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These were the birds that once haunted my dreams.
And my dead mother refuses to be silenced.
Emmaline gifted all of us—all the children of the supreme commanders—with memories stolen by our parents. One by one we were awoken to the truths our parents had buried, and one by one we were returned to normal lives. All but me.
The truth is, I didn’t want to believe my own fears. But the truth is: I am a punctured tire. Every injection of air leaves me both fuller and flatter.
Terror bubbles up inside of me, bleeds through my open eyes. It takes me a moment to remember that I am Juliette Ella. Each time, it takes me a moment longer.
“It’s hard to describe. It’s a pleasure so close to pain I sometimes can’t tell the two apart.” “That sounds awful.” “No,” he says. “It’s exquisite.” “I love you.”
J on her knees in the cold dirt, Warner crouched down beside her, both of them looking like death while the clouds literally melt out of the sky above them.
Luck that I’m seeing this, luck that I feel like I might throw up, luck that I ran all this way in my still-ill, injured body just in time to score a front-row seat to the end of the world.
loneliness is a strangesortof thinga sstrangesortofthing an old friend standing beside you in the mirror screaming you’re notenoughneverenough never ever enough
There’s something newly wrong with the clouds. They’re disintegrating.
The knifelike pain needles into me, pressure building in my ears with an intensity that threatens to crush me from the inside. It’s like someone has overfilled my head with helium, like any minute now the balloon that is my brain will explode.
My knees crack as they hit the ground. My body slumps forward. Dirt kisses my face, welcomes me home.
I was digging my own grave. Slithering, terrifying horror moves through my body as I understand: Emmaline was in my head. She wanted to see if she could get me to kill myself. And even as I think it—even as I look down at the miserable attempt I made to bury myself alive—I feel a dull, stabbing sympathy for Emmaline. Because I felt her pain, and it wasn’t cruel. It was desperate. Like she was hoping that if I killed myself while she was in my head, somehow I’d be able to kill her, too.
J looks like she’s going to die.
NOOOOO please not today!
Yesterday, this morning—an hour ago—I was worried about James and Adam. I thought our problems were simple and straightforward: get the kids back, kill the supreme commanders, have a nice lunch. But now—
I blink at her again. I feel dumb. Numb. Like I broke something deep inside my brain. Deep inside my body.
“Juliette,” I say. It’s the only word I’ve got right now, and Nazeera doesn’t even bother to correct me, to tell me her real name is Ella. She just takes my hand and squeezes.
It’s a surprise, always a surprise, when it finally stops screaming long enough to speak. Fingers tremble. Flowers die. The sun flinches, the stars expire. You are in a room, a closet, a vault, no key— Just a single voice that says Kill me
She looks like a little bird, young and small and fragile. Her long hair is fanned around her face and she’s motionless, a little blue doll with her face pointed straight up at the ceiling. She looks like she could be lying in a casket.
He’s nothing but thorns.
It’s stunning, really, how The Reestablishment managed to convince people that the sky collapsing while the sun just disappeared for a full minute were normal things that could happen in the world.
The few of us who could squeeze into this room: me, Castle, Nouria, Sam, Superman (my new nickname for Stephan),
i really needed a laugh after chapters and chapters of sadness and despair
For a couple of months we forgot that Warner was scary. He smiled like four and a half times and we decided to forget that he was basically a psychopath with a long history of ruthless murder.
I lock eyes with Nazeera, wondering if she has an opinion on the situation, but her expression is unreadable.
Nouria is surprisingly terrifying.
“But she can exist, at least partially, in Ella’s body.” Nouria frowns. “Both consciousnesses in one person. How?” “I don’t know.” I shrug again.
i'm with you Kenji. i seriously feel like ANYTHING can happen and it would somehow make sense 😭
My eyebrows fly up my forehead. Castle and I connect glances: we seem to have walked into a private argument.
