Chapter Twenty-Two. the Name of the Father #3
En Yi had already been admitted into inpatient care.
Mr. Chew, seemingly eager to have Adeline out of his house, put her in the Rolls-Royce with Master Gan and a stoic driver roused from the staff quarters.
Now the car slid soundlessly along the shifting roads toward Alexandra Hospital.
Adeline had almost forgotten what it was like to move through the city so silently; how quiet the night here could be when it was cushioned beyond the glass.
It was long past visiting hours at the former military hospital, but Mr. Chew had strings to pull here, too. Adeline and Master Gan were let up to see En Yi without even providing identification.
She’d never been to a hospital that she remembered.
The air was cloyingly sterile. It was almost enough to cover the terror that stirred in her chest as they walked past the wards.
She had learned to recognize when the sensation wasn’t her own, and was instead the latent afterimage of some anguish that the fire liked to draw out as kindling.
This particular one had an obvious provenance: massacre.
The flame in the back of her mind flickered with wisps of screams and bullets and bayonets.
All over, now, though. The people lying in these beds were to be saved.
En Yi’s parents had left her to be monitored overnight.
The girl was a motionless lump on the bed, but there was also an armchair and a painting on the wall; the single ward was laid out to be comfortable.
Adeline had more recently seen the death beds of Sago Lane laid out shoulder to shoulder, so this suddenly seemed extravagant.
The night felt blurry. She’d nearly fallen asleep in the car and even now had to spark her fingers to ground herself.
Otherwise she was barely sure how she had gotten here.
En Yi shivered and clawed at the blanket with surprising strength when Adeline tried to draw it back. “I’m trying to help you,” Adeline snapped.
“Ruth,” En Yi murmured.
“It’s Adeline.”
“I’ve been baptized. I’m Ruth now.”
“Okay, Ruth. Let go of the damn blanket.”
Finally, En Yi—Ruth—let Adeline push aside the blanket and lay hands on her.
Though Adeline was sapped, the motions had gotten progressively easier, her ability to flow with the surging and dampening sharpening.
She watched her own breathing as she brought Ruth down, staring out the window into the city to try to drown out the white starbursts.
She was going to faint if she did one more.
She might faint now. She was scoured and white-hot, as though all her own fire had been emptied from her in revenge, and Ruth’s fever just kept rebuilding.
Cold sweats broke out on Adeline’s brow.
Ruth was not fucking worth this, she thought, none of them was fucking worth doing this to herself, but she was doing it anyway, and now she was filled with spite to get it done.
Who she was spiting wasn’t clear. The goddess, maybe.
Oh, Tian, definitely, whom the Needle had wanted in the first place.
Who had her power frankly only because Adeline had given it to her, and so, well, fuck her, and Adeline would be heading back victorious and accomplished and with key information on top of all that.
Pushing wasn’t working. A flip of a switch in her mind, a little desperate: Adeline stopped trying to push, and pulled the fire toward herself.
Her thumb moved almost instinctively along Ruth’s arm, searching out and then latching onto the point where the meridian opened more readily.
Ruth lurched as the heat raced through her.
This—this was easier. It was easier to give fire another path to run than it was to extinguish it.
Adeline let it run into her almost greedily, taking back from it.
And then, just when she’d about siphoned all the fever off, she went cold.
It was such an abrupt change of state that she staggered, flexing her fingers, which had gone suddenly numb.
They still moved, though, as did all her limbs.
She still felt swelled with pent-up energy.
But something had gone wrong; something within her had shut off.
Her fire, usually within reach of a thought, was now …
absent. A cool emptiness swam inside her.
Adeline fought to control her own panic.
Had she gone over an edge with this new ability?
Demanded too much, exhausted all her reserves?
Master Gan opened the door. “It’s done,” he said, with a glance at Ruth. “Time for you to go.”
He was a healer. For a moment Adeline considered demanding that he examine her, tell her what was wrong.
But something told her that this wasn’t something he could fix, and that this weakness wasn’t something he should learn.
Rearranging her composure, she nodded and followed him back to the waiting car.
The driver dropped her off on a vaguely specified corner near the Butterfly house.
She walked the rest of the way fighting emptiness and fear—she wanted Tian.
She didn’t care anymore that they’d been fighting.
She needed Tian to have answers—she needed Madam Butterfly to have answers.
It was late even for the Butterflies. Yet the lights on the ground floor were still on, and when Adeline pushed through the tailor shop curtain, wary, she registered Geok Ning at the dining table.
“Adeline!” Ning cried, springing up. “Have you seen Tian?”
“No,” Adeline said, her dread racketing up several notches as she registered Ning’s panic. “I was going to look for her. Why?”
“You haven’t noticed? Your fire?”
“You too?”
“All of us. Everyone’s out looking for her. I’ve called everywhere.” Ning’s breath was quickening; she looked like she was going to cry. “I didn’t mean it when I said she was going to die.”