I never have, but figure, Why not? I sip, not sold on the taste. I suppose it’ll grow on me.
By the second one, I feel great, relaxed in my own skin. “Clotile?”
“Hmm?” She looks mellow, buzzed herself.
“Everybody says we got no hope of goan anywhere. You ever think we deserve better than the Basin?”
Without hesitation, she says, “Non.”
I ponder it over another sip. “Ouais, me neither.”
My eyes blurred with tears.
Yet Jack had made plans to get out of the Basin and fight for a better life. He’d intended to fly in the face of everything he’d grown up believing.
That struck me as unimaginably brave.
Did he still feel he didn’t deserve better? If Clotile had ever dared to hope for more, she’d been punished with something much, much worse than Basin life.
With me as a lingering witness to his thoughts, Jack’s mind turned to another sliver of time.
He and I were walking hand in hand, just after we’d had sex for the first and only time—and right before we’d gone into battle against the cannibals.
’Bout to face shittier odds than I ever have, stone-cold sober, and I never felt so good. Is this what being at peace means? No damn wonder everyone wants to feel this way.
Evie glances up at me with those blue eyes, and she’s so fucking beautiful I nearly trip over my feet. Her scent is honeysuckle, which means she’s all but purring. Her lips curve, and that smile hits me harder than any punch. She’s got no regrets.
Good. ’Cause I’m never letting her go. I might reach too high to have her, but she doan think so. I want to say something, to tell her how I feel about what we just did. Everything I think to say could be taken the wrong way.
So I squeeze her hand and keep it simple. “À moi, Evangeline.” Mine.
She promises me: “Always.”
And I believe her.
“Hey, blondie!” Finn called from below. “Is this a no-boys-allowed tree house?”
I jerked my head up, my tie with Jack severed.
7
“You’re early,” I told the Magician as Matthew and I climbed down. We still had twenty minutes.
“Wanted to avoid the midnight-hour traffic.”
The three of us hurried into the first floor. Metal sheeting made up the walls. Moldy hay covered the ground. A rough-hewn table and a couple of benches furnished the area.
Finn sat on one, raising his leg along it. Matthew took a seat next to him.
When Cyclops padded over hesitantly, Finn grumbled, “Free fort, sit where you want.” But he kind of grinned when the wolf plopped down right beside him.
“We could’ve come to you,” I told him. Maneuvering through this camp must be hell for him.
Sweat beaded his lip, and he was out of breath. “The closer I am to you guys, the better for the illusions.”
The watchtower wasn’t that far from his tent. How close were we cutting it?
He situated his crutch over his lap. Aged stickers of cats decorated the metal parts. Who had it once belonged to? “So an Empress, a horse, and a wolf walk into a fort. . . .”
“If this is a dirty joke, I’ll pass.” I’d missed the Magician’s humor. Tilting my head at him, I said, “You don’t look so good, Finn.”
Was there even a spare Advil to be found? Selena’s arm had to be hurting her too, but with her extensive training, she probably knew Jedi tricks to limit pain.
“I feel like a bucket of fuck, but I’ll be ready,” he assured me. “Right, Matto?”
“Ready Magician!”
I sat on the other bench. “I heard you took a header off a ridge.”
“H to the Azey. That army blows Baggers. My bear-trap injury never quite healed up. Didn’t take much to rebreak my leg. Selena was worse off, though. She broke her arm in two places, cracked her ribs, and fractured her collarbone.”
Just a week ago? I’d suspected she had accelerated healing.
“Somehow she dragged me back to the fort.”
For Selena to refrain from killing Arcana was one thing. Quite another for her to save another card. She’d shown loyalty to someone other than Jack.
I guessed she and Finn had smoothed over their animosity.
“Good thing I’m dying young,” Finn continued in a nonchalant tone, “or I’d be shit out of luck with this bum leg.”
“Dying young?” He wasn’t kidding.
“Made peace with it.” He shrugged. “Kind of think we all should.”
“Because of the game? We don’t know that yet.” As I spoke, another gust howled, drilling horizontal rain against the metal walls.
Finn looked up warily. “Not just because of the game.”
After three months of near constant downpours, the weather was shifting. Occasionally, we’d get hurricane-force winds—and a fog so thick it bordered on tangible. “Have you guys gotten snow here yet?” I thought I’d spied a single flake the night I’d left Aric.
“Not looking forward to that. SoCal surfer boy here, remember? Just think: if the snow comes down like the rain has . . .”
“Snowmageddon!” Matthew cried, cracking both of them up.
“Yeah, Matto, that groundhog came out to check for nuclear winter. But then a Bagger ate him!”
He almost had me laughing. As soon as I got Jack safe.
Finn’s demeanor turned serious again. “Eves . . .” He opened his mouth, closed it, then frowned at the wolf. He probably wanted to talk about Lark—without her overhearing.