Our Infinite Fates

by Laura Steven

It was as though that tearful, manacled night in his bed had never happened, as though I had never wiped the salt slicks from his cheeks, as though he had never said those words that unravelled me every single time: I love you.

I tried to break through the freshly constructed fortress, tried to coax that drawbridge low, but whatever had caused that raw outpouring was once again lost.

I did understand. Because, in his eyes, with the day of the bone marrow harvest also came the day I was going to die. The day he was going to kill me. And so, really, how could he be soft, how could he let himself love, when he was about to execute me?

And yet I thought of the poisoned hip flask in starlit Russia. His words: I knew my willpower would falter at the last minute.

I didn’t know which would be worse—having to say goodbye to my sister or not being able to say it at all.