“People will die,” she said hollowly.
“People will die,” he echoed, thinking of Ilsa. Ilsa in her room, surrounded by stars. Ilsa in the Barren, surrounded by ghosts.
“People are already dying,” muttered Kate. But she didn’t talk any more about him leaving, only sank back against the cushions and returned her attention to the silver pendant.
August shivered, his clothes still damp with rain. He turned away, and felt Kate’s eyes on his back as he stripped the shirt over his head, revealing the black tallies that had circled his forearm and were making their way like roots across his chest and back.
He drew the curtains against the sunlight, dizzy with fatigue. There was only one bed, so he sank to the floor beneath the window, his back against the hotel’s faded wallpaper. Kate said nothing but dropped a pillow over the side of the bed. August stretched out on the dingy carpet, tucking the pillow behind his head.
It was so quiet.
The motel was a nest of muffled noises: dripping water and far-off voices and the electric hum of appliances, and beyond, the growl of engines and tap of shoes on concrete. He missed his music player, missed the hundreds of more familiar sounds that came with living in the compound, every one of them helping to drown the gunshots that now rose to fill the silence in his head.
And then, mercifully, music.
He looked up to see Kate fiddling with the radio beside the bed.
“. . . hate quiet,” she mumbled, turning past a classical station to something with a low, heavy beat. She found his eyes in the curtained dark, and flashed him a tired almost-smile back before sinking gingerly back to the bed. Within minutes, her breathing had evened, and he knew she was asleep.
August let himself sink into the songs, drift past the words and into the instruments, picking apart the threads of sound as he tried to sleep. He couldn’t remember ever being so tired. The ceiling swam in his vision, and a shiver passed through him, like the cusp of a cold.
And then, just as he was drifting off, the hunger started.
August woke from fever dreams to cool air and the smell of mint.
His skin ached and his bones were humming, and a shape hovered over him, a nest of hair blocking out the last light beyond the window. His dreams had been a tangled mess of teeth and shadows, and for a second, he thought he was still asleep, still dreaming, but then he felt the cheap motel carpet beneath his back, and the shape leaned closer, revealing blue eyes and strawberry curls and skin covered in stars.
“Ilsa?” he asked, throat dry. But Ilsa couldn’t be here. His sister didn’t leave the compound. He tried to blink away the phantom, but she only grew more solid.
“Shh, little brother.” She pressed her fingers against his mouth and turned his face toward the bed. “Someone is sleeping.”
Kate was curled up on her side with her back to them, a blanket slipping to reveal the bandages wrapped around her waist, and it hit him in a wave, where he was, what had happened. Colton. The Malchai. The tunnels. The hunger. August sat up, and the room tipped. “You can’t be here.”
“Can’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, won’t,” she whispered. “No one saw me go. No one thinks to look for someone who’s always there. They are all looking for you.”
“How did you find us?”
“You tick, I tock,” she said, her voice so soft that only his ears could pick it up. “I would hear you anywhere.” A breeze blew through the window. It was open, twilight streaming in. He’d slept all afternoon, and he winced as his pulse thudded in his skull, and Ilsa pressed her cool palm to his cheek. “You’re warm.”
He brushed her hand away. “I’m all right,” he mouthed, because it was still true. “Is anyone with you?”
She shook her head. Her eyes were wide, the skin tight over her bones, her edges haloed by the thin light from the window. She looked wrong outside the compound, as if she’d left some part of herself behind.
Our sister has two sides. They do not meet.
“Ilsa,” he whispered. “You can’t be here.”
“Henry is worried. Leo is angry. Emily wanted me to come. She didn’t say the words, but I heard them anyway.”
“You need to go back home. If Harker’s men see you, if they catch you—”
“I told you everything was breaking.” Ilsa sank down next to him, curled up right there on the floor with her cheek to the carpet, picking at the fibers. “I could feel it,” she murmured. “And I’m glad it’s not inside me, but that means it’s out here. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I let the cracks into the world.”
He rolled toward her. “Hush, Ilsa. It wasn’t you.”
“I told Leo about the cracks, and he told me everything breaks. But I wish it didn’t have to. I wish we could go back instead of forward.”