask how many times you shall require me to read it?”
“Until it is fixed in my memory—and I can speak every word back to you,” he said.
After a dozen readings, X finally let Ripper rest. She returned the paper to him, and withdrew to the back of her cell, complaining about the state of her throat. X ran his fingers over the letter, trying to connect the markings on the paper with the words he had memorized. He taught himself “love” and “Zoe,” as well as “superdeep” and “crap.”
Then he sat for hours holding the paper and the coat. He wondered when Regent would send him for the final soul. He wondered if he could survive the terrible wait.
He whispered to Ripper that Regent had told him his true name.
Ripper did not answer immediately.
“Do not even tell me what it is,” she said. “He is a lunatic for having revealed it.”
“I will never tell a soul,” said X.
The churning of his brain finally tired him. Sleep hit him so unexpectedly that he dropped off while sitting against the wall and balancing Zoe’s letter on his palm as if it were made of glass.
He dreamed he was back in the lords’ giant chamber. It was empty. He had snuck in. The marble steps gleamed, the river rushed overhead. He had only seconds to do what he needed to do. He strode to the wall where the map of the Lowlands was embedded in the marble like some massive fossil. He searched for clues about where his parents were held. He ran his fingers along the symbols. There were too many—and he could not decipher them. The rock began to burn under his touch. He was not supposed to be there. The map knew that, somehow. His face was hit with a wave of heat.
When X wrenched himself from the dream, he found that the dark bruises on his cheeks were burning, and that Regent had come with the name of the 16th soul.
X was startled to see the lord in his cell. How long had he been there? Why hadn’t he woken him? What reason could there be for delaying, even by a moment, his final hunt?
X rubbed the sleep from his eyes, but that only made the pain worse. He took a breath to steady himself. He looked up again at Regent, and saw that his face was heavy with sorrow. Something was wrong. The certainty of it hit X’s heart like a hammer.
Regent didn’t speak, didn’t move. He just regarded X miserably, his dark, muscular arms hanging at his side, as if the blood were draining out of him. Nothing about the moment was ordinary. Nothing was right. X wanted to ask Regent what he meant by his silence, but his brain was so frantic now that it could not build a simple sentence.