“He said not to,” Cass said simply. “So I didn’t.”
The room was quiet except for the muffled sound of the bathroom pipe still spraying behind the closed door.
“And the spiritual guide thing. When I was sixteen. Elders don’t usually guide regular members. Honey’s guide was Sister Amara.”
“Your case was exceptional—”
“I liked being exceptional. I liked that someone thought I was special enough to come to my room and read me stories...” Cass paused as a thought tried to form. It was a big one, with edges, pressing against the inside of his skull. He let it go. It was too big. The drug smoothed it down and carried it away, and Cass let it go because the shape was something he couldn’t hold right now and keep walking at the same time.
“I just think it’s a lot of volunteering,” he said, dabbing at the blood one more time. “For one person.”
Riot’s arms wrapped around him from behind and gently pulled him back, and Cass went because his legs moved for him. Cass leaned against him, closing his eyes for just a second. He felt kind of like he was floating in a warm bath.
“We need to move,” Sage said. Her voice was thick. “Now.”
The night was beautiful.
Cass kept thinking that as they walked through Springfield Gardens in the moonlight, and the thinking bothered him, because it seemed like the wrong time to think about beauty. But the light from the focusing lanterns was blurry and bright, making the stone paths look like silver rivers running between the white buildings.
It was beautiful. It was a lie. It was a beautiful lie he loved and he was leaving it forever and his skin felt very hot.
Brother Matthias walked between Sage and Honey. Sage had his right arm. Honey had the blade against his lower back, hidden under the drape of her robes. If anyone looked from a distance, it would look like five people walking together, perhaps heading to the infirmary. Normal.
Riot walked behind them with his hand on Cass’s lower back, supporting him. Cass was fine, he knew that, but the ground kept feeling further away than it should be, and the walking required more attention than walking usually required, and he was leaning into Riot’s hand more than he wanted to admit.
“How do you feel?” Riot asked gently.
“Warm. Floaty. Like I’m watching myself walk from a little bit above.” He tried to explain it better because Riot’s face was doing the worried thing. “My body is doing what I tell it to do. But my thoughts are—they keep going soft. Like I’m thinking through cotton.”
“Is it getting worse?”
“Yes.”
Riot’s hand pressed firmer against his back.
They passed the reflection pools Cass had spent hours sitting beside as a child, watching the fish, practicing his breathing. He’d thought the fish were happy. Brother Matthias once helped him pick names for all the fish.
The fish are in a bowl. They just don’t know it’s a bowl because they’ve never seen the ocean.
The thought arrived clearly, fully formed, and then the drug wrapped around it and it went soft.
“I think I used to be a fish,” Cass said.
“I know, princess.” Riot looked at him with a sad smile.
“Not—I mean—the pool. The fish in the pool don’t know they’re in a bowl. Because they’ve never—” The words kept rearranging themselves. “I’m not making sense.”
“You’re making sense,” Riot said. “Keep walking.”
They rounded the corner past the meditation hall. Cass could hear the voices inside, dozens of them, breathing in unison, the guided meditation humming through the walls like a living thing. He’d been one of those voices. For twenty-four years, he’d sat in that room and breathed with those people and believed he was part of something larger than himself.
He blinked too long.
The herb garden smelled like thyme and sage. Real sage, the plant, not the person walking in front of him holding a man’s arm. Cass’s brain wanted to laugh at that—Sage in the sage garden—but the laugh came out as a small huff of air that made Riot look at him again.
“Still here,” Cass said.
“Stay with me.”
