I stare blankly at the dozens of fabric squares surrounding me atop the bed.
“These all look the same,” I blurt in Ellie’s direction. “They are all… white.”
She pulls the thick curtains together, blocking out the starry night beyond. “Well, wedding dresses typically are.”
My mouth goes dry at the reminder of what one of these little squares will soon become. I shake my head, admitting defeat. “Here. You just pick for me.”
“Paedyn.” Ellie’s tone is surprisingly scolding, enough so to have me smiling with pride. “This is your big day. I refuse to pick out the fabric of your wedding dress.”
I run a finger across the strip of samples, feeling each texture and pattern alongside the growing pit in my stomach. “What if I don’t even live to wear it, hmm? I mean, there is still the final Trial and—”
“And you’ll be just fine,” Ellie reassures gently.
“Why, because I have no problem being brutal?”
The words come out in a rush, like an uprooted fear typically does. She walks over to me, sitting on the edge of the bed only after I pat the quilt insistently. “There is no shame in that when justified,” Ellie states. “It’s not knowing an end to your brutality that’s the problem.”
My eyes fall to the surrounding fabrics and each finger gliding over them. It feels wrong to touch something so blindingly pure with such bloody hands. My soul is stained with death and drenched in the regret of it.
I never asked for this brutality, this darkness. It was asked of me.
Clearing my constricting throat, I lift one of the squares into the lamplight. “How about this one?”
Ellie leans in, her brown eyes tracing the faint pattern of twining vines etched in white thread. “It’s beautiful.” With a sad smile, she adds, “Adena would have loved it.”
“She would have been jealous of the needlework,” I agree with a light laugh. “She always did hate doing that herself.”
Ellie watches me run my thumb over the fabric a few dozen times before saying, “I’ll let the seamstress know what you picked.”
I nod and numbly collect the fabric into a pile that Ellie tucks beneath her arm. “Tomorrow,” she insists sweetly, “we will pick the flowers for the ceremony.”
Groaning, I tip my head back against the wall. “If I pick now, will I be free of these decisions?”
“I suppose, but—”
“Perfect,” I say cheerily. “Roses.”
Ellie gives me a knowing look. “Is that just the first flower that came to mind?”
“Maybe, but it seems fitting,” I defend. “I admire the rose and its thorns. Even the prettiest things can bite.”
Slowly, Ellie nods in agreement. “Then roses it is.” I watch her bustle around the room once again, ensuring everything is in order for the night. “And they will certainly be easy to find. There is a private rose garden here on the grounds. Pretty pink ones, I believe.” I bat her away when she tries to fluff the pillow behind my back. “Now”—she straightens my boots beside the wardrobe—“I will see you in the morning, miss.”
I shake my head at her, even as a smile turns my lips. “Good night, Ellie.”
Tipping her head timidly, she offers a quiet “Good night, Paedyn.”
I watch her slip out the door before spreading my tired limbs out on the bed. Even after I did little more than waste away the day and take full advantage of sleeping on solid ground again, my eyelids still manage to droop. The dagger beneath my pillow is a comfort I clutch as I drift into sleep.
I dream of Adena, as I always do. It is unpleasant, as it always is.
The memory of her death resurfaces, swirling in and out of focus. A collage of every way in which I should have saved her plays behind my heavy eyelids. This nightmare is as torturous as every one before, and I claw uselessly at my subconscious to free me from it.
When I finally wake, it is to a sweaty brow and still-darkened sky. Though, most alarming of all, is the plan I’ve determined. With my mind set and heart aching, I stand to my feet. I don’t bother changing my large shirt and the thin pants beneath, though I quickly add Adena’s torn vest to the ensemble. It is only right to visit our home with her hugging me closely.
I step out into the shadowed hallway, looking like the resident of Loot I once was, ready to rob an unsuspecting prince. It’s fitting that I look like my old self, feel like the girl just trying to survive one sunrise at a time.
Before I was the Silver Savior, the king killer, the queen-to-be, I was Paedyn Gray.
And she is going home.
