Elysium

by Nora Sakavic

Did Notte teach you nothing?" "I guess he was too busy stabbing me in the back." "He will answer for it," Rose says, and it sounds so much like a promise my heart aches.

"Okay," I say when Rose pauses, though none of that sounds okay whatsoever.

"Because he—" My strident loved me dies in my throat. It is a lie I stopped believing the first morning I woke up alone in Elysium, glued to the floor by my own blood and shredded organs. The wounds the gatekeepers carved in me had already been healed to hideous scars by Elysium's magic, but the ache remained—the lingering agony of a rough childbirth barely smothered by the stabbing pains of a recent evisceration. If Adam had ever loved me, he certainly hadn't loved me at the end.

"I am Brimstone," Rose says. Betty called him savior; Rose declared himself strongest. The reaction in the bartender is immediate and confirms both stories. He looked at ease for most of our conversation, but Rose's name takes so much tension out of him he looks fit to crumple. It's the bone-deep weariness of the losing side of a war, of a rebellion forced underground by powers outside of their control. He looks at Rose now like Rose is the moon and stars in his sky, a constellation upon which he will hang every fierce wish and whispered prayer.

I shouldn't have used Adam's name in public, but sincerity and will are the keystones of magic and no matter what Adam did to me I can't think of myself as Evelyn Downey. For better or worse everything I am is grounded in his love and betrayal.

"Just want to make sure we're all on the same page." "We are not even in the same book yet.

I'm just a homeless bartender who can talk to ghosts and win a staring contest with Society's beasts.

"Road trip?" the clerk asks when I return to him. "Highway to hell," I say. "On a schedule."

"I know why I hate him. Why do you?" "It doesn't matter." "It does to me." "It doesn't matter," Rose says again. His tone warns me not to push it. I'm tempted to do so anyway, because backing down from arguments isn't one of my strong suits, but after a nagging internal debate I decide to let it slide.

"You all right there?" Not in sixteen years, but I settle for a tart, "Peachy."

"I lost everything that ever mattered to me and have only just gotten back my life," I say quietly. "Going with Rose means letting him pair me up with a Nightmare, and that's an arrangement I'll never be free of. I don't have it in me to be chained to anyone or anything else ever again." "Even you've got to admit that you're being selfish." "He's the gods' favorite, not me. The war doesn't hinge on me being the self-sacrificing one.

"Where is your sense of obligation?" "In the trash where it belongs."

I have daydreamed of beating the life from Adam a hundred thousand times since he left me to die, but right now that need burns with more desperation than anger. I want him dead. I need him dead. I need to know that he can never hurt anyone else again the way he hurt us.

we are born into this misery, and so we are always aware of our purpose. We are weapons, crafted for one singular reason: to cut out the infection that is killing our Mother. A blade can be nothing but a blade. Only the hand that picks it up knows that there was ever anything else worth holding."

"I am not here to take Sol away from you," I say with quiet and slow emphasis. "I'm just here to beat Notte to death with the biggest sledgehammer I can find."

Pharaoh taps a nervous beat against Sol's lower lip. "We have only half a chance as it is. What happens when we fail, Sol? He will never forgive us." "Then we will not fail," Sol says. "Stand with me." "Always," Pharaoh says, and despite his grim warning there is no hesitation or fear in that promise.

Got any good news for me while you're at it?" "I'm dead and you're in the wastes. What do you think?"

Their words are ice chips on glass: I hear them, but I refuse to let them sink in. I can't listen to them right now. I can't let Pharaoh's rage and Sol's endless, frantic lectures and this horrible truth become my reality, or I will go mad before I ever set eyes on Notte again. I listen to my heartbeat, to the sound of my strained breaths in and out of my too-tight lungs, and tune everything else out with sheer force of will. I lift my chin in defiance and stare down Sol, daring him to argue with me again.

The desolate look on Pharaoh's face is achingly familiar. It is the haunted look of someone on the verge of losing everything, who knows there was probably something they could have done to stop things from spiraling out of control but who also understands they're long past the point to save things now.

Losing it will do me no good, so I hum Sunday Morning to keep my thoughts from spiraling out of control. It feels appropriate, somehow, to sing our wedding song here at my would-be funeral.