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Ash.

Blood.

I scrub my skin until the water runs clear, and by then, I need to puke again. Properly this time. I cough up my soul until my ribs ache, tears stream down my face, and the stitched wound in my side is a whole new wildfire.

Damn.

I brush my teeth and sit on the floor, trying to breathe myself steady.

Oscar appears at my feet and rubs my shoulders, drying me off at the same time.

Eventually, I look at him.

His smile is soft. “Bed, Po. I will come with you.”

No part of me can argue with that.

No part of me wants to.

I let Oscar help me to my feet and guide me to my bedroom.

His hands are warm, his body too. Like I did outside, I lean into him without thinking, and it dawns on me he’s the only soul I can remember doing this with in a hell of a long time.

Only soul who isn’t my dad, anyway.

He’ll be worried.

Iggy. Not Oscar. I don’t know how he’s feeling—I haven’t asked. And I should. I will. But I can’t find my voice. Maybe I left it downstairs⁠—

A flash ignites at the window. At the hole in the wall. The sky is a stranger colour than when I last saw it, as if the clouds are strangling the sun, and the horizon glows white instead of orange.

The floorboards tremble beneath my bare feet. Lightning. A second flash forks the sky, silent veins in the dark sky.

Silent to me.

The floor shakes again and Oscar flinches. I look to him as the first drops of plundering rain fall, knowing when I look at the world beyond the hole in the wall again, the smoke will be gone, the earth washed clean. I don’t need to see it happen. I need Oscar, and he needs me.

I close my eyes.

Open them again and for the first time since the barn came down, I breathe without tasting fire.

I find Oscar’s hands and lace our fingers together. I don’t speak. Neither does he, but a thousand words pass between us all the same. Or maybe, as we turn and watch the rain come together, maybe it’s just three.

I love you.

24 OSCAR

The storm is long. Poet wants to protect me from it, but he doesn’t feel good, and he can’t stay awake. And I do not want him to. Aside from Sol and my own reflection all those months ago, I have never seen someone more tired.

Except maybe Jack.

But I am not thinking about him. Or Sol. Or even Aras until Hanna calls to tell me she is taking him to her parents’ home in Norfolk—to where he was the night Poet and I spent together in a barn that, to my knowledge, still stands. Unlike the battered shell outside, but I don’t think about that either. Once Hanna is gone and I’m sure the call has not disturbed Poet, I read the list of smoke inhalation red flags Locke Halliwell sends me, check Mal is okay, and answer a dozen other messages—from Sol, from Sev.

From River and Rubi.

I send my own messages to Skylar.

Oscar: Thank you for what you did. I appreciate it more than you know