She touched his forehead, jerked away. “You’re really burning up.”
He smiled, that dazzling, delighted smile. “Just like a star. Did you know that all the stars are burning? It’s just a whimper and a bang, or a bang and a whimper, I can’t remember, but I know that they’re burning. . . .” She turned, and started pulling him through the trees. Heat wicked off him now, and flowed over her skin where it met his sleeve. “So many tiny fires in the sky, and so much dark between them. So much darkness. So much madn—” He cut off. “No.”
“What is it?”
He jerked free, brought his hands to his head. “No, no, no . . . ,” he pleaded, folding to his knees. “Anger, madness, joy, I don’t want to keep going.”
“Come on,” whispered Kate, crouching beside him. “We’re almost there.”
But he’d started shaking his head, and couldn’t seem to stop. She could feel the anxiety rippling off him like heat, seeping into her skin. His lips were moving, and she could just make out the words. “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay.”
She wrapped her arm around his waist to help him up. His shirt was slick and she thought it must be sweat, but the rest of him looked dry and when she pulled back, her fingers came away black.
“August,” she said slowly. “I think you’re bleeding.”
He looked down at his body as if he didn’t recognize it, and when he didn’t move, Kate reached out and guided up his shirt. She could see the place where a bullet had graze his ribs. He touched his side and stared at the streak of blackish blood on his hand as if it was a foreign thing. The manic smile was gone, and suddenly he looked young and sad and terrified.
“No,” he whispered. “This is wrong.”
He was right.
Sunai were supposed to be invincible.
Nothing is invincible.
It had to be the hunger, somehow wearing away at his strength.
“Let’s go,” she said, trying to help him up, but he pulled her down instead. Her knees sank into the mossy earth, and his fingers dug into her arms. He was shaking now, the short-lived euphoria plunging into something else. Tears streamed down his face, evaporating before they reached his jaw.
“Kate,” he said with a sob. “I can’t keep going toward the edge—don’t let me fall.” His breath hitched. “I can’t I can’t do it again I can’t go dark again I’m holding on to every little piece and if I let go I can’t get them back I don’t want to disappear—”
“Okay, August,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm and even. “I won’t let you fall.”
He buried his burning forehead on her shoulder. “Please,” he whispered. “Promise me.”
She reached up, and stroked his hair. “I promise,” she said.
They’d made it this far. They would get to the house. Cool him down. Get the money from the safe. Get the car from the garage. And they would drive until they found something—someone—for him to eat.
“Stay with me,” she said, taking his hand and rising to her feet. “Stay with me.”
Heat prickled through her fingers, at first pleasant, and then painful, but she didn’t let go.
They made it to the house.
Gravel crunched beneath her feet as Kate half led, half dragged August across the field and past the overgrown drive and up the front steps. The blue paint on the front door had faded, the garden plants had all gone wild, and a spiderweb of a crack ran across a pane of glass, but otherwise, the house looked exactly as it had.
Like a photograph, thought Kate, edges frayed, color fading, but the picture itself unchanged.
August slumped against the steps as Kate scavenged under weedy grass for the drainpipe and the small magnetic box with the key hidden inside. She’d knock the door in if she had to, but it had lasted this long, and she didn’t like the thought of being the one to break it now.
“Tell me something,” murmured August, echoing her words from the car. His breathing was ragged.
“Like what?” she asked parroting his answer.
“I don’t know,” he whispered, the words trailing off into a sob of grief or pain. He curled in on himself, the violin case slipping from his shoulder and hitting the steps with a thud. “I just wanted . . . to be strong enough.”
She found the box and fumbled to get it open. She didn’t realize her hands were shaking until the sliver of metal went tumbling into the weeds and she had to dig it out. “This isn’t about strength, August. It’s about need. About what you are.”