Brooke

5

When I finally make it to my tent, I’m crushed to find it empty.

Clara isn’t here.

I want to go search for her, but I’m too exhausted. Normally, Hyde and I would have traded shifts, two hours on watch, two hours asleep, but we’d felt it best to double up after what had happened with Wylan, both of us alert for danger. We were thrumming with adrenaline too, but now that rush has faded and my eyes won’t stay open.

I collapse onto my bed pad and barely pull my boots off before I plunge into sleep.

At some point I feel the covers shift, and I emerge from the rainbow colors of a dream to see Clara. She burrows under my blanket and nestles beside me. It’s the middle of the day, and she shouldn’t be here, but I love that she is. I love that my sister has come to find me. I pull her close and drift back to sleep, breathing in her strawberry scent.

When I finally wake, Clara is still sleeping. In my dreams I saw her standing in the rain, shaking and crying. Great big hiccups came out of her between sobs as she said, Don’t leave me, over and over.

But then I touch my shirt, feeling the dampness at my breastbone, and I know it wasn’t a dream. Not all of it, anyway.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help her. She’s not like Talon, who seems to have returned without missing a step. Talon lost his parents and his aunt, and yet whenever I see him he is laughing and running off somewhere with Willow and Flea, no sign at all of being scarred.

Not my sister.

Don’t leave me, she cried in my arms.

Clara isn’t lost, like I thought before. She’s worried we’ll turn our backs on her again. Sell her again. She is afraid of being betrayed. She is afraid that if she lets herself love, she’ll only be abandoned again.

And I understand that. I won’t pretend what I’ve gone through is the same, with Perry, but it’s not different, either.

I am afraid too.

Fear is what pulled me away from Hyde.

An unexpected sadness washes over me as I remember what he said. That he wanted to know me. He was opening his heart, but I couldn’t because mine is closed. Mine is bruised and wailing and grasping to stay afloat. Mine is hiding in a corner, terrified it will be discarded again.

And I don’t want it to be.

So much, I don’t want it to be.

A lump rises in my throat as the urge to talk to someone slams into me. I need to tell someone how lonely I feel. How Perry and Liv and Roar left a hole in my life that I don’t know how to fill. I need someone to tell me that everything will be all right.

Molly.

Molly is strong, like my mother isn’t. I don’t have to worry that my problems will burden her with worry. No one else is as wise and understanding.

I pull on my boots, tuck the blankets in around Clara, and jog to the Dweller cave, because that’s where I’ll surely find Molly.

Right away I see that the situation in here has deteriorated. The Dwellers are not shivering and drifting in and out of consciousness anymore. They are silent and still and barely breathing, and there is nothing even partly amusing about it.

It’s frightening.

They are on the verge of dying, and it’s so chilling that I almost forget why I came here until Molly calls my name. I see her in the dimness, crouching over one of the Dwellers. But any thought I had about having a long talk with her vanishes when she snaps, “Hurry, Brooke! Now!”

I rush over and see that she’s pinning Aria down.

Aria is convulsing. Her legs thrash against the blankets and her eyes are wide, but I can’t see her pupils. They’re rolling back.

“Get Perry,” Molly says. “Bring Perry and Marron now!”

For a second, I can’t move. I can only stare. The bandage has been removed from Aria’s arm. The bullet wound on her bicep almost makes me retch. It is swollen and raw. The smell that comes from it is curdled and festering and wrong. The infection is worse. Even I can see that it’s spreading into her bloodstream.

“Brooke, go get Peregrine!” Molly snaps.

I turn to go, but it’s as though Perry somehow sensed he was needed, because there he is, running toward us. Gren appears behind him, and that explains why Perry is already here.

Gren is an Aud. They were likely in the Battle Room nearby and Gren heard Molly. Heard her panicked voice shouting Perry’s name.

I step back before I am run over by them. There is a mad scramble as Molly issues orders. Then Aria is in Perry’s arms and it’s like the night she was poisoned. The night of her Marking ceremony.

He carries her out, but this time we all follow.

He takes her into the Battle Room and sets her on the trestle table. Marron enters, making clipped demands for clean towels, boiled water, and surgical supplies from the Dweller Hover. I have never heard such a commanding tone from him.

I’m there. I know I’m there because I see and hear everything. But I am numb as the supplies arrive. Numb as Aria is injected with needles that finally relax her rigid, shaking muscles. Numb as her arm is sliced open by Molly while Marron aids her.

The smell and the blood make me queasy, so I stare at Perry’s face as he hovers over Aria. He speaks to her though she’s unconscious. He begs her to hold on and he tells her in a dozen different ways that he loves her.

The things he says . . . they are beautiful.

I don’t want to see or hear any more.

I leave the Battle Room, with its small army of people fighting to keep Aria alive, and wind my way through the dark corridors of the cave.

I wander aimlessly for a while, not feeling angry or hurt or much of anything.

All I can hold in my mind is hope. I want Aria to heal. I don’t want Perry to have his heart broken too. As much as it hurt to be left by him, he’s my Blood Lord. And he’s my friend.

He was my nemesis in archery competitions when we were young. He was my best friend’s little brother. Roar’s constant companion in tormenting Liv and me. A pest for many years, in truth. Awkward and gangly and too quiet, until the day he became gorgeous and graceful and quietly confident.

He is not just a friend, I realize. He is family. That means we have an unbreakable bond. I want him to be well and happy. Even if it’s not with me.

His face appears in my mind as he whispered to Aria so passionately and desperately. The bond between them is visceral, like Marron said in the meeting this morning. Life-sustaining.

It’s what I want.

Perry never felt that way about me. He cared for me. I know he did. Does. But he never felt that for me, like if one of you dies, you both die.

Then it hits me, and I don’t know how I didn’t realize it before.

I never felt that way about him, either.