The Warm Hands of Ghosts

by Katherine Arden

“And afterward, Wilfred, you will tell me at last about the darkness, and how you came to love that man.”

Laura had fought her monster, and Pim had found herself one. It was so much easier to hate a man than a system: vast, inhuman, bloodstained.

Laura was silent. Because she’d seen Pim at last, through the gauze of her bright, sweet nature. And what moved under the skin was wounded, and ruthless, and certainly a little mad.

He’d given up oblivion to try to come back to her. She’d saved him from that. But she could not save him from this. Perhaps they’d never find their way back to each other. But they had a chance to try. Because he was alive. She owed Winter that.

“Can you ask? Iven, we were dead together, we were born together. I cannot live without you.”

Winter moved forward, sharply, and kissed him, his body warm, his grip almost bruising. It was shocking. It was inevitable. It was home. It was the first time Freddie had felt alive in his own skin since the night he went up Passchendaele Ridge.

Winter drew away, but only to a finger’s breadth, close enough for Freddie to see his pupils blown wide, his face afraid. Neither of them, Freddie thought, was who he’d been. But if they’d never changed, they wouldn’t be here, together, in the dark.