Chapter 16 Grief
Grief
Grief is like snow.
— LUCAS SCOTT
Icouldn’t get the idea of Lucas stabbing a scalpel into a kid’s neck out of my head. For days, the image attacked at random, and I’d flinch so hard that people stared. I retreated to my safe space to get away from it. Tall trees…warm rain…scent of cypress…
Still, the horrid image would skewer my meditative state at the worst times.
Several days passed before I understood the weight on my chest was betrayal. Why had I thought better of him? I’d seen him kill innocent people. I’d somehow convinced myself he wasn’t evil. He’d proven me wrong, and it was almost as if he’d broken a promise.
Then the look in his eyes before he did it would flash in my mind, his willingness to let me kill him afterward—no, not just willingness, but desire—and I’d spiral out of control. I turned the riddle of him over so many times that my head ached.
What was I missing?
The secrecy, the mystery—they were driving me mad. My hands shook, and panic attacked when I least expected it. I could barely eat, which made my workouts agonizing, and my sleep was punctured by rude awakenings from violent dreams.
What was the point of living when this was what life would be?
Three nights after I nearly killed Lucas, a sweet scent eked through the air, like burning wood and petrichor, drawing me outside. The summer sunset passed in shades of candy pink and ember orange. The incongruous beauty clashed with the ugly emotions inside.
I stood in the overgrown gardens of headquarters and sobbed until I laughed, a maniacal soundtrack to the night. The laugh finally gave way to a black fury. It struck like a fork of lightning, and I fantasized about laying waste to the NAO, burying them so deep that they suffocated.
It wasn’t fair, I thought, that they’d done this to us. These deaths, these tragedies, were on them, and they didn’t even care. They reveled in the devastation.
I wanted them to burn.
I wanted them all to burn.
The next day, Dr. Grayson pulled me aside to ask after my welfare, but I waved him off. Jayden caught me one night after he returned from a raid, expression soft as he took in my face. He ran his hand over my curls and gave me a reassuring smile. “It’s going to be okay.”
How could he possess optimism when I drowned under an entire ocean of hatred and terror? I turned from him, loath to find comfort in his arms when my very soul felt as if someone had taken a hacksaw to it.
And yet…
I returned to Lucas the next week and pretended nothing had changed. After all, I couldn’t stop seeing him just because he’d proven himself a killer. It was a fact I should have remembered from the beginning.
“Let’s just move on,” I said when I entered the house.
Hesitant, he handed me the knuckles I’d left on the floor. “It’s going to keep happening. You know that, right?”
“I know. It’s my fault for wanting to think better of you.”
A muscle in his jaw flickered, but he said nothing.
The cut on his lip healed by the second week, and August had almost passed before we reestablished our normal routine. The days sizzled with heat, and my scuffles with Lucas became feats of misery and sweat, but I put in my all because otherwise he complained.
Week after week, he remained his mysterious self.
He griped when he thought I was childish, pointed out every instance of my incompetence, and refused to answer the questions I most wanted to know.
He continued to gift me with things he believed would keep me safe, the most ridiculous being a pair of tennis shoes after he complained I showed up every week in sandals.
I eyed the gray and purple sneakers. “Are you serious?”
He shoved them at me. “You need reasonable footwear.”
My scowl didn’t deter him.
“Is reasonable beyond your capabilities?” he asked.
“Is it reasonable to want to kick you in the knee?”
He pointed at the shoes. “You’ll do a lot more damage if you’re wearing those.”
September arrived in a haze of sweat and my own increasing endurance, and as my reservations finally vanished, I gathered the courage to ask about Tekqua.
We sat sweating as usual, both of us on the floor on opposite sides of the room.
“You want me to search for her?” he asked. “We keep records of prisoners.”
I nodded. “Maybe you could help me find her.”
His curious eyes met mine. “Who was she?”
“My best friend.”
I recounted the story of the man I’d shot in the head to save her life—the first person I’d ever killed.
After that, it all spilled like water from a tipped jar.
I gave him too much information, but I couldn’t stop.
I hadn’t spoken of Tekqua to anyone since she’d been captured, and emotions I’d repressed for months flooded the rocky terrain around my heart.
The day she’d disappeared was the only one I couldn’t force from my mouth.
“Where’s Tekqua?” I whisper to Isaac, who’d been on patrol with her.
They’d been missing for days, and he’d just returned—alone.
Isaac flinches at Dr. Grayson’s prodding of his leg. “Captured.”
One word.
Two syllables.
