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“What is this, Sariel?” Johnny asked, his voice steady even though he looked genuinely shaken up.
“It looks like we’re, uh—”
“Going to be responsible for the deaths of many people and not care?” Reese supplied.
I felt the weight of Aria’s guilt hit me like a baseball bat to the head.
I glared at Reese when Aria began pacing. “If anyone does die, it’s because they’ve made decisions that led them to their demise.”
“True,” Marilyn said. “Maybe we’re taking this too literally—”
“That’s you,” Aria interjected, pointing to a very dead painting-Marilyn, whose head seemed to be the only thing remaining of her. Her jaw was slack in a scream, and her expression was petrified.
“And you, Reese.” She pointed out painting-Reese, and then to Johnny and Neo, whose wings were crushed beneath him at an odd angle. “You’re all fucking dead!”
Her snapped-out sentence made them all flinch.
“And what am I doing? Snarling at someone while sitting on your fucking corpses!” Her voice rose, shrill and loud. “And you’re trying to… to interpret this in some other way other than what’s right in front of us?”
“Aria—” I tried.
“Shutup, Sariel.”
I jolted back at the bite in her tone.
“We’re going to get you all killed,” she said slowly, using her hands to express her disbelief. “Whether it's something actually as dramatic as this, we don’t know. But we’re going to get you all fucking killed.”
“And the others?” Reese asked, motioning to the multitude of dead people in between us.
There was a literal sea of them, and the painting was so scarily detailed, I found myself focusing on one person in a red shirt lying face down amongst the pile. That shirt was so familiar—I hated thinking that it might be someone I knew, yet couldn’t remember.
“Do you really think you got all these people killed by yourself?” Reese asked again.
“Exactly. You probably have nothing to do with this shit,” Marilyn added.
“With Azazel and the Upper Council after us, therewillbe casualties and collateral damage,” Reese explained. “We wouldn’t be responsible for their deaths no matter how much our guilt tried to convince us we were. The fault would fall on the killers alone.”
“That doesn’t make it any better, Reese,” Aria answered angrily. “Collateral damage? Do you hear yourselves? That building filled with children is ‘collateral damage’ to you?”
She gestured furiously in the vague direction of the school. “This community of innocent people who have struggled and finally found refuge, a safe space, is collateralfuckingdamage if the Upper Council comes through here looking for us?”
“Aria, stop,” I tried to intervene. “That’s not what they’re saying—”
“What are they saying, then? That it’s okay for others to die if it means we get to escape and keep running for the rest of our miserable lives? I’d rather be dead, Sariel.”
Pain lanced through me. “Okay,” I said gently, grasping one of her wrists in my hands. “I completely understand, but some of us are not quite as selfless as you are. I, for one, would happily watch the world implode as long as you were safe.”
I felt her shock at my words like a stab to the back. I knew our morals differed, but the evidence was now laid bare before me as she stared at me, horrified.
“That makes you no better than your fath—”
“Guys!”
Neo bursting through the doors with a frantic look on his face, his phone in one hand, and his shirt damp from sweat had just saved me from a world of hurt. Although she hadn’t finished her sentence, the sentiment hung in the room like humid air.
Neo froze at the sight of the painting, his shoulders drooping and jaw unhinging. “Holy God,” he breathed in disbelief.
“What happened, Neo?” Marilyn asked. “We can discuss the painting again later.”
