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Into the nothing where she couldn’t move…couldn’t scream…and no one ever came…
“What if it’s not that simple, though?” she said. “Everyone who wins says they were good, but they’re the ones who tell the story. They get to choose how we’ll remember it. What if it’s never that simple?”
On her own, it was nice, feeling like a functioning person again. Helena had forgotten how easy it was to exist when her mind and body couldn’t betray her.
but now Ferron’s discomfort was something she tried not to think about.
It was like the ocean that went on and on, and all its promises were death.
“Ferron always comes for me,” she whispered.
“What did he do to you?”
“I’m not going to hurt you,”
She knew he wouldn’t. He only hurt her on certain days, and this wasn’t one of them,
And for Helena’s fracturing mind, an absence of cruelty was sufficient solace. For her starved heart, it was enough.
but she could feel herself eroding, desperate to have something in her life that was not pain. That was not dead and gone.
“No one is going to steal your book,” he said as if he was trying very hard to be patient. He gestured around. “Who even would? If they do, I will buy you a new one. Leave it.”
Her face, he’d once said, was disastrously honest.
The feelings she evoked would have to seem natural. Subtle as poison until he was too far gone for a cure.
“Yes,” she said, without emotion. “I’m yours.”
Kaine Ferron, I’m yours as long as I live.”
“You are full of surprises,” he added after a moment, voice lower than before.
“Do you say that to every girl?”
some space from it all.”
“You exist, Marino. I think that’s reason enough.”
Shiseo was on standby as she worked,
weeks. I don’t expect to make it.”
Crowther and Ilva somehow knew exactly who possessed the latent resonance for it, even when the girls themselves did not.
“I’m so sorry, Kaine.”
She’d made too many wrong assumptions while seeing him as Ferron.
“Don’t die, Marino. I might miss you.”
“You’re like a rose in a graveyard,” he said, and his lips twisted into a bitter smile. “I wonder what you could have turned into without the
Calculating, Cunning, Devoted, Determined, Ruthless, Unfailing, Unhesitating, and Unyielding.
Helena just wanted to sleep for a few years.
“Don’t die, Kaine,”
“There are far worse fates than dying, Marino.”
“All right, then, but only because you asked.”
“Yes. Funny how often people in power hate politics, as if what they really want is to do as they please and be praised for it, and if they aren’t, then it’s all beneath them.
“I must say, Marino, you’ve ended up being quite expensive.”
“All right…” he said, “but only because you asked.”
She wanted to curl up so tight alongside him that she vanished.
She’d never felt so cold as she did then,
“I can’t—I can’t do this again—” he finally gasped out. “I can’t care for someone again. I can’t take it.”
“I promised I was yours. You made me swear it. I didn’t make plans.”
