The Sunai looked down at her, its hand hovering in the air between them, edges wavering like smoke. And then, it shuddered. A single, animalistic shiver that rolled from horns to wing and down, through its body and into its feet, the darkness retreating like a tide, revealing black hair, and smooth skin, and gray eyes.
August stood there, barefoot and shirtless, chest rising and falling. His wounds and bruises were gone. So were the black tallies that had counted out days, months, years across his skin. And for a long second, his face remained empty, his features too smooth, his expression as blank as his brother’s. He looked at her as if they’d never met. As if they hadn’t fled together, hadn’t fought together, hadn’t nearly died together.
Then a small crease appeared between his eyes. The faintest edge of a frown.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
His voice was still distant, but there was something in it. A sliver of concern. Kate let out a ragged breath. She looked down at herself, her torn sweater and bloodied hands. “I’m alive.”
A tired smile flickered across his face. “Well,” he said, “that’s a start.”
Nothing was different.
Everything was different.
They crossed the field in silence as the first signs of day seeped into the edges of the sky, Kate’s eyes on the distant house, and August’s on Kate. Her shadow danced behind her, restless, reaching for the world and pulling at his senses, a gentle, persistent tug.
He wanted to comfort her. And couldn’t. There was this gap, where something had been, some part of him he couldn’t reach. He wanted to believe it was fatigue, loss, confusion. Wanted to believe it would pass.
The house was as they’d left it. The cars on the gravel drive. The front door hanging open. The body in the hall. Kate fetched her lighter from the grass and stepped around the corpse, went into the kitchen. August padded toward the bathroom, where his violin lay splintered on the tiled floor, its neck broken, strings snapped. He forced himself to step around it, the way Kate had with the corpse.
He recovered his shoes and watched his fingers tie the laces. His skin was smooth, no black marks running up his arm. He ran a finger thoughtfully over his wrist.
Four hundred and twenty-four tallies gone.
Erased.
He straightened, his eyes drifting up the mirror. He searched his face, tried to remember the version of himself from hours before, the boy clutching the sink, desperate not to lose control, eyes wild and feverish, face contorted with terror and pain, every feeling sharp and terrible and real. He tried, but the memory was more like a dream, the details already fading.
“August?”
He turned to see Kate standing in the doorway, staring down at the wreckage of the violin.
“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “It’s only wood and string.” He’d meant the words to sound comforting, but his voice sounded wrong in his ears. Too steady. Like Leo’s.
Something rose in him—a ghost of panic, an echo of fear—but then it settled.
Kate was holding out a black T-shirt. When he reached to take it, their fingers brushed, and he drew back sharply, afraid of hurting her. But of course nothing happened. His violin was strewn across the tile floor, and her soul was safe beneath the surface.
The shirt smelled of lavender, he noticed as he slid it on, the fabric soft against his cool skin.
“August,” said Kate, her voice brittle. “Are you . . . okay?”
“I’m alive,” he said, echoing her answer.
She wrapped her arms around herself, but her gaze was level. “But are you still . . . you?”
August looked at her. “I’ve been tortured, turned, and I just killed my brother. I don’t know what I am right now.”
Kate chewed her lip, but nodded. “Fair enough.” She looked lost.
August ran a hand through his hair. “I have to go back to V-City, Kate. I have to see Henry. I have to help my family—what’s left of it. Leo said the fighting has already broken out and—”
“I understand.”
“There are two cars. I’ll—”
“I’m going back, too.”
August frowned. “Is that a good idea?”
“Probably not,” she said, fingers closing around the silver pendant at her neck. “But I need to see my father,” she said. “Will you come with me?”
August tensed. They’d come this far together, and he trusted her, but the thought of facing Harker . . . “Why?”
Her knuckles went white against the metal. “I need to ask him something,” she said. “And I need to know he’s telling the truth.”
Kate Harker sat on the edge of her father’s desk, watching clouds drift past beyond the window, low white streaks over the city. Her heart was pounding, and her whole body ached, but she was here. Where she belonged.
Harker Hall was a fortress; there was no getting in or out without being seen by someone.
Which was fine with Kate. She wanted them to know she was here.
Wanted him to know.
She’d done her best to keep August a secret, though. Told him exactly where to stand to keep him off the cameras.