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

by Micaiah Johnson

Come join me, Rage says, at this spark that is lit by the distance between what the world is, and what we could make it.

Wrong and right are moods in Ash. Not values.

but I don’t really think in terms of value. I like to watch pretty things move. I like to make broken things fixed. I’m simple.

It’s not even really a story about anyone’s parents dying anymore. For most of Ashtown, it’s a story about a door that never opens.

They’ve forgotten that we’re just the honest version of what licks its lips in wait on the other side of the wall.

Real names are for lovers and children. They have no place between us.

They’ll learn that to love something is to open wide and hope what you love is digestible.

Cara looks at him like he’s just asked her to fuck a cactus.

Stories are powerful, and none are more powerful than the ones you let others tell you about yourself.

“You really can’t help yourself, can you? You’d die if you had to shut the fuck up.”

“I…want access,” he says, and the edge of rage in his voice tells me he’s lived a life where want is merely the step before have.

He’s uninventively cruel. He hunted for sport, but didn’t hold glass over ants or anything. Curiosity and bloodlust are probably best kept separate.

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

That’s all growth is, getting too big to stay somewhere that used to feel good. Just having one less place in the whole world that fits right.

“The blood between you doesn’t speak to him. He’s not one of us, Nik.”

I wish fiercely that we were kids together and this was a clubhouse, before the world taught us its many disappointments.

“What do you want?” she asks, and Adam smiles. He smiles like that is his favorite sentence, like it’s the sentence he’s heard most often in his life, the sound of another person’s desperation the lullaby that sends him to sleep.

Maybe that’s all holiness is: the dirt that raised you in the hands of someone who cares.

“That’s what we’re doing. Teaching them the lessons they need to learn to coexist with us.”

Sometimes, villains are precisely what the future wants.”

I’d wondered then if he had anything to live for, but that wasn’t what he lacked. He was looking for something to die for.

Whatever time you had, it was enough. Whatever you accomplished, it was enough. We will remember your good deeds for the rest of our lives. We will forget your wrongdoings forever. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for spending your time in the dirt with us.”