Those Beyond the Wall (The Space Between Worlds #2)

by Micaiah Johnson

Exlee has a whole wardrobe like this, things more romantic than explicit.

Like anyone who still clings to the gender binary is automatically unworthy of being considered a threat.

if it came down to it, I don’t know if Cheeks would protect his new heart or his old one.

I keep my eyes trained over his head like the only thing less significant than what he just said is whatever he’s planned to say next.

A beautiful woman doing what needs to be done. A devoted man paying the price. Maybe it’s for the best I’ve always been ugly. I do quite enough damage without something that powerful in my arsenal.

She must be too pretty to get anything but disappointment.

He wanted to hurt me, out of anger, and so he did. It could make me cry if I let it. He had to know how fucked that was, but he didn’t even hesitate.

She wouldn’t be the first who got recruited off a murder. Makes more sense to teach them how to control their rage, or hurt, in our ranks. They get to rebuild their lives and figure out what went wrong, and the mandatory partnership for runners is better surveillance than some fucking uniform throwing food at them three times a day.

When you discover a corpse you’re responsible for it. Bad luck to forget the name, and I need all the good grace I can get.

he’s lived a life where want is merely the step before have.

Curiosity and bloodlust are probably best kept separate.

Man’s heart is a diseased potato but there’s nothing wrong with his mind.

If we had half a brain between us, we’d stay put. But I’m the one taking point and I’ve got orders, so I don’t have the luxury of having a brain, not even half.

Truth be told, I’d rather be yakking.

I’m a survivor, not a theorist, so I leave the questions and go straight to practice.

this is a worried friend offering to make it better. Nothing more, but certainly nothing less. It was beautiful. I can see that now that I’m not distracted by what it wasn’t.

I’m not the one who needs to crush anything different from me; that’s Wiley logic. I just…they were so beautiful. They were so beautiful it made me feel ugly. I couldn’t be them, so I tore them apart. It wasn’t supremacy. It was jealousy.

I guess I’ve just always wanted to be a sister. Nik Nik is my brother. Adam has just proven he isn’t.

How many people would use no one else is doing it as an excuse not to act, rather than as motivation.

he can’t tell the difference between power and cruelty anymore.

“Don’t you just hate it? When you think you’re reading a story about science, and it turns out it’s been a story about magic all along?”

like it’s a diagnosis and not just good sense.

I know there’s a problem before I see the corpse.

decade. I know it’s Brand because once he realized what was happening, he dragged himself away so his brother wouldn’t witness it.

Only an older brother would slit his own throat to keep his little brother from hearing his death scream.

I may have two rulers sitting near me, but all I can think about is the missing third.

Everyone here already knows what’s wrong. I’m the one about to find out.

Exlee is in love with my brother. It’s so pure and open it can only shame me, make me question if I’ve ever loved anyone in my whole rotten life.

He believes in nothing more than hiding your heart, so much so I’m sure I’m the only one even aware that my brother has one.

And every story will be true, because they will be heard.

I put a hand over the bruise he left on my arm, press it gently to let the pain remind me not to comfort him.

I think my mother knew. She could tell that I wasn’t a spirit broken into obedience, I was a spring held tight and losing, a monster being born but holding its breath.

Nik Nik took two blows without a sound, but I made sure he never had to take a third.

his new sister a spider monkey on the old man’s back, pulling pulling pulling the glass-ladened whip around his neck so hard it would take a coroner to tell if it was strangulation or blood loss that got him.

I don’t dream about Senior’s murder anymore, but back when I did I was never killing him. It’s always myself I sneak up on, my own throat I slip the toothed material around. And the person on their knees? The one I’m protecting? In my dreams, that’s me too.

Most of the people Senior put down were his friends, his family, and when you kill someone that close the weapon carries the curse.

If you were at all afraid of death it’d make you run. Which is the goal, to make sure the people who make it to death’s door really want to be there.

I didn’t hate him because he called me a sinner. I didn’t hate him because he told me I was filthy and in need of redemption. I hated him because everything he said was true.

She said your dad killed himself…” …and there’s only one way a Ruralite can do it in their religion, only one way that doesn’t dirty their hands or make extra work for those around them. Cross is staring at the floor, and he goes on staring. “He never knew it was me. I heard his confession, but I never let it slip.”

“Exlee says jealousy is a poison you make for others but drink yourself.”

If someone wants to use it to destroy themselves, better to figure out why they want to disappear than just make sure they never hold a blade again.”

Like anything else that doesn’t deliberately hurt others, it’s morally neutral here.

You can’t solve any craving for excess by stopping the act. You’ve got to solve what made them need, which is a separate thing entirely. Need can make any act harmful. Even love.

insecurity is a young girl’s game and somewhere along the way I got to building exactly the kind of life I want, and those old concerns slipped away.

faking excitement to prove how scared they’re not.

There are types of Wileyites, and I call this one artsy parental disappointment. His blond hair is long, his clothes are trying for rugged with their expertly placed tears and purely cosmetic patches, but they’re too expensive—the synthetic materials shining rich and complex beneath the sun despite everything being black. Not to mention the tech he’s using could feed a family out here for months.

in the war between boot and facecam, boot wins.

I’d love to know how long he’ll look before realizing we don’t have a courthouse,

Bored Wileyites hoping to turn our tragedy into a section of their portfolio have been shadowing us all morning. We got instructions not to kill anyone, but we’re still allowed to keep up our reputation.

either they were doing it for show, or Wiley doesn’t know anything about care for outsiders despite all that it’s learned about lust for us.