Soft light slips between the cracked cobblestones and crawls up the sooty walls. I breathe in the familiar stench of Loot, nearly choking on the thick air. My senses are bombarded with the past and every memory that accompanies it.
Dawn dares to creep over the horizon, painting the alley in a warm glow. While walking that graveled path from the Bowl Arena, I watched the night slowly flee from a rising sun. Those quiet hours were spent reliving the last time I stumbled down that road, bloody and broken. I passed the tree whose roots are decorated with that bundle of forget-me-nots, passed the rocks and plants that were once stained with my blood. Everywhere I looked, my past stared back.
It follows me still, here on Loot. I walk the same uneven cobblestones, dodge the same sneering Imperials. Though, I have never been so aware of the stubborn stench that ceaselessly wafts from the slums, not since staying in the castle.
This realization stings slightly, a reminder of everything I no longer am. So much of myself lives within these streets, both the broken and the resilient. Adena lives here, on every warm breeze and colorful banner. Her name is written across the stones I step on, and I let her soft presence lead me back home.
Merchants roll their carts right across my path, cutting me off with an unbothered yawn. Some start the day early in the hopes of claiming the most populated parts of Loot. I scan the rickety stalls as I pass, finding the shortage of resources on display. Food was something I rarely paid for, let alone observed for long before shoving it into my mouth. Still, I saw it dwindle over the years, slowly enough that only the merchants knew for a long while.
I was so busy surviving the streets of Loot that I didn’t know the extent of what was happening on them. Homeless huddle against crumbling buildings, no bed to sleep in or money to live with. A stack of sticky buns glisten on a merchant’s cart, each one an outlandish five shillings. I realize now that I’ve never actually paid for one, and thus, have no idea how expensive living has become. More than ever, I see Ilya for what it is—shambles.
But that is going to change.
I tug the fraying vest around me and quicken my pace. A small crowd spills out onto the alley, snatching what food they can afford. I weave between the bodies, and it feels like falling back into a familiar rhythm. The tranquility of blending in is a beauty that even the castle cannot offer me. I have not felt peace like this since…
Since I left Adena for the Purging Trials.
The thought falls away when the Fort comes into view.
My heart stutters in reminder of its missing piece. I stumble toward the alley’s end, my eyes pinned on the barricade. A ray of sunlight brushes the worn rug and reaches for me to rejoin it.
The Fort looms closer, and my pulse quickens. Squinting through the shadows, I falter at the unfamiliarity before me.
This is not the home I left.
No, this fort now bears a colorful banner above it. The fabric squares have been sown onto the yarn, painstaking proof that this was Adena’s doing.
I can’t seem to breathe.
Behind the barrier, our belongings have been rearranged. The usual pile of cloth is sorted neatly beside a new blanket and pillow I never got the chance to share with her.
Even in the dull light, her vibrance exudes from the space.
And I tremble in the presence of it.
My knees hit the cobblestone, and I welcome the shock of pain.
It’s as if I’d expected her to be sitting there, waiting for me to return from a day of thieving. As if she would phase through our fort and come bounding toward me in search of a sticky bun. As if I didn’t hold Adena’s dying body in my lap or see her blood gushing between my fingers with every glance at my incapable hands.
A tear slips down my cheek, splattering the ground with a drop of my anguish.
She was waiting for me to come home.
Muffled footsteps sound behind me.
But she never made it home.
My stare remains distant, even as a deep voice rings out behind me.
“This alley is taken. You’ll have to find another place to—”
I turn to let my teary gaze fall on this stranger.
His brown eyes widen with a recognition I don’t share. Strands of black hair fall around strong cheekbones while the rest is pulled back with a loose strap. I blink at the lonely silver streak threading among such darkness, as though a lock of my own hair lives on his head.
“It’s you,” he breathes.
The scar slicing his lips curls with the words. I tense. “And who are you?”
“After all this time, you’re finally back to visit her,” he mutters.
Understanding dawns, so blindingly clear I have to blink. “You’re the boy. The one Adena was seeing during the Trials.”
He sinks to the cobblestone beside me, and in the morning light, I can just make out the dark splotches under his eyes. It’s more than a lack of sleep around his gaze; it is a smattering of bruises. “She talked about you all the time. And then she died for simply knowing you.”
