Page 53 of The Wicker King

She hmmed, but didn’t even blink.

“Would you do something bad if you knew it would have more good in it, in the end, than bad?”

“What’s good is good and what’s bad is bad,” she murmured, fiddling with the corner of her quilt.

August gritted his teeth in frustration, but he continued in a soft voice. “I have to do something important. And dangerous—”

“Is it for Jack?” she interrupted.

“Oh. Um. Yeah,” August said, surprised.

“You think I don’t notice things. But I do.”

SEMPER FIDELIS

“Are you scared?”

“No.”

“Yes, you are. But you’re very brave, too…” Jack fidgeted anxiously as he sat on the edge of the tub. “I understand now why they chose you over me. Why the council wanted you as their champion, and why I was unfit.”

August turned on the tap.

“They have stories about you, songs. They call you the Raven, the Golden Bird, the King’s Lionheart. Women smile at you as we walk in the streets; men talk about you over their fires. It’s written all over the walls. They love you and you can’t even see them … my Lionheart. Can you imagine?”

Jack steadfastly kept his eyes on the tile as August pulled off his shirt and jeans, dropping them in a heap in the corner. He stepped gingerly into the tub and lay down in the water, his boxers soaking through.

“I hope this works,” Jack sighed.

August sat up suddenly and gripped Jack’s forearm. “I am doing this for you. Not the Wicker King. Not what we have become. But for you. If anything goes wrong, I want you to remember that.”

Jack nodded. August slipped beneath the water—and breathed.

CLEAR

He came to. Hacking water onto the tile. His nose was bleeding. The room tilted and whirled. Distantly, he could feel Jack brushing his hair back from his forehead, frantically trying to help.

August pinched his nose until the flow stopped, then collapsed to the floor in exhaustion. Jack pulled him up and cradled him in his arms.

“Did you see anything?” he asked, sounding both terrified and hopeful.

August swallowed. His chest burned and spasmed. It took him a minute to answer, though he valiantly kept trying to get the words out. “No,” he choked. “I’m sorry.”

Jack curled around him, pressing their foreheads together in sorrow. They breathed the same air. So close but not touching. Never touching. Through the haze, August wondered if Jack could taste the remnants of stardust he’d brought back with him from the edge of death.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “Everything is going to be okay.”

TARTARUS

They went to school the next day as if nothing had happened. August had a test in math. Jack slept though British Literature.

Alex and the twins said nothing about the bruises under August’s eyes.

Or the way his hands shook when he picked up his water.

Or how his food sat on his tray, untouched, for the third time that week.

August burned a paperback book out in the parking lot again because his hands had begun shaking uncontrollably from stress, and he couldn’t find anything else on such short notice. He was more careful this time, though, and managed not to get caught. Afterward he doused the fire with Coke, put his backpack on, took a breath, and went back inside.