“She’s here. You missed her by about five minutes.”

“She’s staying with you?”

“I’m looking after her,” she says, “until Jost gets better.”

“I promised to take care of her. We’ve been looking for her for weeks. You disappeared before you told me where she was,” I say.

“She’s safe here,” Alix says, but I shake my head.

Even if Jost recovers, this is my promise to him.

“Ad.” The nickname is spoken so impossibly quietly that I think I must have imagined I heard it slip from his lips.

“I’m here.” I lean down to Jost, placing my other hand over the one clutching mine.

“You have to take care of Sebrina,” he says.

“I told you I would,” I remind him softly.

“I don’t think I can do it,” he says. His hand begins to tremble in mine and a seizure rolls through his body. A medic rushes over and gives him a shot.

“I’m sorry, but he’ll go back to sleep now,” he explains.

“It’s okay. I’ll be here awhile.”

“He’ll sleep for a long time,” he warns me.

“Will he get better?”

“His injuries are severe, and some of the work is extensive.”

“Work?” I ask.

“It looks like a Tailor tried to heal some of his wounds,” Alix says, stepping in.

“A Tailor?” I ask in horror.

“We’re not all bad,” the medic says with a wink, and I realize with some embarrassment that of course this man would be a Tailor. “Your friend will be fine.”

“Thank you,” I tell him.

“We should let him sleep,” Alix says, placing a hand on my shoulder.

I pull away from her.

“I need a few minutes alone with him, okay?”

The medic and Alix exchange a look, but they do as I ask.

“I’ll be with Alix,” Amie says. She leans down and kisses me on the forehead.

Once they’re gone I turn my attention back to Jost. Some of the scars are barely visible while others streak angrily across his shoulders. I pull the sheet down to examine his chest. The marks extend there. Whatever happened to him, it was serious. Despite the medic’s reassurances that he will live, dread steals through me. How had he survived this? How exactly was he altered?

“Sebrina.” Her name barely escapes his dry lips.

“She’s fine,” I say to him. “Alix is watching her.”

“Promise me like you promised him,” Jost mumbles.

I’m not sure what he’s trying to tell me. The drugs they’ve given him must be making him delirious.

“Promise you’ll care for her,” he repeats.

“I promise, Jost.” The weight of the vow is heavy on my chest, but he seems to relax, his hand loosening over my own.

“But you have to fight, Jost,” I say. “For her. For me.”

“Never stop…” His words are a maze of sounds, losing me in his drugged haze. “You.”

“Rest,” I command, placing a gentle kiss on his bruised cheek. He goes to sleep then, and I stand to leave him, wondering what he meant by “never stop you.”

But the thought that haunts me can’t be possible.

TWENTY-NINE

NIGHT FALLS, STEALING AWAY EARTH’S SUN UNTIL another day dawns. It always feels like the darkness settles too soon over this healing planet, but I’m grateful that the camp grows quiet. People return to their makeshift homes and tents. Amie falls asleep in the one loaned to us by someone with a kinder heart than mine, and I sneak out to the edge of the camp where the world is still and the air hangs like a heavy black blanket. This is where I can see the stars.

Alix appears, moving so softly through the darkness that I’m unaware of her until she’s nearly by my side. She thrusts a tattered bag into my hands.

“What is this?” I ask her, tired of her lies and secrets.

“Open it.”

“I don’t want it.” There is nothing she can give me anymore. Not answers or guidance, and certainly not hope.

“You aren’t the only one with a broken heart,” she says in a soft voice.

I don’t look at her. It doesn’t take much to know when someone is in love, especially when that person is in love with the same man as you. It doesn’t soften my feelings toward her, though.

“Is that why you won’t tell me how he died?” I ask her. “Because you can’t share his last moments?”

Alix takes a step toward me, and when she speaks her voice is low. “Do you think that he would want you to share that? He died for Jost, so that his brother could live.”

Her eyes are heavy as she confesses this, full of a burden that I don’t quite understand.

“Then why not tell me where Jost was? Why keep it hidden?”

“I’m sorry that I was presumptuous about Jost and his wishes,” she says, skirting my question.

I stop her. “You weren’t presumptuous. You were purposeful. Deliberate. You knew what he wanted. You knew I was alive. I know that. The only thing I don’t know is why you kept the truth from me.”

Alix opens her mouth but then shuts it again, turning back toward the camp.

“Take this,” I call to her, holding out the bag.

“I have no claim to that,” Alix says. “I’ll be gone by morning. Take care of Sebrina. Jost will be strong soon.”