His words are a blunt knife to my chest. “I know.” I choke on the emotion in my throat. “It should have been me. Not her.”
Those brown eyes bore into mine. “She was coming to see you, long before being summoned as your seamstress. We had it all planned.”
“I don’t understand.” My back hits the grimy wall. “How did you two…?”
“Hera was my cousin,” the man says dully. “When I discovered how close you and Adena were, I knew she would help me get into the castle, just to see you.”
“Then Hera died in the first Trial,” I recall numbly at the memory of Braxton driving a blade through her invisible chest.
“And Dena in the last.”
I feel the moment my heart shatters, feel the shards of it pierce my lungs until I’m gasping for air.
Dena.
She was my A. But she was his Dena.
“I’m so sorry,” I choke out. “I’m so, so sorry. About Hera. About…” A tear slips down my cheek. “About Dena. I couldn’t save her. Why didn’t I save her?”
Something shifts behind his dark stare. Perhaps it’s pity or another entirely demeaning emotion. But I watch it begin to smother that stony expression, erode the anger etched into the corners of his eyes. I doubt this is the monster he expected to face. Instead, a crumpled, crying girl is falling apart before him.
“This is all my fault.” I turn my blurry gaze back to the Fort, every bright color a mockery without her here. “She redecorated for me. To surprise me when I got back from the Trials.” Tears are falling in front of this stranger, but I can’t seem to find the will to care. “But it was her who never made it back. And it’s all my fault. This is all my fault—”
“I couldn’t save her either.” The stranger sounds choked. It takes that thought for me to realize how much more he is than that. This man is one of the last pieces of Adena. “I… I couldn’t do anything but watch her die.”
“You were there for her when I couldn’t be,” I say firmly. “And that was enough.”
He shakes his head of dark hair at the cobblestones beneath us. “I have spent weeks being so angry with you. With the girl who killed her.”
“Me too.” I almost laugh, even as tears refuse to shy from my gaze. “You can’t blame me—or Blair—more than I already have.”
The silence that stretches between us only reminds me of Adena. She is not here to fill it.
The man shifts, slipping from the shadow that once draped over him. I let my gaze fall from his face for the first time, as if the dull light has tempted me to investigate further. My stare scours over his broad shoulders, then the fabric hanging over them. The black vest is cut close to his body with pockets and pockets and—
I know those pockets.
My chin dips. I stare down at my own torn pockets.
“She made you a vest.”
The stranger now stares at the olive fabric wrapped around me, his dark eyes glassy. “She did.”
All the air has left my lungs. Hurt curls around my body, choking until it’s crushing my will, my hope, my heart. I grieve Adena all over again, because I was not the only one she lost. Two great loves were left behind, and both hug what remains of her close to their heart.
Tears fall, but I don’t care that my vulnerability is on display. I kneel at the foot of our fort and cry for the girl who once brightened it. The stranger swipes at his cheek but is quick to aim the sharp planes of his face at the ground.
“What is your name?” I finally manage to whisper.
It takes him a long moment to find an answer. “Mak.”
I nod quickly, the action shaking tears from my eyelashes. “Can I…” My voice cracks. “Can I give you a hug, Mak?”
He doesn’t do it for me. I can tell by the tensing of his shoulders. No, he does it for his Dena—my A. We fall into each other, bodies shaking with grief and anger. In his embrace, I understand how someone so rigid and stoic could only be molded by the gentlest of hands. He was drawn in by Adena’s warmth, forever imprinted on by her now-broken sewing fingers.
We hold each other, strangers connected by a mutual love. And when Mak finally pulls away, his eyes rimmed with red, a streak of sunshine falls heavily over our kneeling bodies. The beam of light coats us thoroughly enough to dry the tears staining my cheeks.
The scar cutting through Mak’s lips curves with a sad smile. “What?” I ask weakly. This man does not look like the type to smile easily, though that may have only been the case before Adena gave him a reason to.
He shuts his eyes to bask in the warm light. “Just admiring the sun.”
