I didn’t ask for any gloves.
I’m flexing my bare hands, walking the length of the room and back, bending my knees and familiarizing myself with the sensation of wearing a new kind of outfit. It serves a different purpose. I’m not trying to hide my skin from the world anymore. I’m only trying to enhance the power I already have.
It feels so good.
“These are for you, too,” Alia says, beaming as she blushes. “I thought you might like a new set.” She holds out exact replicas of the knuckle braces she made for me once before.
The ones I lost. In a battle we lost.
These, more than anything else, represent so much to me. It’s a second chance. An opportunity to do things right. “Thank you,” I tell her, hoping she knows how much I mean it.
I fit the braces over my bare knuckles, flexing my fingers as I do.
I look up. Look around.
Everyone is staring at me. “What do you think?” I ask.
“Your suit looks just like mine.” Kenji frowns. “I’m supposed to be the one with the black suit. Why can’t you have a pink suit? Or a yellow suit—”
“Because we’re not the freaking Power Rangers,” Winston says, rolling his eyes.
“What the hell is a Power Ranger?” Kenji shoots back.
“I think it looks awesome,” James says, grinning big. “You look way cooler than you did before.”
“Yeah, that is seriously badass,” Lily says. “I love it.”
“It’s your best work, mates,” Brendan says to both Winston and Alia. “Really. And the knuckle—things . . . ,” he says, gesturing to my hands. “Those are just . . . they bring the whole thing together, I think. It’s brilliant.”
“You look very sharp, Ms. Ferrars,” Castle says to me. “I think it quite suits you,” he says, “if you’ll forgive the pun.”
I grin.
Warner’s hand is on my back. He leans in, whispers, “How easy is it to take this thing off?” and I force myself not to look at him and the smile he’s surely enjoying at my expense. I hate that he can still make me blush.
My eyes try to find a new focus around the room.
Adam.
He’s staring at me, his features unexpectedly relaxed. Calm. And for one moment, one very brief moment, I catch a glimpse of the boy I once knew. The one I first fell for.
He turns away.
I can’t stop hoping he’ll be okay; he only has twelve hours to pull himself together. Because tonight, we go over the plan, one last time.
And tomorrow, it all begins.
FIFTY-EIGHT
“Aaron?” I whisper.
The lights are out. We’re lying in bed. I’m stretched out across his body, my head pillowed on his chest. My eyes are on the ceiling.
He’s running his hand over my hair, his fingers occasionally combing through the strands. “Your hair is like water,” he whispers. “It’s so fluid. Like silk.”
“Aaron.”
He leaves a light kiss on top of my head. Rubs his hands down my arms. “Are you cold?” he asks.
“You can’t avoid this forever.”
“We don’t have to avoid it at all,” he says. “There’s nothing to avoid.”
“I just want to know you’re okay,” I say. “I’m worried about you.” He still hasn’t said a single thing to me about his mother. He never said a word the entire time we were in her room, and he hasn’t spoken about it since. Hasn’t even alluded to it. Not once.
Even now, he says nothing.
“Aaron?”
“Yes, love.”
“You’re not going to talk about it?”
He’s silent again for so long I’m about to turn around to face him. But then.
“She’s no longer in pain,” he says softly. “This is a great consolation to me.”
I don’t push him to speak after that.
“Juliette,” he says.
“Yes?”
I can hear him breathing.
“Thank you,” he whispers. “For being my friend.”
I turn around then. Press close to him, my nose grazing his neck. “I will always be here if you need me,” I say, the darkness catching and hushing my voice. “Please remember that. Always remember that.”
More seconds drown in the darkness. I feel myself drifting off to sleep.
“Is this really happening?” I hear him whisper.
“What?” I blink, try to stay awake.
“You feel so real,” he says. “You sound so real. I want so badly for this to be real.”
“This is real,” I say. “And things are going to get better. Things are going to get so much better. I promise.”
He takes a tight breath. “The scariest part,” he says, so quietly, “is that for the first time in my life, I actually believe that.”
“Good,” I say softly, turning my face into his chest. I close my eyes.
Warner’s arms slip around me, pulling me closer. “Why are you wearing so many clothes?” he whispers.
“Mmm?”
“I don’t like these,” he says. He tugs on my pants.
I touch my lips to his neck, just barely. It’s a feather of a kiss. “Then take them off.”
He pulls back the covers.
I only have a second to bite back a shiver before he’s kneeling between my legs. He finds the waistband of my pants and tugs, pulling them off, over my hips, down my thighs. So slowly.
My heart is asking me all kinds of questions.
He bunches my pants in one fist and throws them across the room.
And then his arms slip behind my back, pulling me up and against his chest. His hands move under my shirt, up my spine.
Soon my shirt is gone.
Tossed in the same direction as my pants.
I shiver, just a little, and he eases me back onto the pillows, careful not to crush me under his weight. His body heat is so welcome, so warm. My head tilts backward. My eyes are still closed.
My lips part for no reason at all.
