Arlo
I know something’s wrong, I feel it in my bones as I tear through the streets of Elaris Isle, the engine roaring beneath me.
I was sure she’d run, but I never thought she’d leave the academy grounds.
I went to the stables first, thinking she’d be with Bellamy like she always is when her world starts closing in. But she wasn’t there, and I lost precious minutes searching.
I ran for the car. The driver told me she’d taken one of the school vehicles, for a second I wanted to wring his neck for letting her go in that state, but there was no time to tarry.
He’ll pay for it, eventually.
Now I’m heading for the port. That has to be where she’s gone.
My chest tightens into a knot of shame. After everything I have done, after every scar I’ve carved into her life.
I let my ghosts and jealousies swallow me, I let a poisonous certainty take root and convince me she had betrayed me.
She hadn’t.
She was the one who needed protecting. I was a fool for not seeing it.
Rocco was dangerous from the start. He first tried to kill me when we were two, our nanny stopped him and the doctors got involved soon after.
Father wanted it buried, to keep the Vass name intact. Between money and influence, the fact of twins was quietly erased, for the rest of the world, there was only Arlo Vass.
His illness never made him harmless. He had episodes, treatment helped sometimes, failed at others.
I remember, when I was five, finding a stray cat and bringing it into my room. The next day it lay slaughtered on the floor.
Part of me wanted to blame Rocco outright, a smaller, foolish impulse sought to chalk it up to illness rather than malice, because he was my brother, my twin, and I found myself hunting for consolations that simply did not exist.
Years passed and things did not improve.
Our relationship had frayed into something ugly.
And yet, against every better instinct, some old reflex, blood before all else, pushed me to protect him.
It was a stupid, automatic loyalty, trained into me by years of denial and habit, in that instant it made Ophelia the guilty party by default, when in truth she was everything I had ever breathed for.
How could I have put my brother above her? There is no honourable answer. It happened because it was the script I knew, twin, blood, obligation, automatic and unquestioned.
I failed to think.
I did not see the Ferrum mask, I did not account for medicine missed or madness unrestrained. I did not see how dangerous he could be with her until it was far too late.
He hurt her.
If I’d been there, if I’d kept my temper, I might have stopped it.
She should never have been put in the position of being hurt or forced to kill to save herself.
I would have done it for her.
Yes, I would’ve killed my own brother for touching her after she said no.
But that night, when I found him lying on the ground, not breathing, everything flipped in an instant.
I saw them together and the worst conclusion formed in me. I threw myself into hating her with everything I had.
And the cruellest part of it?
My fury was less about his death than about the betrayal I imagined, the idea that she’d chosen him over me cut deeper than the corpse at my feet.
I rang father. He asked no questions, perhaps he already understood. Perhaps, in the private parts of himself, he considered it inevitable.
My hands clamp the wheel until the leather protests. The speedometer needle is well past the limit and rain lashes the windscreen.
Rounding the bend, flashes of blue and red bloom up ahead, sirens keening, tearing through the night.
I curse under my breath, another delay. I have to reach her before she takes the ferry.
But as I draw closer I spot a car with St. Monarché plates.
No.
My chest tightens until it feels as if something inside me tears.
I stamp the brake, the tyres shriek and the car fishtails, listing sideways. I’m out before the engine dies, the door slamming behind me as my boots hit the slick road.
I’m running.
Someone shouts to stay back, I ignore them and keep going.
“Sir, you can’t—” an officer steps forward.
“Move,” I say, clipped.
“Sir, it’s an accident scene, you can’t—”
I cut him off. “Have you ever heard the name Vass?”
He swallows and nods, his eyes widening.
“Good. Now move. One more second and I’ll make sure you never badge up again.”
He hesitates, then moves aside. “Mr Vass, I—”
By then I’m already past him.
The scene is chaos, flashing lights, the smell of smoke and scorched rubber.
One car lies on its side on the roadside verge, the other sits in the road, its nose caved in and its driver still slumped at the wheel.
From the gouges and skid marks it’s obvious what happened, some idiot tried a reckless overtake, clipped her line and forced her to swerve.
He will pay for this.
He. Will. Fucking. Pay.
I look back at the car that contains my whole world in it.
Two paramedics kneel at its side, one crouched by the door, the other half inside the upended vehicle.
As I push forward I see her, hair caught in splintered glass, blood running from her temple and her lip.
My legs nearly give way.
I stay rooted as a handful of firefighters haul her from the wreck. I watch, helpless, while they ease her onto a stretcher and the paramedics swarm.
She lies there, impossibly small, rain and blood matting her hair.
I take another step forward. I have to touch her.
“Sir, you can’t—” a fireman begins, stepping into my path.
“Let me through,” I growl.
“Sir, please, we’re working—”
“Let me through!” I surge, but another closes on my arm.
“Back,” he says. “We’re trying to stabilise her.”
“Stabilise?” My voice buckles. “She’s alive. She has to be.”
“Barely. Head trauma, possible internal bleeding,” one paramedic snaps, the words blur into a distant roar in my ears.
My head rings, heat floods my chest. I stand by uselessly as they fight for her life. The rain falls harder, hissing into the blood in her hair.
I force my way to her side and drop to my knees. Someone moves to stop me again. “Touch me and you’ll lose a hand,” I snarl.
They don’t. They let me kneel beside her.
My fingers find her hair, sticky and cold. “Ophelia,” I whisper, in a raw voice. “You are not dying. Do you hear me?”
Her eyes are closed, entirely still, not a single flicker.
A paramedic slaps a lead to the monitor. His face drains. “We’re losing her—”
“No.” The word rips out of me. “You are not fucking losing her.”
“Get the airlift ready. Now!” another voice snaps.
“Do it!” I roar. “Call it this instant!”
“It’s en route, two minutes,” someone answers.
They go to work, pads to her chest, compressions, adrenaline pushed into the IV line.
The rain drums on the stretcher, their voices are clipped. “Low blood sugar,” a medic mutters as he slides a syringe in. Her body convulses once, a tiny, useless spasm, and then the monitor keens, a long, terrible tone, and falls to a flat line.
“No.” I grip the edge of the stretcher until my knuckles ache. “Ophelia. Don’t you dare.”
They keep at it, compressions, breaths, shocks, while the lead medic’s voice, reports. “She’s not responding to CPR. No pulse.”
“Keep going,” I bark, my voice breaking. “All of you, don’t stop. Bring her back.”
One medic meets my stare, exhausted and apologetic. “Sir, we’ve been compressing—”
“Push harder,” I snap. “Push and don’t tell me she’s gone.”
When the pause stretches too long, something in me cracks.
My heart is lodged in my throat, before thought can stop me, I drive a single, desperate thump into the centre of her chest.
The noise that follows is obscene, a hollow, sick crack. For a second the world holds its breath.
Then the monitor stutters.
A blip.
Another.
A beat.
The paramedic stares at the screen, then at me. “A precordial thump,” she whispers, stunned. “I haven’t seen that work in years.”
I pay her no heed. I press my forehead to Ophelia’s, my breath hot against her skin.
“Ophelia, don’t you leave me. We’re taking you to the hospital now.
Don’t you dare die, if you do, I will follow you.
Tell me, are you intending to die? Say it plainly, because if that is what you want I must go first, there is no way I could bear the knowledge that you have stopped breathing.
If that is your wish, say so, and I will end it. ”
She lies completely still, only the monitor’s constant beeping proves she’s still here.
The helicopter’s rotors pierce the night, I look up, press my lips to her brow and whisper, “Fight, ma lune.”