Chapter 24
And Then I Lost Me
HARPER
Landing spits Niko and me into the bowels of the medbay like two lost sheep.
Niko orders Tia into a medbay, like somehow that’ll save her. I have no voice to tell them that it’s over. Not when they collapse two seats away from me in front of the operating theatre, their nails pressed into their knees, leaving deep crescents.
Neither of us talk about Tia. It’s as if we know that doing so will break us both, and we’re too determined to uphold a strong facade to do that to each other.
I’m acutely aware of how shitty I look. I feel like a human stripped to bone, and the stench of death haunts me.
There are dark smears over my shirt from where I’d helped to load Kiran and Tia into the hospital heli-carrier.
A bloodied bandage has been tied hastily around my palm, I don’t remember when, and a devil-red swathes my forearms with sin and the death of hope. It’s horrific.
In my peripheral vision, Niko turns to me.
They rest their elbows on their knees, clutching their hands as though using the contact to ground themself. ‘Did Tia know?’
I swallow. ‘Yes.’
Niko’s gaze cuts away. A frown knits across their forehead, and they press their fist to the bridge of their nose as if in prayer.
‘I don’t even know how I’m going to tell her parents,’ they whisper. ‘I was supposed to protect her.’
Me too.
I gesture vaguely to Niko’s face. ‘You have blood on you, you know.’
They raise a hand to the rust streak on their cheek. ‘You too.’
For a second, we stare at each other. A shaky, unspoken truce hangs in the air.
‘Doc says it’ll still be a few hours before we can see Kiran,’ I say. ‘I’m . . . going to go get cleaned up.’
Niko says nothing, but they follow when I stand.
We borrow paper gowns and use the pressure wash showers in the medical department.
Cold water carves into my skin, chilling me straight to the bone.
I don’t find it in myself to turn it warmer, and welcome the icy pain until my skin turns red and I can’t feel my fingertips.
It cauterizes the jagged edges of my loss so it stops bleeding, even if only temporarily.
When I return to the waiting area, Niko says Kiran’s out of surgery, and we sit in the ward together.
Kiran’s still unconscious, and Niko’s gaze lingers on him as we both take a seat.
I stay silent to give them space, but to my surprise, Niko breaks it. ‘I know you’re probably still in shock, but if you’re up for it I want to know what happened.’
Instinctively, I grab the medallion on my chest, winding its chain around my fingers so tightly it hurts. I avoid Niko’s gaze. ‘From the start?’
‘From the start.’
So, my eyes red-rimmed and my voice brimming with tears, I begin. It hurts to speak about Tia, but the entire world hurts anyway.
I want to start from the night of the gala when I got the assassination assignment, but that feels too immediately incriminating, so I set the story up a little earlier – during the blueprint heist that night. I tell Niko about how I hadn’t even known what the blueprints were for.
I try to explain the strange bond I’d created with Tia when I’d bandaged her leg. How I realized Tia treats her wounds before anyone finds them, like showing pain is a crime she forbids herself from committing.
Instinctively, I refer to Tia in the present tense, and Niko thankfully doesn’t correct me. If they do, I might fall apart.
Halfway through, I need a glass of water. Halfway through, Kiran wakes up. He drifts in and out of sleep as I speak.
Sometimes Niko stops me and stares into space, like they need time to process what I’m saying – it happens after I brush over our first kiss, my cheeks involuntarily flushed, and it happens again when I talk about my reveal.
By the end of it, Niko’s silent. They lock their fingers together and rest their elbows on their knees and press their lips to their white knuckles like they’re praying, even though I know they’re not really religious. Stiffly, like a poorly strung puppet, they stand. ‘Outside.’
Niko glances around the corridor as if they’re checking if it’s empty. When no one appears after a few seconds of inspection, they finally turn to me.
Their eyes are blazing green, their fists clenched by their side.
When they speak, their words are eerily calm. ‘Get out of my house.’
That can’t be right. I can’t have heard right. It must have been drowned out by my thudding heart. ‘What?’
‘You killed Tia.’ Niko takes a step closer, their gaze set fierce and harsh and meaner than I have ever seen before.
It’s like the floor has twined up my calves and grabbed me, leaving me stupid and immobile. ‘Didn’t you hear everything I said? She matters too much for me to ever have—’
Niko doesn’t acknowledge it. ‘You got close to her just to kill her. How dare you have the audacity to hurt my daughter and come into my house like you care about her? About us?’
‘I’m sorry—’
‘I don’t care about apologies!’ When they snap, their eyes flash ominous green, a sickly shade of warning and poison.
‘She made you kill her so you would become Fox leader. She became a target because your clan turned her into some sick test for you. You have been lying to me and hurting the people I love, behind my back. I’m not letting it go on. Leave.’
They don’t have their wings on them, but Niko is millimetres away from me and I’ve never been this scared of them. Fury twists haunting shadows over their features in the dim corridor light. It shifts their face in a way I don’t recognize.
The ward door clicks open. ‘Nik. What’s going on?’
Kiran. He limps to us as if he’s approaching a wild animal, his eyes scanning the space between me and Niko as if he’s guessing what happened and guessed right.
‘I’m handling this. Go rest,’ Niko snaps.
Kiran rests against the doorway, his gaze cool. ‘I can handle myself. Leave Harper alone.’
Niko bursts out laughing. It’s dry and mocking, mirthlessly crude. ‘Leave her alone? When she’s here after nearly killing my entire family? I’m supposed to just be okay with that?’
‘I overheard some of her story. Tia made her do it. You know Harper would never hurt us.’
I hear it in his statement. Raven might, but Harper wouldn’t.
Niko goes still. They whip around to face him. ‘You knew about this, didn’t you?’ A finger jabs at me, their eyes wide. ‘There’s no other reason why you’d be so calm.’
‘I –’ Kiran’s eyes slide over to meet mine – ‘had my suspicions.’
The floor cracks open under me, the walls collapsing around us and filling my lungs with rubble and sin, mortar crushing my heart, a bleeding, dying love.
‘Was everyone just keeping this from me?’ Niko demands. When they realize they’re getting nowhere with Kiran, they whirl back on me. ‘I want you out. Leave my house, and don’t come back.’
‘Where is she going to go, babe?’ Kiran shuffles to edge between us. ‘We’ve lost enough family today.’
‘No.’ Niko shifts, and through the green glow of their pupils, tears shine over their eyes. ‘She doesn’t count.’
Suddenly all the moments I spent lounging in their house, sharing a couch over movie night, bickering over the stove in the kitchen, unravel in my mind, yarn unspooled and lost to the void. It’s clear in Niko’s statement: I’m not part of the family. I never will be.
They take a step closer. ‘I want you gone.’
I take a step back. Around us, Niko’s anger forms a hurricane, lashing out and bringing the world down on me with the power of the heavens, an angel in their truest form.
The world warps with their fury, and I’m not sure if it’s just me or if Niko’s really using their powers. I can’t tell. All I can see is Niko’s glare, and all I can taste is the tears in my mouth.
‘Niko—’ Kiran starts, but I cut him off.
‘I’ll go.’ My voice cracks, my lips salty. ‘I’ll leave.’
The walk down the hall feels like forever. Niko’s gaze burns into my back, and it’s the last thing I see when I get into the lift.
I grab the bag with my suit from the room, with my phone and wallet. My hands reach instinctively for granola bars at the kitchen counter. It reminds me of early mornings and Tia, so I take ten like a memory and an oath and drop them into my bag.
When I finally go, it’s as Raven: leaping out of the window of the fifty-third floor – a dark, darting silhouette against the sun’s first cry of blood over the sky.