The moment the elevator doors opened, he stormed out, carving a line toward his room.
“Where have you two been?” asked Henry.
“Is that blood?” added Emily.
August didn’t stop.
“Leo?”
“I was giving him a lesson.”
“What—”
“Don’t worry, Henry. He’ll be fine. . . .”
August closed the door, and slumped back against the wood. There was no lock, so he stayed there until he was sure no one would follow, then let out a shuddering breath and tore off the FTF jacket. He left the lights off and collapsed onto the bed. His fingers dug into his ribs, trying to stop the buzzing, but it didn’t work, and as soon as he closed his eyes, the buzzing rose to screams. He fumbled in the crumpled sheets until he found the music player and shoved the buds into his ears.
Something landed on the bed, and he rolled over to see Allegro padding toward him, but the cat paused just out of reach, bright eyes narrowing with suspicion, and when he went to pet him, the cat recoiled and darted away.
They can tell the difference, you know, between good and bad.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into the dark. “I had no choice.”
The words left a sick taste in his mouth. How many times had someone said those things to him? It never made a difference. A confession didn’t undo the crime, nothing could, so August folded in on himself and turned the music up until it drowned out everything.
It was the middle of the night, but he couldn’t sleep.
The buzzing had finally stopped, but his nerves were frayed, and he padded out into the kitchen, and poured himself a glass of water. He wasn’t thirsty, but something about the gesture calmed him, made him feel normal.
His attention wandered over a stack of folders on the counter, and he was about to reach for them when he heard something scratching in the dark. August set the glass aside untouched, and found Allegro pacing back and forth in front of Ilsa’s door.
He knocked, but the door wasn’t pulled all the way shut, and it fell open under his touch. Inside, the lights were off, and the first thing he saw were the stars. Every surface of Ilsa’s room was covered in them, tiny dots of fiber-optic light splashed across the ceiling and walls and floors. His sister stood in front of the window, her strawberry hair loose but strangely weightless, twining through the air around her face. Her fingers were splayed across the window glass, and in her sleeveless shirt, her own tiny black stars trailed across her shoulders and down her arms.
Two thousand one hundred and sixty-three.
August couldn’t reconcile the Ilsa in front of him, gentle and kind, with the monster whose true voice somehow leveled a piece of the world and everyone in it.
Our sister, the Angel of Death.
He wanted to ask her about that day. Wanted to know what happened, what it felt like, to live with so much death. He wanted to, but he wouldn’t.
Allegro padded toward the bed, and August was about to retreat when his sister spoke, so softly he almost didn’t hear.
“It’s falling apart,” she whispered. Her fingers twitched on the glass. August padded forward carefully, quietly. “Crumbling,” continued Ilsa. “Not ashes to ashes and dust to dust, like things should go, but wrong, like when a crack starts deep inside a stone and then spreads and spreads and spreads, and you don’t know until the day it . . .” She pressed against the window, and hairline fractures began to web out across the glass.
August brought his hand to rest over his sister’s.
“I can feel the cracks. But I can’t tell . . .” She squeezed her eyes shut, and then opened them wide. “I can’t tell if the cracks are out there or inside of me or both. Is it selfish, to hope they’re out there, August?”
“No,” he said gently.
They stood for a while in silence. When she spoke again, her voice was steadier. “Thirteen. Twenty-six. Two hundred and seventeen.”
August frowned. “What’s that?”
“Thirteen Malchai. Twenty-six Corsai. Two hundred and seventeen humans. That’s how many died in Lyle Square.” He stiffened, didn’t realize he was still holding her hand until she let it fall from the glass. “That was its name, before the Barren. They were holding a rally; that’s why there were so many people there. I didn’t mean to do it, August. But I had to do something. Leo wasn’t there, and the rally was turning, and . . . I just wanted to help. I’d never gone dark before. I didn’t know what would happen. Leo makes it look so simple, I thought we all burned the same way, but our brother burns like a torch, and . . .”
And Ilsa burned like a wildfire.
And August?
You could burn so brightly, that’s what Leo told him. If you let yourself.