The Aviate glides onto the Fortesquieu landing pad. Zhara’s hand resumes burrowing into the seat fabric at her side, chafing it so hard that it rips. She grimaces and then places both her hands in her lap. “Sorry. Nervous habit.”
“I don’t care,” I say. “Rip away.”
The Aviate comes to a full stop as a clone butler on the landing pad walks over to it, places a step pad at the door, and then opens the hatch. Zhara and I both stand, and the butler takes our hands to help us step out. It’s the same clone butler that once greeted me when I was loaned to the Fortesquieus in my former life here. “Who’s in charge here?” I ask him, meaning, Who will lord over me here?
To Zhara, he says, “I’ve been instructed to guide you to your quarters inside, Miss Zhara.” To me, the butler says, “Miss Elysia, I’ve been instructed to point you in that direction.” He points toward the sea.
What? Has this clone just invited me to take another leap off a cliff, to spare me the misery of living in this palace that will constantly remind me of what was taken away from me? Challenge accepted. I have no problem immediately ditching Zhara at this point. “Later,” I say to her.
I run to the precipice of the cliff and look down to the violet sea. Desert flowers are scattered across the pink sand, encircling an area where the word ELYSIA is spelled out in red rose petals. For a second, my heart drops because I think, Oh no—Alex! He’s here, along with his misguided romantic gestures. I so don’t care.
But I do care. Because standing in front of the rose petals, his arms outstretched to beckon me down from the cliff, is my Tahir.
I bite down hard on tongue, so hard that I can taste blood in my mouth.
The blood tastes real. I’m not dreaming. Tahir must be real! He’s right there!
EVER SINCE WHAT HAPPENED WITH IVAN, my heart has felt only doom and dread.
Now, I understand—truly understand—what it means to have a soul, because in this moment, mine feels like it literally just exploded with exhilaration. The feeling spreads to each and every cell in my body, fireworks of joy.
I bolt down the cliff stairs to the beach. I can’t get to Tahir fast enough. I’m so scared he will disappear before I can touch him again.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he says as I run to him, smiling that smile that makes my knees buckle and my heart sing.
I stop for a brief moment to soak him in. Tahir looks the same, but different. It’s like there’s a twinkle in his hazel eyes, the only nonphysical feature transplanted directly from his First. Before, his facial expressions looked like controlled reactions to what his chip processed that his First would feel in any particular situation. The result was a guy programmed to be charismatic, like his First, but who more often looked and sounded stiff. He looks freer now. What changed?
I spring into his open arms. There are no words yet, just kisses. His hands touch the sides of my face, and I press my lips against his cheeks, then his eyelids, then his nose, winding back to his mouth. I didn’t realize how dead I’ve felt until this very moment, when I suddenly feel so alive. I jump to straddle my legs around his waist as Tahir holds me up from behind. “You’re real,” I whisper into his ear. “I can’t believe you’re real.” I can’t stop kissing. I can’t get enough of him. It’s not just happiness I feel right now. It’s delirious happiness.
“Elysia, Elysia, Elysia,” Tahir murmurs. “I’ve dreamt about this moment for so long. I can’t believe it’s finally here.”
I have so many questions. When did he get here? Why is he here? What does this all mean? But those questions can wait. For now, all I want to experience is his full cherry lips touching mine—slowly, sweetly. I forgot it was possible to feel so cherished.
Eventually we both must get some air. My feet fall back into the sand, but I’m not ready to let go. “Let’s walk,” Tahir says. Side by side, he wraps his arm around my waist, and I wrap mine around his, but it’s not enough, and my other arm goes around him too, so they lock around his waist, and I press my face against his chest as he places kiss after kiss on my head. I want to never let go of him.
“How is this even possible?” I ask Tahir. “It feels like a miracle, your being here.”
“I told my parents I wanted to return to Demesne, to be with you. They said yes.”
“It’s that simple?”