But it has no meaning. I understand it, but it makes no sense.
Everything goes gray about the edges. Shouts burst around me. The floor rises to hit my knees. All the oxygen flees the room, and I’m pulling nothing but poison into my lungs.
My forest is gone.
My life is meaningless.
There is nothing left.
I’m falling, falling, falling, with no end in sight.
This is the NAO’s most deadly weapon, I think.
They have the ability to use love against us. They can take what we care for most. They can systematically remove the things that make us human.
Without them, we have nothing to fight for. If we have nothing, why would we fight?
This is how they get what they want.
By breaking us.
I swallowed hard, ripping that memory apart before it had a chance to drown me in yet another panic attack.
When I finished my story, silent tears dripped, and Lucas regarded me with an impassive face. “What happened to her?”
I sighed. Of course he’d ask that. I cleared my throat. “She—she was captured.”
“How long ago?”
“January.”
A pall fell as we both silently acknowledged what that meant. If she’d been captured, then he’d been the one to decide her fate. He dropped his head, hiding his expression. His voice broke the silence, mellifluous and soft. “I don’t remember her.”
I nodded, both relieved and upset. “I’ve been scared to ask you. Scared of what the answer might be.”
“She’s pretty?”
“Beautiful.”
“I usually have to send the pretty ones to the House.”
I swallowed. Tears rose.
“That means she could be alive, Sophia.”
My bitter laugh replied. “Death before slavery.”
His head rested against the wall, and he regarded me through his lashes. “There are shades of gray.”
My eyes snapped to his. “What would you know about it?”
“I’m very familiar with the brothels. They’re better than torture and death.”
“Rape is torture, Lucas. Even if it doesn’t hurt.”
He sighed. “If they’re executed, they’re tortured to death. If I send them to the Stability bloc, they starve. If I send them to the House, yes, they’re raped, but they’re fed, and they have beds to sleep in, and if they behave, the men aren’t allowed to harm them.”
“So it’s torture, starvation, or debasement.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Physical scars or psychological ones. At some point, everyone has to decide which is worse.”
I cursed under my breath.
He regarded me closely. “What did you do, Sophia? When she didn’t come back?”
It poured from my mouth. Every broken, self-destructive action I took. I’d been reduced to uncontrolled panic attacks. Engaged in unsafe sex. Shut out everyone and everything. I’d careened through wild guilt and dark desires for death, wishing something would come along to end the pain.
I omitted nothing, including the part that led me to him.
He nodded like he not only understood, but expected it all. “Your psychological wounds are worse.”
I frowned. “What about you?”
His teeth flashed in the dark, a wry smile appearing. “You know the answer to that.”
Yes, I did. His entire body was riddled with scars. Some days, he came to me with fresh, nasty injuries. None of them bothered him more than whatever darkness haunted his past.
“Both of us are scarred,” I said.
“Seems so.”
“I’m broken and you’re beyond repair.” I motioned between us. “Maybe we deserve each other.”
He stared for a long moment, and the air thickened. Eventually, he spoke, his voice barely audible. “No,” he said. “You deserve better.”
A couple of weeks later, a chain of violent thunderstorms struck. We worried about a tornado when the sky turned green and the clouds dipped low, but I booked it to the house on Evanston during a break in the storm.
The rain returned in the last minute of my ride, soaking me in a downpour. Upon my entry, Lucas took one glimpse at me dripping onto his carpet and sighed.
I scowled. “Don’t even start. Let me have some of your clothes.”
“Now you want my clothes?”
“Obviously,” I snapped.
With a small chuckle, he ushered me into the master bedroom and dug out an outfit. Clothed in his dry cotton, I headed toward the back room, but he didn’t follow.
“Wait, Sophia. Come here.” He sat on the couch and patted the cushion beside him.
My limbs froze as my abdomen filled with lead. What was that tone in his voice? Was that…concern?
I studied his face, attempting to parse what was coming from his expression alone, but it was guarded. Carefully blank. Dread bloomed in my chest as I sat.
He took a breath, and in the strangest move of all our time together, he placed his hand atop mine. “I’m not sure I should tell you this.”
My breath snagged in my throat. “Tell me…what?”
His gaze dropped to his hand over mine, but no words emerged.
“Lucas?”
“I found your friend,” he said, eyes slicing up to mine.
Time stopped.
My ears rang. My head swooped. The world closed inward. For several seconds, his face floated in a sea of hazy black.
“Where is she?” It came out as a hoarse whisper.