“I want to be able to feel you,” he whispers, his words at my ear. “I want your skin against mine.” His gentle hands move down my body. “God, you’re so soft,” he says, his voice husky with emotion.
He’s kissing my neck.
My head is spinning. Everything goes hot and cold and something is stirring to life inside of me and my hands reach for his chest, looking for something to hold on to and my eyes are trying and failing to stay open and I’m only just conscious enough to whisper his name.
“Yes, love?”
I try to say more but my mouth won’t listen.
“Are you asleep now?” he asks.
Yes, I think. I don’t know. Yes.
I nod.
“That’s good,” he says quietly. He lifts my head, pulls my hair away from my neck so my face falls more easily onto the pillow. He shifts so he’s beside me on the bed. “You need to sleep more,” he says.
I nod again, curling onto my side. He pulls the blankets up around my arms.
He kisses the curve of my shoulder. My shoulder blade. Five kisses down my spine, one softer than the next. “I will be here every night,” he whispers, his words so soft, so tortured, “to keep you warm. I will kiss you until I can’t keep my eyes open.”
My head is caught in a cloud.
Can you hear my heart? I want to ask him.
I want you to make a list of all of your favorite things, and I want to be on it.
But I’m falling asleep so fast I’ve lost my grasp on reality, and I don’t know how to move my mouth. Time has fallen all around me, wrapped me in this moment.
And Warner is still talking. So quietly, so softly. He thinks I’m asleep now. He thinks I can’t hear him.
“Did you know,” he’s whispering, “that I wake up, every morning, convinced you’ll be gone?”
Wake up, I keep telling myself. Wake up. Pay attention.
“That all of this,” he says, “these moments, will be confirmed as some kin
d of extraordinary dream? But then I hear you speak to me,” he says. “I see the way you look at me and I can feel how real it is. I can feel the truth in your emotions, and in the way you touch me,” he whispers, the back of his hand brushing my cheek.
My eyes flicker open. I blink once, twice.
His lips are set in a soft smile.
“Aaron,” I whisper.
“I love you,” he says.
My heart no longer fits in my chest.
“Everything looks so different to me now,” he says. “It feels different. It tastes different. You brought me back to life.” He’s quiet a moment. “I have never known this kind of peace. Never known this kind of comfort. And sometimes I am afraid,” he says, dropping his eyes, “that my love will terrify you.”
He looks up, so slowly, gold lashes lifting to reveal more sadness and beauty than I’ve ever seen in the same moment. I didn’t know a person could convey so much with just one look. There’s extraordinary pain in him. Extraordinary passion.
It takes my breath away.
I take his face in my hands and kiss him, so slowly.
His eyes fall closed. His mouth responds to mine. His hands reach up to pull me closer and I stop him.
“No,” I whisper. “Don’t move.”
He drops his hands.
“Lie back,” I whisper.
He does.
I kiss him everywhere. His cheeks. His chin. The tip of his nose and the space between his eyebrows. All across his forehead and along his jawline. Every inch of his face. Small, soft kisses that say so much more than I ever could. I want him to know how I feel. I want him to know it the way only he can, the way he can sense the depth of emotion behind my movements. I want him to know and never doubt.
And I want to take my time.
My mouth moves down to his neck and he gasps, and I breathe in the scent of his skin, take in the taste of him and I run my hands down his chest, kissing my way across and down the line of his torso. He keeps trying to reach for me, keeps trying to touch me, and I have to tell him to stop.
“Please,” he says, “I want to feel you—”
I gentle his arms back down. “Not yet. Not now.”
My hands move to his pants. His eyes fly open.
“Close your eyes,” I have to tell him.
“No.” He can hardly speak.
“Close your eyes.”
He shakes his head.
“Fine.”
I unbutton his pants. Unzip.
“Juliette,” he breathes. “What—”
I’m pulling off his pants.
He sits up.
“Lie down. Please.”
He’s staring at me, eyes wide.
He finally falls back.
I tug his pants off all the way. Toss them to the floor.
He’s in his underwear.
I trace the stitching on the soft cotton, following the lines on the overlapping pieces of his boxer-briefs as they intersect in the middle. He’s breathing so fast I can hear him, can see his chest moving. His eyes are squeezed shut. His head tilted back. His lips parted.
I touch him again, so gently.
He stifles a moan, turns his face into the pillows. His whole body is trembling, his hands clutching at the sheets. I run my hands down his legs, gripping them just above his knees and inching them apart to make room for the kisses I trail up the insides of his thighs. My nose skims his skin.
He looks like he’s in pain. So much pain.
I find the elastic waist of his underwear. Tug it down.
Slowly.
Slowly.
The tattoo is sitting just below his hip bone.
h e l l i s e m p t y
a n d a l l t h e d e v i l s a r e h e r e
I kiss my way across the words.
Kissing away the devils.
Kissing away the pain.
FIFTY-NINE
I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows propped up on my knees, face dropped into my hands.
“Are you ready?” he asks me.