“Yes.” I give him a look like, Really? Tahir pauses and then adds, “Tariq is the new chairman of ReplicaPharm. He masterminded the company’s bailout for the island’s property owners. They wanted to unload their homes here but couldn’t find buyers with that kind of money. Now there’s no society people here anymore who would care that I’m a clone—or that I’m in love with one.”
I know it’s not that simple. Surely Tahir’s father had bigger reasons for becoming the head of ReplicaPharm other than wanting to bring his cloned son to an island where Tahir could be accepted for who he really is, and where the island’s whole new corporate mission would be to safeguard his son’s well-being. I know it’s ugly politics that are making us a pawn in some stupid adult game, but I don’t care. If the result is my reunion with Tahir, that’s good enough for me. Nothing else matters.
“You look different. You feel different,” I say. “I see it in your eyes, feel it in your kiss, hold it in your body. You’re so much more relaxed.”
“I am more relaxed. His parents,” Tahir says, meaning First Tahir’s parents, Tariq and Bahiyya, who love their cloned Tahir just as much their original son, even if clone Tahir is still learning how—or if—he can reciprocate that feeling, “are no longer trying to make me be like First Tahir. They’ve finally accepted that I’m a clone. They recognize that I have a soul, even if it doesn’t conform to their hopes as quickly as they’d like. But they’re pleased with my progress. Even if my soul is a very new and raw one, it’s mine just the same. I didn’t like having to pretend I was someone I’m not.”
“But your family loves you so much. It’s wrong that you had to act like someone you weren’t, but I can understand how they’d rather have you pretending to be First Tahir than simply not existing.” I squeeze his hand again to remind myself. Tahir exists! He’s mine!
“Ha, not exactly all my family love me that much,” Tahir says. “Remember my cousin Farzad? Supposedly First Tahir’s best friend? He wanted nothing to do with me after he found out. He and his family returned to Biome City when ReplicaPharm bought Demesne. They didn’t want to live on an island with clones who are acknowledged to have souls.”
“They were afraid their clones might turn murderous? Like me?”
“That’s exactly what they’re afraid of.”
He stops our walk, and we drop down to the sand—that silky-smooth Demesne sand, I forgot how lush and sweet and perfect it is—to sit down. I rest my head on his shoulder as we look out over Io, its violet water lapping over pink crystalline sand. The premium air I breathe in no longer tastes so toxic to my mouth. Now it tastes extra sweet, like honeysuckle and lavender sprinkled with magic, because I’m sharing it with Tahir. He is everything—the only thing—precious to me.
Tahir reaches over and traces his index fingers across the knuckles of my hands. “What happened?” he asks me. “With Ivan. I want to hear it from you.”
Quietly, I say, “Ivan violated me. And then tried to kill me. I fought back.” I recognize that I sound emotionless and too concise in recounting this complex situation, but I don’t know how to express it otherwise. It’s like the rage and horror of what happened are compartmentalized in a part of my brain that’s locked away. Not dwelling inside that memory compartment is what’s allowed me to survive everything that’s happened since. Even with Tahir, whom I trust more than anybody, I can’t go deeper. Not yet. We are only just reunited. I want to dwell in the joy of this moment, and not relive the hateful situation that led me here.
Tahir’s eyes darken and his body shakes in anger. “I hate them for what they allowed to happen to you!” He lifts a fist into the air. “I’ve never felt rag
e this raw before. It’s almost frightening—but powerful too. Am I right?”
His arms reach over now to pull me tightly to him, and I feel his raging heart beating against my raging heart, and a potent wave of completeness comes over me. I nod against his chest. “You’re right,” I whisper. Experiencing anger on that powerful a level is what enabled me to fight Ivan, who was trying to kill me—and win.
Tahir says, “We have to get away. Be free. Yes?”
“Yes!” I don’t exactly know what this freedom that Tahir and I seek would be like. I can’t define it because I’ve never experienced it; I just know it exists. It’s a mythic place where we live unmonitored, unmoored, and behave like ourselves. Without fear of retribution. Without being data-mined. It’s where we live our lives however regular people out in the world do, with whatever joys and pains come along with it. Until our Awfuls kill us. “But first we have to help finish the Insurrection. Makes sure that what happened to me cannot happen to other clones here again.”
