He obeys without hesitation, flipping the pistol and handing it over. Xander tucks it away as Topher approaches, pulling his jacket off. Xander bunches it up and presses it over my wound. Pulling his own jacket off, he tucks it behind me, over the hole where the arrow entered.
“Pressure, here and here,” he says to August, who wraps his hands around the front and back of my ribs, the gentle pressure making pain begin to register properly for the first time since it happened. Since Liam accidentally shot me with an arrow.
I could almost laugh.
If I weren’t so sure I was dying, that is, I could probably laugh.
“I’ll go back for a medic. Or we could take her back to the base,” Topher says. But his voice has the tone he used when he talked about us loving each other, belonging to each other. He doesn’t believe it.
“It’s three hours at least,” Xander says. “She doesn’t . . .”
August starts to rock. He lets the blood-soaked jackets fall away and pulls me closer, hugging me to his chest.
“I’m sorry, August,” I say.
No. No.
“Please, can you take my friends through the pass? To the human territory?”
No. No. No. Leave you nevermore.
I lift my hand up and touch the side of his face, the metal still pulsing hot and cold. He hisses mournfully.
“I told you we would be friends one day.”
He makes a series of signs then. Some I know, and some I’ve seen before but never quite understood. Some new ones. But now, in this hazy space before death, they make perfect sense.
You walk in my dreams, Pretty Wind Flower.
“You too, August,” I say, registering the nickname he’s given me properly for the first time. He’s said it a million times, but I never understood what it meant until now.
Pretty Wind Flower.
Dandelion. Yes. I think there’s a dandelion inside me too, somewhere, with the raven and the hope. I’m apparently not as invincible as I thought.
When I blink next it’s hard to get my eyes back open. Only the sound of Topher crying gives me the strength.
“I’ll go back to the base,” he says through his tears. “I’ll bring back a medic.”
Xander, who is sitting by my feet, calls after him. “Topher! Wait! It’s not . . .” Then he glances at me, his face not hiding the hard truth he was about to yell out. “It’s dangerous!” he finally says, but there’s no spirit in him, either.
I turn my head to look at Topher, standing by the path down from the plateau. He looks at me, but I don’t have the strength to interpret his expression. And he, I think, lacks the will to speak. He just turns and walks away.
He walks away. Didn’t he tell me once he would never leave me? Or was that someone else?
August pulls me closer again and moves one thumb to wipe a tear from my face.
“Try to hang on, Rave,” Xander says.
I try. But I can feel myself unraveling, and the puddle of blood I’m lying in is getting larger.
Feel broken?
How many times has August asked me this and how many times have I lied and said no?
“Yes,” I say.
Repeat me.
We stare at each other until my reflection in the glass of his eye mask starts to blur and darken.
Breathe, he signs. I needed the reminder. But the next breath I take has bubbles of blood in it, which drip down my chin. As August wipes it away, I see his hand is shaking. He’s trembling. He pulls me into his lap, sliding down to sit cross-legged beneath me, cradling me as he did that night before I learned the truth about what happened to Tucker. About who August was.
Despite the warmth he surrounds me with, I’m shivering too as my mind travels backward, back through the months I didn’t know whether August was alive or dead. The months I tried to love Topher, tried to ignore the coldness growing inside him. Through the days August and I walked through the snow to return me to a life of hiding and scheming, through the weeks in the penthouse, hating him, fearing him, longing for him when he was gone. And the rocking climb up the stairs half conscious in his arms, and the glimpse of him outside the barn when Sawyer thought I was dreaming, and him carrying me, carrying me, with snowflakes drifting down around us, with the stars falling. And staring at that latch on the bathroom in the trailer, staring and wishing I had locked that door. Though with his propensity for breaking locks, he probably would have just torn the door from its hinges. Maybe that act of violence would have been enough to incite anger toward me. Maybe he would have darted me and walked away.
Either way, that unlatched door is the reason we’re both here now, my life leaking away, his heart breaking. Either way, when he opened the door he saw something that made him hesitate, and that was all it took.
He remembered the girl who floated away in the river and didn’t want to let her float away again.
I wonder if there is such a thing as love at first sight. I thought once that Tucker loved me. I see now that I was wrong. This is what love feels like: August’s trembling hands trying to hold my blood inside me. In my memory, as he carried me away from the trailer park, he trembled too. Was he scared of me? Or scared of losing me? Maybe both.
I blink again. When I open my eyes, my hand is resting on August’s face, his own warm hand pressed over it.
“Can you take this off?” I ask. “Your helmet? Your armor? Can you take it off?”
No. Yes. Die.
“You die if you take it off? Even for a minute?”
He adjusts the hand sign slightly—I’m not even sure how—but it changes the tense to passive.
Not die. Be killed.
“Who would kill you? Other Nahx? It’s forbidden to take it off? No one will know, August.”
He looks up to Xander, who I had forgotten was even here. Xander sniffs wetly before answering.
“I’m not going to tell anyone.”
August turns his face back down to me, and with the morning sun shining on him, I can almost imagine I see his eyes behind the mask. “Would you take it off? Please? I’d like to see what you look like.”
He stares down at me, running his trembling fingers over my hair. Finally, he reaches out with one arm and touches Xander on the shoulder.
Take, he signs. Take her.
Xander moves to sit closer as August gently slides me into his lap. The movement causes a fresh burst of blood to bubble out, and Xander clumsily presses his bare hand over it.
“God,” he says quietly. And then “Okay . . .” I wish I could have spared him this. I wish I could have spared everyone everything.
August rises up to rest on one knee. He looks around the plateau and then back to me, with his head turned to the side. I bite back a whimper as a sudden spasm of pain lances through me.
“Please,” I say, and I don’t add there’s not much time.