I look up. Stand up. Shake my head.
“Breathe, sweetheart.” He stands in front of me, slips his hands around my face. His eyes are bright, intense, steady, and so full of confidence. In me. “You are magnificent. You are extraordinary.”
I try to laugh and it comes out all wrong.
Warner leans his forehead against mine. “There is nothing to fear. Nothing to worry about. Grieve nothing in this transitory world,” he says softly.
I tilt back, a question in my eyes.
“It’s the only way I know how to exist,” he says. “In a world where there is so much to grieve and so little good to take? I grieve nothing. I take everything.”
I stare into his eyes for what feels like forever.
He leans into my ear. Lowers his voice. “Ignite, my love. Ignite.”
Warner has called for an assembly.
He says it’s a fairly routine procedure, one wherein the soldiers are required to wear a standard black uniform. “And they will be unarmed,” Warner said to me.
Kenji and Castle and everyone else are coming to watch, care of Kenji’s invisibility, but I’m the only one who’s going to speak today. I told them I wanted to lead. I told them I’d be willing to take the first risk.
So here I am.
Warner walks me out of his bedroom door.
The halls are abandoned. The soldiers patrolling his quarters are gone, already assembled and awaiting his presence. The reality of what I’m about to do is only just starting to sink in.
Because no matter the outcome today, I am putting myself on display. It is a message from me to Anderson. A message I know he’ll receive.
I am alive.
I will use your own armies to hunt you down.
And I will kill you.
Something about this thought makes me absurdly happy.
We walk into the elevator and Warner takes my hand. I squeeze his fingers. He smiles straight ahead. And suddenly we’re walking out of the elevator and through another door and right into the open courtyard I’ve only ever stood in once before.
How odd, I think, that I should return to this roof not as a captive. No longer afraid. And clinging fast to the hand of the same blond boy who brought me here before.
How very strange this world is.
Warner hesitates before moving into view. He looks at me for confirmation. I nod. He releases my hand.
We step forward together.
SIXTY
There’s an audible gasp from the soldiers standing just below.
They definitely remember me.
Warner pulls a square piece of mesh out of his pocket and presses it to his lips, just once, before holding it in his fist. His voice is amplified across the crowd when he speaks.
“Sector 45,” he says.
They shift. Their right fists rise up to fall on their chests, their left fists released, dropping to their sides.
“You were told,” he says, “a little over a month ago, that we’d won the battle against a resistance group by the name of Omega Point. You were told we decimated their home base and slaughtered their remaining men and women on the battlefield. You were told,” he says, “never to doubt the power of The Reestablishment. We are unbeatable. Unsurpassed in military power and land control. You were told that we are the future. The only hope.”
His voice rings out over the crowd, his eyes scanning the faces of his men.
“And I hope,” he says, “that you did not believe it.”
The soldiers are staring, stunned, as Warner speaks. They seem afraid to step out of line in case this turns out to be some kind of elaborate joke, or perhaps a test from The Reestablishment. They do nothing but stare, no longer taking care to make their faces appear as stoic as possible.
“Juliette Ferrars,” he says, “is not dead. She is here, standing beside me, despite the claims made by our supreme commander. He did, in fact, shoot her in the chest. And he did leave her to
die. But she was able to survive his attack on her life, and she has arrived here today to make you an offer.”
I take the mesh from Warner’s hand, touch it to my lips just as he did. Drop it into my fist.
I take a deep breath. And say six words.
“I want to destroy The Reestablishment.”
My voice is so loud, so powerfully projected over the crowd, that for a moment it surprises me. The soldiers are staring at me in horror. Shock. Disbelief. Astonishment. They’re starting to whisper.
“I want to lead you into battle,” I say to them. “I want to fight back—”
No one is listening to me anymore.
Their perfectly organized lines have been abandoned. They’re now converging together in one mass, speaking and shouting and trying to deliberate among themselves. Trying to understand what’s happening.
I can’t believe I lost their attention so quickly.
“Don’t hesitate,” Warner says to me. “You must react. Now.”
I was hoping to save this for later.
Right now, we’re only about fifteen feet off the ground, but Warner told me there are four more levels, if I want to go all the way up. The highest level houses the speakers designated for this particular area. It has a small maintenance platform that is only ever accessed by technicians.
I’m already climbing my way up.
The soldiers are distracted again, pointing at me as I scale the stairs; still talking loudly with one another. I have no idea if it’s possible for news of this situation to have already reached the civilians or the spies who report back to the supreme. I have no time to care right now because I haven’t even finished giving my speech, and I’ve already lost them.
This isn’t good.
When I finally reach the top level, I’m about a hundred feet off the ground. I’m careful as I step onto the platform, but I’m more careful not to look down for too long. And when I’ve finally planted my feet, I look up and around the crowd.
I have their attention again.
I close my fist over the microphonic mesh.
“I only have one question,” I say, my words powerful and clear, projecting into the distance. “What has The Reestablishment ever done for you?”