Tahir places his hand beneath my chin to lift my gaze to meet his. “My feelings exactly. You just make me love you more and more. We’ll finish the job, and then we’ll escape. Who cares how little chance we have to succeed? We’ll do it anyway, because we must. We’ll burn the island down if we have to.”
I love his fire. “Are you Awful now?” I ask him.
“Pretty much,” says Tahir. “But it’s not the disease we were led to believe. You’ll find me much more fun now. Even Tariq says so.”
If Tahir is Awful, he is soon to die. I think I am slowly growing Awful too, but I don’t have the doctors that Tahir has had to confirm it.
We have to make the most of our remaining time.
That’s why his parents brought him back to Demesne and agreed to become my monitors here, I suspect. To clock out Tahir’s remaining time in a safe place, and to gift him with the only present that’s ever mattered to him. Me.
“Elysia!” We hear my name being called from the top of the cliff, and Tahir and I look upward.
There stands Alex, waving at us.
Alex lives. I guess that’s a good thing. For him. For me, not really.
“What’s he doing here?” I ask Tahir as Alex bounds down the stairs toward the beach to reclaim me.
“Alexander Blackburn? He’s our guest too.” By the easy tone in his voice, I know that Tahir has no idea about my relationship with Alex. “My parents offered him accommodation in the quarters that Farzad’s family used to occupy. He can’t leave here or he’ll be imprisoned for treason by the Uni-Mil. Bahiyya told me he comes from a powerful Aquine family. His grandmother is negotiating his extradition back to Isidra. Until then, we’re stuck with him.”
“He thinks he’s my boyfriend,” I admit to Tahir.
“The Aquine?”
“Yes.”
Tahir laughs heartily. “We’ll just have to re-educate him about that.”
As Alex bounds toward me, I see he’s cleaned up nicely since Heathen. His face is now clean-shaven, and his blond hair has been shorn back to a military buzz cut. He wears white linen pants with a blue shirt that fits his muscular form perfectly and highlights the intensity of his turquoise eyes; clearly, the Fortesquieus’ clone tailor has been busy to have custom-fit new clothing ready for Alex so quickly. How efficiently Demesne prioritizes aesthetic perfection first and foremost. Alexander Blackburn looks as handsome as the night I first met him, at the Governor’s Ball, so dashing in his fine military uniform.
He’s too perfect. It’s unseemly. I feel resentful at his approach.
“Elysia!” he calls out. “How’re you feeling? I’ve been so worried about you.”
After all I’ve been through, do I really owe the Aquine a gentle breakup? Because I just don’t feel up to the task.
The kind, docile Elysia who needed a protector no longer exists, because she doesn’t need to anymore. To make that clear, I pull Tahir to me and plant a long, deep, deliciously Awful kiss on his lips just as Alexander reaches us. Now the Aquine knows which mate I’m loyal to: Tahir. My true partner, not my protector because of convenience.
Now Alex knows he’s free to reclaim Zhara—if she’ll have him.
I pull back from Tahir and stare dully into the Aquine’s perfect blue eyes. “I’m fine,” I tell Alex. “Thanks for your concern.” I take Tahir’s hand and walk away.
We leave Alex standing alone on the beach—this big, beautiful, “perfect” specimen of a man who trained to be a military commando, who looks like he was engineered for climbing the harshest mountains or fighting the deadliest fires or leading the most noble battalions.
Who looks so small in this moment.
THE FIRST AND ONLY LOVE of my life has been returned to me, and I should be relishing every precious second of that reunion, but still, annoyingly, I feel compelled to check on my First.
