She closed her mouth.
“Princess.” Riot said the word just above a whisper, just for Cass. “Come here. It’s okay.”
Cass’s body left the edge of the bed before Riot finished, like it wasn’t a decision or thought. He settled into Riot’s lap, his face buried in Riot’s neck and his good hand gripped Riot’s shoulder for dear life as he just breathed and shook.
The rattling behind Riot’s own eyes faded. The pressure drained. Whatever this thing was—this mirroring, this sympathy tremor that his body did when Cass was in distress —began to ease.
Things That Are Wrong With Me. Volume twelve. Now with a supplementary appendix.
Honey hadn’t moved. She stayed sitting on the edge of the bed, three feet away, watching Cass curl into Riot without the smallest hesitation to account for the fact that his best friend wasright there. She held her face still, her eyes shimmering like she was trying very hard not to feel something and felt the edges of it cut anyway.
“Find Sage,” Riot told her as Cass’s lips moved on his skin, repeating something over and over that neither of them could hear. “You’re her welcoming advisor. Bring her to the commissary at first seating.”
“All right. Just breakfast, and we will continue this discussion there.” She stood and smoothed her robes like a deliberate, practiced reset, the composure going back on like armor. Then she stepped toward the bed, pushed Riot’s shoulder sideways with one hand like someone who did not find his size especially noteworthy, and struck the headboard with her fist.
A panel popped open and she pulled several small glass vials from it, all of them with broken wax seals around the top.
Cass lifted his head from Riot’s neck. “You—I looked for those. For months.I could smell something every time I stayed over and I could never find—”
“I know,” Honey said simply. She gathered the vials and tucked them into her robes, close to her chest, and moved back towards the door. “First seating, don’t be late.”
Chapter thirty-nine
First Seating
Cass
Theporridgetastedtheway it had always tasted, which was like nothing pretending to be something. Cass ate it because eating was what everyone did at first seating, and because his body needed it even if his stomach disagreed, and because the act of lifting a spoon to his mouth gave him something to do with his hands that wasn’t reaching for Riot under the table.
He finished his food and reached for Riot under the table anyway.
The commissary was full and quiet in the way it was always full and quiet—murmured conversations at approved volumes, ceramic bowls in three approved colors, the soft lighting that made everything look healthy and happy. He loved this room. He’d sat across from Honey and watched her sort through logic puzzles while eating, her brow furrowed, her locs swinging forward when she bent over her bowl. He felt like he belonged here.
Now the room looked like a bad painting of a room he’d once lived in and it made him sad.
Honey arrived five minutes late, which in Springfield Gardens might as well have been arriving without clothes. She sat across from them with a tray she’d assembled the same for years—porridge, fruit, tea—and immediately began arranging the fruit by size. Grapes first, then berries, then orange and apple segments. She’d done this since they were eight because when the fruit was in order, her thoughts would follow. Cass always loved watching her do it and hoped that it would rub off on him, the way her mind needed the world to be organized before it could work. It never did. His thoughts sort of fell through things until they landed somewhere useful.
“I need more time,” she said to the grapes.
“Honey—”
“I know.” She placed a berry between two grape segments, then adjusted it. “I tried to imagine leaving and I couldn’t see it, Cass. I couldn’t make a picture of it in my head. Every time I tried, it was just—blank. Like trying to imagine a color that doesn’t exist.”
“There’s no picture,” Cass said. “I’m here now, for you, asking you to please come with me before they hurt you. We have a place we can go to. It’s so beautiful, Honey, like things in story books. There aren’t any bells or mandatory meditations…you can look at birds whenever you want—”
“That’s not a good enough reason to leave my entire life behind, Cass, you can’t ask me to do that.”
“This isn’t like an impulsive decision being made while fucked up on synth drugs.” Riot spoke, low and even, pitched for their table and no further. Both Cass and Honey flinched. “The community leader where I am from didn’t approve this mission. The woman with the green hair risked everything she had to come here and help Cass. I’m risking everything. He’s risking everything. Think about it for more than an hour.”
Honey’s arranging hand paused, then she picked up her tea and looked into it. Cass wanted to say more, but Honey was doing the thing where she stared at her tea like it contained answers, which meant she was thinking, and when Honey was thinking, the best thing to do was wait.
So he just held Riot’s hand and waited.
And then Sage walked in, and Cass forgot about the fruit and the tea and Honey’s thinking face.
She was bald.
The green hair—the moss-colored waves that had been part of her the way Riot’s scars were part of him, justthere,just a fact about her body—was gone. Her skull was bare and pale where the hair had been, with a faint shadow of dark roots, and she was wearing cream seeker robes, moving through the commissary with the kind of calm that Cass could tell meant Sage was not calm at all.
