A large figure barreled onto the street, easily catching up to me. I pushed myself harder, but I was cold and tired. He grabbed my wing and jerked me around. I stared at a white mask that covered his entire face.
I struggled in the direction I’d left Sam, but my attacker seized my arm and threw me to the ground. Stinging raced through my elbow and thigh; my knife, which of course I’d forgotten about, skittered away. Warmth oozed as I scrambled to my feet.
He shoved me again.
I crawled toward my knife, just two steps away. Before I could reach it, my attacker plucked me off the ground and hurled me in the opposite direction. I screamed as limbs banged against stone. Blackness gripped me as I rolled onto my back, groaning at sharp fires everywhere.
Something dull hit my ribs. His shoe. I let out two weak
I had to find Sam. My arms shook as I lifted myself to my elbows. Pain flared where the skin had scraped off, but it drove me all the way to sitting to avoid more stinging. “Sam?” I sounded like a frog as I lurched to my feet.
The knife was where I’d dropped it. I stumbled, retrieved it in case our attackers returned, and shambled toward the bush. My whole body felt like a bruise.
Sam was prone on the dead grass. I dropped to my knees, sheathed my knife, and touched his throat. His pulse beat steadily beneath my questing fingers. “Wake up.” I cupped his cheek; his skin was cold.
He moaned and opened his eyes, but couldn’t seem to focus. “Someone hit me.”
“Let’s go. They might come back.”
“Are you okay?” He sat up and swayed. “I don’t think I am.”
“You’ll live.” We helped each other limp toward safety. If our attackers had returned, they could have killed us both and we couldn’t have done much about it.
It seemed like it took hours to get back to the house, and the streets of Heart were such that you could wander that long without ever meeting anyone until the market field, so there was no one to help us. Not even Stef, who lived next door. Though since we didn’t know who attacked us, it was probably better that we didn’t see anyone.
Sam flicked on the lights as we staggered inside. We winced at the brightness, but that pain was minor compared to everything else.
“You look awful.” Before I remembered, I leaned on the wall for balance while I kicked off my shoes. The white stone, the same that ran around the city and doorless temple, chose that moment to pulse like a heartbeat. I recoiled and tripped over my half-off shoes, then landed on my butt next to a piano leg. My tailbone ached. “Ow.”
“So do you.” Dirt and blood streaked his face, and his sleeve hung open to reveal a nasty burn on his arm, blistered and red in the middle and black around the edges. He saw where my gaze landed, and grimaced. “It will heal.”
“We should call someone. A medic. The Council.” I dragged myself to my feet. “They need to know, right?”
He nodded. “I’ll call Sine while I check that the house is empty. Stay here.”
“Nope. Going with you.” One advantage of our condition: He couldn’t stop me. “Why Sine, not Meuric?”
“I trust Sine.” He drew a ragged breath and braced himself on the wall as he headed for the stairs. The shelves groaned protest, but they held until he reached the banister. His ascent was slow — the blow to the head must have disoriented him worse than he let on — so I went behind, ready to catch him should he lose his balance. Well, I could soften his landing when we hit the floor. Maybe.
After he made a quick call and we checked all the rooms, I followed him into his washroom.
“She said she’ll look for a medic to send over,” he said, “but it’s late and people are still hard to contact after the rededication.”
“At this point, I’d rather just take every painkiller in the house and go to sleep.”
He gave me a weak smile. “Yeah.”
While he reached behind the curtain and turned on the spray, I fished out a handful of pills for him and filled a glass of water. He took them without complaint; I took a handful myself.
“Are you going to stay in here while I shower?”
“Oh, no.” I glanced at his arm. “We should put something on that. The water will hurt.”
“Right.” He slouched on the edge of the tub and didn’t complain when I helped him pull off his shirt, careful of the blisters. I placed gauze over his burn, then wrapped it in a waterproof bandage and moved to leave. “Hey.”
I waited at the door where steam billowed out.
He met my eyes, suddenly focused. “Don’t go far.” When I nodded, he closed the door halfway, enough that I couldn’t see him, but I could see his shadow in the steamy mirror while he undressed and then vanished behind the shower curtain.
After he finished, he helped me clean and bandage my scrapes before I headed into the other room for my turn. Hot water soaked through my muscles, easing some of the strain from hours of dancing, and getting thrown around the street. Some, but not nearly enough.
Nightgown-clad, I emerged to find him asleep on my bed. My painkillers had kicked in while I squeezed water from my hair, so I hoped that meant his had, too. I sat next to him. “Wake up, sleepy.”
“I am awake.”
“Prove it.”
He opened his eyes and managed a smirk. “See?”
I touched his chin. “No one mentioned that you get beat up after the masquerade. Seems counter to all the romance.”
Sam pushed himself vertical and sat next to me. Our socked feet hung off the edge of the bed. “That wasn’t part of the plan.”
“You had a plan?” From where we sat, my butterfly dress was visible on the washroom floor, bent and shredded wings and all. Cheeks hot, I remembered what he’d suggested just before someone shot him.
His eyes found the dress, too. “I was teasing about that. Unless you were looking forward to it. Then I meant every word.”
“Ask me tomorrow.” The painkillers had numbed the aches across my body, but my mind felt ready to explode from today. “Do you know who attacked us?”
Sam shook his head, then groaned and rested his face in his palms. “I think this is going to hurt for days. No, I don’t know. I have suspicions, but I didn’t see anyone. Did you?”
“I think there were two. One shooting, who I didn’t see, and then a big man with a mask covering his entire face.”
“That could describe a lot of people.”
“He probably knocked you out so you wouldn’t be able to identify him.” Sam might have figured it out, based on other physical clues and who was currently what age and which gender. I was the only one in the world who wouldn’t be able to even guess. A thousand emotions I thought I’d moved past came rushing back.
“Other than scrapes and bruises, you’re unhurt?”
“Sure.” But the whole situation infuriated me. There was Sam with his experience and the way he kept alternating between friendly and more than friendly; I’d been attacked somewhere I should have felt safe — creepy white stone walls notwithstanding — and then I was constantly reminded that I was the only nosoul in existence. The only person who didn’t see the beginning of Heart, or know everyone, or have something to contribute.
The butterfly costume had been the real me. Like me, it hadn’t lasted long. Wouldn’t be there in the morning.
I marched into the washroom and scooped up the silk and wire shreds. Futilely, I yanked at it as though I could rip it in two, but it was too strong, even destroyed.
With a wordless shriek, I flung it across the washroom, picked it up and threw it again. Wire clattered across stone and wood, but no matter how many times I hurled the costume remnants, I didn’t feel better. It was too light, too easy, but there was nothing heavier I could throw, nothing that was mine, anyway.
Everything here was Sam’s.
