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“There’s a news blackout, but they… they’ve arrested people. Thousands. Put them all together. Wiped out their homes and businesses.”Kristallnacht, my mind supplies, eerily still. Arabella looks at me with fear in her eyes. “I didn’t want this. Not really. It’s not what I…” She breaks off, licking her cold lips.
“You’re allowed to have bad thoughts,” I whisper numbly, as the gravity of Arabella’s words hits me. It seems simpler, at this point, to focus on the girl in front of me than the political Armageddon erupting elsewhere. Rehabilitating Arabella seems like the key to the entire, swelling universe right now. “You’re allowed to be wrong and change your mind. You’re allowed to reflect and choose to be better.”
Arabella stares at me, not saying a word. It makes me nervous because I know how deep Antiro’s talons have pierced her, and I’m not sure if my words tonight have convinced her.
“So they’re arresting people for crimes that don’t exist. Why?” Again, more silence. My stomach churns, and in the distance, the roar of the wind grows steadily louder. “You know this is about Luke, right?” I ask her, because such overblown cruelty about a boy I know to be quiet and shy and earnest and fair seems patently absurd. My heart pangs with longing as I say his name. I miss him to the point it aches. “Luke.OurLuke. The Luke we’ve shared classes with.”
“It’s beyond just him,” Arabella says, her eyes fluttering closed as though trying to shut out the world. “If you thought it was bad now…”
“I’m not afraid to fight,” I declare, as if it were a given.
Arabella opens her eyes. A single tear spills from each eyelid. “I am.”
I reach out to hold her but she steps away. The rain suddenly becomes thick and oppressive between us, making my throat constrict. The ground turns marshy under us and I grab Arabella’s wrist for her own safety.
“This is Antiro’s mess,” I urge her through the rain. “Not yours.”
She shakes her head at me. “It’s the same thing.”
“No, it’s not. If you leave, this is—”
“Cowardice. I know.” She twists her wrist, slipping from my grasp like an animal freed.
“That’s not what I—”
“They’re going to kill me. They’re going to hunt me down. It’s the least I deserve.”
Destruction of enemies is marked as progress and blasted to Antiro members daily as a victory message, as a warning, to be celebrated by the mob-god. No wonder paranoia bounces off Arabella.
It’s a doomsday cult.
“Ara—”
“Do you want to know something?” Arabella asks, and in my mind, there’s an eerie steadiness to her voice as she pauses before the sky. “I always wondered what bad people say to console themselves when they do bad things, and I think I get it now. I just wanted to make the world a better place. That’s it. That’s how they justify it.” She gazes at me through the thick, crystal rain without emotion. “So tell them that. Let them know when —if— they ask about me. Tell them that all I ever wanted was to make the world better.”
Her face is calm, her body relaxed. It should have been the loudest warning signal as the rain pounds down around us.
But it happens before I can stop it. In a series of slowing frames, I watch Arabella’s arms unfurl like wings, embracing the storm before us. Lightning floods the sky in an instant. A peculiar silence muffles my senses. Arabella twists toward me as she falls, her face one of confused peace, as the last thing she sees is me trying to catch her. I fall to my knees as though slain, my fingers clawing in the dirt, watching Arabella disappear like a star falling to earth, vanishing from all sight.
The rain falls harder. It grows louder and louder until it pounds ceaselessly against my skull, consuming all that I see.
I blink, my breath shuddering and as silver as steam.
Everything I see is water.
The shock of the moment freezes me and I’m unable to move. My knuckles are frozen hooks, digging in the mud, burying me in the earth. Waves continue their siren song, crashing against the rock as if hungry for more. The wind howls in pain overhead. And I feel everything at once: the rain hitting my body, my skin, the ground beneath me. My dress clinging, suffocating. My hair, yanked by the wind as if by a demon. I blink. My eyes sting. Blood rushes to my head. I want to throw up.
“No,” a voice cries behind me. “No!”
And before I can do anything, before I can even turn my head, another body flies past the edge as though the air were paved with marble. A crackle of lightning splits open the black sky, its white glare momentarily blinding me as it illuminates the scene. The figure tumbles headfirst toward Arabella, disappearing into the darkness, the rain obscuring all features. But I know. I know before he’s swallowed by darkness again, the sea lurching, and I close my eyes in horror.
He’d come to save her.
Suddenly there’s a sound, a most terrible noise — a cry of agony, of despair, of loss. And it’s me. I realize it’s me. I crawl desperately away from the edge, planting my knees and hands in the thick, choking mud. I clamp my mouth shut with my palms and wait, wait for the sound to stop. My fingers curl tightly around my face as I stagger backward, kicking my feet against the damp earth, praying that whatever happened doesn’t happen again, as I beg, beg that the last minute of my life might have been mistaken…
Too late. Much, much too late.
The rain falls in torrents.
It cleanses.
It rebirths.
It renews.
The world is full of death.
***
