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New voices. One makes my chest hurt. Reach for it. Don’t let it go. Reach for it don’t let it go
Why did humans have to try and ruin and torture and hurt everything that they didn’t fully understand?
For some reason, the thought of this strange, damaged creature thinking I didn’t care made my chest hurt. I wanted to tell them I did care. I wanted to tell them that I hoped we could help them. I wanted them to feel better. I wanted their wings fixed.
Living in the Wastes, it was easy to disconnect from the rest of humanity and become truly savage.
But fear drove humans to do things they normally wouldn’t. Self-preservation made us harsh and unfeeling.
read one of the others while I waited for you.” While he’d waited for me. Like he’d actually felt the lack of my presence.
When she smiled, I couldn’t work out if it was meant to be friendly. If it was, she failed.
“So,” Rig began in a cheery, conversational tone as we headed to the diner, “is there a reason you were just pretending like you and Aury hadn’t spent all of last night fucking each other’s brains out?”
“I’m happy for you. You two are so cute it makes my teeth hurt. And I would be a terrible friend if I didn’t encourage you to keep doing whatever it was you two were doing last night, because by the sounds of it, it was exquisite. Please, keep having as much freaky monster sex as you can. I’m living vicariously through you.”
“Zoos were awful, and this is too,” I blurted before I could stop myself. “They’re living, thinking beings. Not commodities. They’re not here for our amusement.”
I was addicted to him. I hadn’t before realised how starved my body had been for intimate touch. For sex. But it was more than that, too. I felt like I’d woken up after a long sleep. Like I had something driving me each day, rather than going through the motions. He made mundane things feel new and joyful again, like reading or gardening or tending to the hens.
“I know, and I love you, but… you worry about everything, Ghost,” he added, voice hesitant. “Sometimes that much worry is crippling.
With Aury, everything was different.
“Stop sending me out there to look for him, then.” My eyes were watering with frustration, and I hated it. “Stop making me go on all these pointless journeys, because every time you do, you’re telling me that my life is worth less than Cat’s. Less than the miniscule chance of me finding him.”
I couldn’t hear this. I couldn’t handle it. Because a large part of me still wanted to turn to Aury and pull him into my arms and tell him everything would be okay. Tell him I still… cared for him. And if I could still feel that way about someone I’d just witnessed massacre dozens of people with palpable bloodlust—with glee… what did that make me?
didn’t care what he could become. I didn’t see that monstrous face when I looked at Aury. This was my sweet, gentle, kind monster. He was still my Aury.
“I’ve left something for you on the nightstand, but it’s not a big deal and when I come back, I don’t want you to mention it.” I frowned, looking up from my book. “What—” But he had already slipped out of the room. I looked over at the nightstand and froze when I saw the little wooden figurine on it. With big wings. One damaged.
I felt a momentary flash of anger at him. He’d just come into my life, into the camp, and made me fall in love with him, then fucked off even though I’d been literally begging him not to. It wasn’t fair. Now everything looked shit and bleak and boring without him, and my best friend wasn’t even here to make it better, and it felt like my heart was slowly dying in my chest.
It was a book about living conditions of the working class in Victorian London. Nothing distracted you from heartache quite like detailed descriptions of what it was like to die from typhoid in nineteenth century poverty.
“I knew he wouldn’t have gone far, because he would want to watch over you. So I just walked around until I got the sudden urge to flee in terror, which meant he was nearby.”
The thought of coming across Mary didn’t scare me. I would never let her hurt Gage—or Rig—and I wouldn’t let her take me, because that would hurt Gage just as much.
Humans could die so easily, but the rycke chose its death. Our bodies didn’t fail. The life seed didn’t die. When we were done with living, we simply allowed the earth to take us back, to use our body for new life. When Gage’s human life came to an end, I would follow him. I knew it deep in the core of me already—there was no question. He was my mate.