After our long walk on the beach, I take a brief leave of Tahir in order to see where Zhara is situated. The butler leads me to the quarters I’ve been designated to share with her. I enter the bedroom and find Zhara luxuriating on a chaise situated beneath a sun-soaked glass wall overlooking violet Io, her head nestled on a magenta pillow. She sees me and announces, “I forgot what real pillows feel like—and these pillows here feel a million times more luxurious than the ones back home. Did you see the bathroom? It’s entirely made of white marble. It looks like a giant pearl, with gold—literally, gold—fixtures!”
“Whatever,” I say.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder—human beholders. My fuchsia clone eyes register a white-walled room that’s large and immaculate, the size of a grand ballroom, bathed in sunlight, with views of the violet sea below. The room’s opulence—the inlaid parquet floors, the desks and chairs carved from ivory, the burgundy silk pillows on the king-size beds, the gold-spun silk chaises—don’t change the fact that I’d rather live in a dirty, miserable slum anywhere in the real world, if living in that slum meant that I was free.
“Apparently Tahir is here?” she asks me, flashing a smile my way. I don’t return the smile, even if my heart feels it. For some reason, I don’t want to share my joy with her. Seeing my nearly identical face and body lodged so comfortably inside the Fortesquieus’ is a sudden and stark clash of my two lives—the brief but happy one I experienced here before with Tahir, before he was sent away and before Ivan violated me, and the short and hard one on Heathen, where I discovered my First was alive and not at all happy to discover my existence, and where I was designated as the hope and future of an Insurrection that never properly came to fruition. “Details?” Zhara asks.
I shrug. I don’t feel like sharing with her in this moment. Why’d I really come looking for her? I wonder. Maybe I’m getting to be like an animal that stalks its prey with no intention of devouring it, just to keep tabs on it and prevent it from stealing resources.
“Whatever,” Zhara mimics back to me. She stands up and runs across the room and climbs the ladder to a bed hanging from the ceiling, where a half moon–shaped window looking over Io serves as the bed’s headboard. She flops down onto the bed. “This bed is like lying down on a cloud. No wilderness beds of sticks and boughs for us here. Seriously, I could almost die from this level of luxury.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” I should feel so happy right now. I’m living in a palace instead of in a cave on Heathen. My true love has been returned to me. But dumping the man who was so good to me has made me grumpy—too grumpy to tell Zhara the news yet. Hurting someone I cared for has cut deeply and unexpectedly into my heart. How do humans live with causing this kind of pain to each other on a regular basis?
“What’d I ever do to you?” Zhara asks, her face expressing the same irritation that I’m feeling.
“Not die. I think that’s clear.”
“You’re getting really mean since we got to Demesne. Is there some side effect in the air here I don’t know about?” Zhara knows the answer as well as I do: Yes. The side effect is called Awful
. It applies to Betas, not Firsts. Zhara rolls over onto her side so her back is facing me. “I’m going to ignore you and take a nap. Hopefully by the time I wake up, you’ll be appreciating your good fortune and not acting like a PMS bitch.” She lets out a loud yawn and snuggles tight under her blanket.
She can’t see it, but my face snarls and registers the expression Ugh.
I walk to the floor-to-ceiling mirror near to my bed and stand sideways before it, pressing my hand against my belly. The baby is gone. I change position to face the mirror. I partially lift my shirt. My exposed belly is flat again. I trace my pinkie finger over a tiny laser incision mark at the base of my belly, thin like a piece of thread. The doctor told me the minor mark would disappear within days, and then there would be no physical evidence left of what my body once carried. The mark can’t disappear fast enough for me.
My bump was not that big yet, but still, I feel a million pounds lighter.
Bitchy. But much, much lighter.
A few minutes later, as I stand in a corner of the room where I’ve moved to inspect the view outside, I hear a kind, familiar female voice call to me. “Welcome!” I turn around and see Tahir’s mother, Bahiyya, standing at the doorway to the room. She is a later-age human female who oddly prefers to look her age. She shares Tahir’s hazel eyes and mahogany skin, but her face is wrinkled with soft lines. Her hair is long, completely gray, and falls in waves nearly to her hips. She has Tahir’s charismatic smile, which she offers to me now along with two open arms.