Sam
She winces, remembering fragments of what happened, but when she tentatively moves, she’s surprised to feel only a dull ache in her chest instead of the hellish agony of broken ribs and torn insides that Sebastian and Will inflicted on her. A numbness pervades her body.
Clipped footsteps make her turn her head toward the bedroom door. Demeter bustles in with a sweep of perfumed air, her white hair tied back into a neat braid. At the sight of her, the woman frowns.
“It’s not important,” Demeter replies. “You can’t stay here for long. Once Diamond realizes that you’ve survived your ordeal, she’s going to have every crewman out in the city looking for you.”
The woman ignores her and taps on the bowl of soup. “Drink it all,” she says. “Your soul will need strength.”
“But—” Sam starts, then pauses. “You work for her.”
“And so did you,” Demeter replies dryly.
Sam pushes herself laboriously upright, trying to ignore the burning agony from her wrists, and takes a sip of soup that Demeter feeds to her.
It’s a rich broth, hearty with meat and vegetables.
She swallows carefully, noting the lack of pain from her ribs and chest, then eats the next few bites more eagerly.
“You can stay here for the night,” Demeter tells Sam as she eats. “I have a rental car you can take in the morning. Head south until you pass the border, don’t stop unless you absolutely have to.”
“And then do what?” Sam mutters. “Forget that this ever happened?”
“And then run,” Demeter replies. “For the rest of your life, you run.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she says.
The alchiatrist shakes her head. “You can’t stay here.”
“I can’t leave,” she replies.
“Why not?”
“Their prisoner. Ari—Shakespeare. I need to get him out.”
“You’re a foolish little girl,” Demeter mutters.
“You thought you could play this game, didn’t you?
You don’t have a chance in hell. Prisoner exchange is still on, you know, tonight at the estate.
If Diamond doesn’t kill him, Lumines likely will, for him being potentially compromised.
You think you can take on both syndicates and win? ”
“I’m getting him out,” Sam repeats.
Demeter shakes her head in exasperation. “I can only buy you so much time.”
“What about you, then?” Sam retorts, nodding at the woman. “Why are you helping me?”
Demeter forces her to eat another spoonful, then puts the bowl down and regards Sam with pursed lips.
She looks out the window and looks back.
“There was a time when I was your age, you know,” she says.
“Young and full of fire, excited by the power Diamond exuded and enticed by the promises of alchemy.” She leans forward.
“You see a lot in thirty years. Thirty years lets you watch the transformation of a human, a society, a way of life.”
“And what have you seen?” Sam asks.
Demeter doesn’t answer. She just leans back, as if in pain, and rubs her joints.
“I’m tired, Sam. My body is old and my soul is ravaged.
The closer we come to the perfection that drives us, the more we chip away at our souls.
And what happens when we arrive there? What then?
You look down from the mountain and see the carnage you’ve wrought.
” She presses a hand to her chest. “But for now, I can still feel my soul, tattered as it is. Eventually, you realize what you should really be using it for.”
Sam looks at her and has a vision of herself, thirty years from now, her soul fragmented into pieces, her eyes sunken like those of Sebastian, her chest hollow and devoid of emotion, of what gives her life.
Someday, she will sink into a shell of existence.
Her soul will die a quiet death, and with it shall go her body.
“Get out of Angel City,” Demeter tells her in the silence. “Forget about your boy. There’s nothing left here for you. Go, and don’t look back.”
Sam doesn’t answer. She finishes her soup quietly, lets the woman inspect the wounds on her wrists and ankles, sees the stripes of damage done there by Sebastian. When Demeter leaves her alone again, she leans back against the pillows and thinks about the woman’s words.
It doesn’t end. It will never end.
She stares out the window. There is a brick wall there, but beyond it is a sliver of the city, and she can see that she is several floors up, overlooking a little street market.
Clusters of people browse the goods, a father holding up his daughter so she can get a better look at the flowers, a young couple picking out apples and avocados.
Sam watches and tries to feel the coming and going of their lives, souls blinking in and out of existence, so big and so fragile, filling living bodies so completely that no amount of nonliving material can match them.
She turns her attention to the window, notes the hinges, counts the number of floors. Then she closes her eyes. Darkness closes around her, but in this sun-drenched room, it has a reddish haze, warm and vigorous.
She thinks of Ari turning to her on that first day in the classroom and whispering hello, his large, somber eyes. She remembers the feeling of his finger tracing the symbol for gold against her hand.
I like you the way you are, Sam.
In the red-tinted darkness, she makes a promise.
I’m going to save you, Ari. And if I can’t, if they take us down, then I will pull every single one of them with us.