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“I’m exhausted. A little nervous. But I’m ready.” Both of them know it’s more complicated than that, but Margaret supposes they’re becoming adept at this game of meaning more than they say aloud.
As she swirls the scotch in her glass, it strikes her just how surreal this is. She feels as though she’s peering through a window, watching another Margaret live the happy, domestic life she never envisioned for herself. It never occurred to her that she could exist outside her mother’s shadow—or that she’d ever want to.
It’s for the best that they care for one another silently, that they remain in the safe realm of plausible deniability.
It emboldens her, this strange new power she has over him.
it’s not your job to take care of her when she never gave you the same courtesy. This isn’t how love is supposed to be. Can’t you see that?”
“Then you never liked me. You liked the idea of me.” “It sounds awful when you say it like that.” Her eyes brim with tears. Four sisters have inoculated him well against this. The kind of tears that come from wanting to be absolved, not from wanting to make amends.
Wes thought her so small-minded back then, and now he wants to kick himself for being such a fool. Of course she had no big dreams when she couldn’t see much past surviving another week. She can’t hold them like a gun, or eat them, or burn them to keep the house warm.
Soon enough, everything will return to normal. They will resume the comfortable rhythm of their lives, a planet and its orbiting sister moon.
Her mother has always contented herself with ghosts, but Margaret is alive for the first time in years. She isn’t ready to go back to haunting this place, silent and unseen.
still does not raise her voice. She’s never had to resort to that to get her point across. Her anger is like the slow simmer of water. Confronting it is like taking the first, tentative step onto thin pond ice.
There are punishments far worse than being struck. To be forsaken and unloved—that is the worst fate of all.
has never hurt her in a way anyone can see.
I thought it was alchemy. But all along, it was you. You let it consume you. How can you act like a mother to me now when you haven’t in years?”
By all means, continue working yourself to the bone for your family of one.”
I love you. How long has it been since Evelyn told her that? Once, she said it every day in a thousand different ways.
But that’s never been the whole of her—of them—no matter how desperately Margaret wishes it could be. She has built herself a mother out of those precious memories and kept herself alive on them. But she can’t subsist on crumbs anymore.
As soon as she’s within reach, he enfolds her in a hug that squeezes the breath out of her. She could lose herself in this. The heat of his body against hers; the heady, ridiculous scent of his aftershave and the wild, bright salt of the sea; the way he holds her as though she’s something precious. “I never should have left you,” he says against her ear. “I never should have let you go.”
“How are you doing?” She laughs softly. “I don’t know, honestly. I’ve never been so miserable or so happy.”
isn’t sure she’s ever been hugged so much in her life. It’s a strange, giddy feeling, and when at last she’s allowed to sit, a cup of tea is pressed into her hands. She’s beginning to understand that the Winters family can make a home anyplace they land.
“If you’re tired, you don’t have to come, even though Mad says things like you don’t have a choice.”
He talks a big game, but he clams up when he has to follow through. But when he does, he’s not capable of doing anything halfway if he has the option to do it extravagantly. I understand if you don’t think you can tolerate it. I just don’t want to see him hurt. He’s very annoying when he’s upset.”
But right now, surrounded by people who’ve accepted her, it isn’t so difficult to believe that everything really will be alright.
Mad smiles, sweeter than he’s ever seen her smile in her life. It petrifies him.
What would it mean for a Sumic kid from the Fifth Ward and a Yu’adir girl from the countryside to win? It would mean nothing, and it would mean everything. It would—at least for one night, at least in this one nowhere town—force New Albion to reconsider what its heroes look like. To acknowledge its heritage, its identity, is not and was never homogenous.
A driftwood fire flickers near an inlet, its flames sparkling purple as the salt and metals burn off. The reflection of the full moon shimmers on the waves, a bridge of light he swears he could step onto and follow to the horizon.
She fears that this pleasant ache within her will wash away with the encroaching storm—that this impossibly bright happiness will be taken from her before the day is done.
He has shown her both sides of himself: loving and spiteful, ambitious and selfless, untethered and hopelessly devoted. They are both him. They will both always be him. She cannot make the same mistake again; she cannot make a whole of only one half of him. If there is one alchemical law she believes in, it’s that one.
A family. It fills her with a longing so intense, she feels sick with it. For so long, she’s languished as if in a desert, chained just outside the oasis of her mother’s affection. Hearing those words is like the first sweet drink of water in years.
though she’s been threaded through with an electrical wire, jittery and wild with dread. Nothing can be fine when nothing is certain. The only thing certain in her life has been the same core truth. Survival means clinging to what she knows. It means fighting tooth and nail for what she has, not for what she wants. But right now, she doesn’t know what she has any more than she knows what she wants.
No. It can’t end like this. He can’t fail to protect someone—not the one time it truly matters.
There is something dark within him that enjoys this heady rush of power. It’s intoxicating to at last hold all the cards—to cradle a life in his hands. The divinity of God lives within each of them, but only an alchemist can harness that spark.
He wonders if it would be as easy to dissolve a human as it would be to dissolve a stone. If All is One and One is All, what’s the difference, really?
“You’ve promised me everything.” Her hands tremble. “And yet, I still can’t … I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know how I’m supposed to trust that you won’t break your promises. I don’t know how I’m supposed to believe that you won’t leave the moment I close my eyes tonight, or that you won’t create the stone, or that we can be happy. That I can be happy. How can I know?”
A guarantee against something he’s already sworn not to do isn’t worth that. Nothing is worth that, especially when her peace of mind can never truly be guaranteed. She’s lived her whole life braced for another blow, but no amount of preparation or precaution has stopped them from landing. All her life, love has been a scarce and precious resource, something earned or denied, something she starved for every day. But with Wes, love is different. It is reckless and inexhaustible. It is freely given. It simply is. Time and time again, he’s stayed beside her through her doubt. He’s shown her that
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Margaret at last sees her for what she is: a frail woman clinging to her last scrap of power.
Or did you always love the memory of him more than you loved the reality of me?” There it is. The small, horrible fear she has kept locked away for so long. “I’ve always been right here. Growing up with you—it felt like starving. For everything. Your affection, your protection, your interest. I thought if I never needed anything, if I never bothered you, if I took care of us until you finished your work, you’d love me. But it didn’t work. You never saw me. You never cared.”
“That was brave of you.” “It didn’t feel like it. It felt cruel and unfair.”
All I know for sure is that if God or the truth or whatever you want to call it is out there and we can reach it, we’re not going to find it in that box. We’ll find it in other people.”
