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“When will you leave?” I breathed, meeting Jake’s gaze over her head. None of us wanted this, and for the first time, I thought I knew the loss Jake had felt before—far too many times to count.
“I don’t know. Soon, I guess,” Del murmured.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “It’s not fair,” the little boy in me said. “I just got you back.”
“I know,” she whispered into my chest.
I met Jake’s regretful gaze again. “How many times have you had to do this?” I asked. “Had to leave—to flee because some prophecy told you to?”
Jake didn’t answer because I knew it was an unanswerable question. In over three hundred years, it must have been countless. His sister, family, and friends—as originals, they were at the heart of so many of the prophecies.
At the crunch of footsteps, I glanced over my shoulder to see Callon and Ada approaching, Callon carrying a large cast-iron pot by its handle and Ada a stack of bowls, with spoons and napkins resting on top. “We brought stew,” Callon said, holding it up. His gaze roved over us, likely noting the tension clouding the air. “We’ll just put this all on the table inside.”
I nodded my thanks and hadn’t fully turned back to Del when Ada’s voice rang in the air. “Something’s wrong!”
The three of us spun around as Ada rushed into my quarters, Callon standing at the doorway, pot in hand and fixed in place.
Del ran into the room, and I followed to find Liam leaning over the cot, his face red, his breathing shallow—too shallow. His eyes were glassy with fever in the candlelight, and a sheen of sweat glistened on his skin.
“Liam, sweetie—” Del knelt on the floor by the cot and ran her fingers through his hair, pressing her other hand against his forehead.
“Fever,” Del breathed.
Crouching beside them, I offered Liam a cup of water from the table.
“Fin,” Callon said. “He looks just like Dylon.”
“Who’s Dylon?” Ada asked, hovering by Del’s shoulder.
“A little boy in camp who’s been sick with a fever too.” I shook my head. “But this can’t be the same thing. We only just arrived. Liam couldn’t have caught it already.”
Tears clouded Del’s eyes. “Have Dylon’s hands been trembling?” she asked, swallowing thickly. The gravity in her voice made my stomach lurch.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, and though I dreaded her reply, I needed to know the answer to my next question. “Why do you ask?”
Del closed her eyes, and a tear dripped down her cheek as she lifted Liam’s hand. His fingers twitched in a way that seemed unnatural. “It’s the wasting sickness,” she breathed, only barely. She rose to sit on the edge of the cot and pulled Liam into her arms. Her chin quivered as she murmured reassurances to him.
When I looked at Ada, there was horror in her eyes. And then I remembered the ill and intoxicated people outside the Menagerie and the crowded streets of the Shadow District. The look of fever. The tremors. I’d thought it had been strix, but was itallthe wasting sickness?
The world shattered as I peered down at my son.
I thought I’d known terror. That I’d been afraid before, but never had I felt the claws of panic inching their way up my throat or this insurmountable weight of absolute dread. Liam was just a boy. An innocent. He wasn’t one of the purebred elites who had damned themselves with inbreeding—he came from Del and me, and we were perfectly fine. We were nobodies.
“How can this be?” I asked Jake, suddenly desperate for him to have the answers. “What do we do?”
Jake’s expression wasn’t one of surprise or despondency as he shook his head. It was one of sympathy. Of resignation. Because this was how life was—this was the life he’d been living for centuries.
I fell to my knees beside Del and Liam, pulling them into my arms. “It’s okay,” I said, desperate for it to be true. “We will find the cure,” I told Del, more adamant. I looked into her tear-filled eyes. “We’ll find the cure. I promise. And we’ll do it together.”
THE END