“God, this is so depressing,” I groan, running both hands through my hair.
my legit reaction to the book so far 😭
I swear, it’s all I do. I just smile, and in a fraction of a second Winston’s locked eyes with me, his death stare screaming, Shut your mouth, Kishimoto, and I don’t even have a chance to be offended before he turns abruptly away, his ears bright red.
“To be fair,” Stephan interjects, “Haider’s always been a bit delicate.”
HA! 😭
Warner is in exactly the same position we left him in, sitting stiffly beside J. Staring at her. Staring at her like he might be able to will her back into consciousness.
I spin around, my panic transforming quickly into anger.
“What happened to you, man?” I whisper. “Where’d you go?” “Hell,” he says. “I’ve finally found hell.”
no, now i'm crying 😭
Memories wrap around me, bind my bones. I sleep. When I sleep, I dream I am sleeping. In those dreams, I dream I am dead. I can’t tell real from fiction, can’t tell dreams from truth,
Four days of nothing. J is still sleeping. The twins are calling it a coma, but I’m calling it sleeping. I’m choosing to believe J is just really, really tired. She just needs to sleep off some stress and she’ll be fine. This is what I keep telling everyone. She’ll be fine.
Kenji, i believe YOU are telling YOURSELF that because you don't want to live without her. stereotypical sign of someone convincing everything's okay, when it isn't. trust me, i know 😞
Brendan puts milk in his tea. Winston adds whiskey. Ian and I drink it black.
3 different people; 3 different reactions
“I mean, a coma is basically just a really long nap. J will be fine. The girls will get her better, and then she’ll be fine, and everything will be fine. And James and Adam will be fine, obviously, because Sam’s seen them and she says they’re fine.”
Kenji, stop saying everything's fine. it's okay to accept that it's not.
“Knock what off?” Ian says, incredulous. “Come on, man, you don’t think this is a little weird? Having tea parties every night?” Winston lowers his voice to a whisper. “I’ll kill you if you ruin this for him.” “All right, enough. I’m not deaf, you know.” Brendan narrows his eyes at Ian. “And I don’t care if you lot think it’s weird. I’ve little left of England, save this.” That shuts us up.
He stares straight at me, his ice-blue eyes and white-blond hair giving me Warner vibes.
“It’s true.” Brendan shrugs. “You’re a handsome guy.” Winston chokes on his tea.
“New mission,” Ian says, sitting back in his chair. He counts off on his fingers: “Save Adam and James. Kill the other supreme commanders. Finally get some sleep.”
“On an unrelated note,” Winston says to me. “How does your head feel?” I frown, gingerly touching my fingers to my skull. “What do you mean?” “I mean,” Winston says, “that this is probably a good time to tell you I’ve been pouring whiskey in your tea all night.” “What the hell?” I sit up too fast. Bad idea. “Why?” “You seemed stressed.” “I’m not stressed.” Everyone stares at me.
“Not drunk. Just a little . . . fuzzy.” The whiskey is starting to settle now, warm, liquid fingers reaching up around my brain and squeezing. She raises an eyebrow. “Winston did it,” I say, and point.
i'm WHEEZING 😭
But most days I am an idea, and nothing more. I am foam and smoke moonlighting as skin. Dandelions gather in my rib cage, moss growing steadily along my spine. Rainwater floods my eyes, pools in my open mouth, dribbles down the hinges holding together my lips.
His lips are at my ear whispering, whispering Come back to life, love I’ll be here when you wake up
I blink at Haider, still recovering from the blast, the lingering whisper of whiskey in my brain, and now this: proof that Haider Ibrahim has a conscience.
Every sound unnerves me. A sudden shudder of branches. An innocent breeze. My own ragged breaths.
My head is spinning with what-ifs and maybes and it could’ve beens even as I face down the reality right in front of me. Even as I stare straight into the black hole devouring my future, I can’t help but wonder if we could’ve done this differently.
Sobs rend the sky. Violent cries echo into the distance. Inarticulate voices, guttural moans, goose bumps rising along my flesh. We are sprinting toward death.
Time seems to expand, fracturing apart as I bear witness to a massacre.
