alone. He’d visited me during my recovery, but only for short periods. And never to speak about anything real— about what he’d done as Prometheus, about what he’d do next, about the bond between us and whether it could be repaired.
I hovered in the doorway, watching him. He was flipping the pages of the journal—his journal. His brow was furrowed, gaze distant. Every so often he’d shift his hand, tracing his fingertips over the lines of a drawing.
When I stepped inside, he spoke without lifting his head. “I really did it all for you,” he said softly. “I wanted a place we could be safe.”
“I believe you,” I said, making my way to one of the chairs so I could sit and rest my splinted arm on the tabletop.
“When you look at it a day at a time, you don’t see what’s happening. One day you siphon power away from a prisoner wanted for murder, because they’ll be banished anyway. Then it’s only those people convicted of treason.” He turned a page of the journal, eyes falling on the last page, the one with my face on it. “Then it’s anyone who opposes you.”
My splint itched, but my heart ached more, and I leaned forward. “It’s done now.”
“And so is Lethe.” He closed the journal with a slam, lifting his head and looking at me. His eyes grew even sadder— even four days after the battle, I knew I looked half a step away from death, covered in scratches and bruises. “Everyone’s celebrating out there because Prometheus is gone and the Renewables are free, but it’s only because they don’t realize yet what it means for Lethe. Without the magic from the Renewables, it’s over.”
“You’ll find a way,” I told him firmly. “You’re brilliant. You’ve always been brilliant. If anyone can save Lethe, it’s you.”
He shook his head, expression grim. “No, we’re leaving. You and me, as soon as you’re well enough to travel. It’s over here. It was over the moment I knew I couldn’t hurt you even to save Prometheus. Adjutant was right, I can’t make those kinds of decisions. I never could.”
My pulse quickened, and I fought to keep my voice even. “Basil, you can’t leave. This is your city. These are your people now.”
“But they don’t know that,” he snapped, fierce. Desperate. Afraid. Where was my brave, confident big brother? “They’ll figure out that I was Prometheus, sooner or later. They’ll all figure it out. But until then I’m just Basil Ainsley, and I don’t owe anyone anything. You and I can go. We can find some other place, some safer place.”
For a moment it was easy to imagine. Me and my big brother, on the road, striking out for territories unknown. We could leave all this uncertainty behind, all the guilt. I’d never see Nina or Olivia again, Basil wouldn’t have to watch the long, painful recoveries of the Renewables kept captive in CeePo.
I closed my eyes. “You chose to make Lethe what it is,” I said slowly. “That was the hard decision you made. You just didn’t know, at the time, how hard it’d turn out to be. Believe me, Basil. I know what it feels like to run away. And you can’t do it, not now. You’re not going to find a safer place out there.”
He dropped his head into his hands, fingers tangling through his thick hair. His face was worn, so much older than I remembered. Even though it had been years, in my mind’s eye Basil was always still a child, still the age he was when he left the city. But the man sitting across from me was barely more than a stranger.
“Lethe is doomed,” he murmured. “You’re saying that you and I have to go down with it?”
“Maybe it’s not doomed.” My mind hunted for a path out of the mess, some way of solving this problem without more bloodshed and torture. Basil was always the problem solver, not me. I sucked in a deep breath. “Talk to Dorian.”
“I saw he was here.” Basil lifted his head, watching me. “You think he’ll have ideas?”
“There are a hundred Renewables in the Iron Wood, at least.” I spoke slowly, turning it over in my mind. “The city— our city, the architects—know where they are. They need a safe place. You need Renewables to keep this place safe. Maybe there’s common ground there.”
Basil sat up, brow furrowed. He didn’t reply right away, but I could see him working it over in his thoughts, the same cautious excitement spreading over his features that he always had when designing a new fantastic machine in his sketchbook at home. “With that many, we wouldn’t need full-time donors. They could go in shifts. Donating a little magic at a time. It would be hard—but not unbearable. They could volunteer.”
I leaned back, grimacing as the movement triggered a new ache in my arm. Breaking it had been the easy part. This slow healing, clawing myself back bit by bit to fighting form—this was the hard part.
Basil’s eyes flicked up, meeting mine. “And you say I’m the brilliant one.”
I shook my head. “You spend enough time trying to outrun this darkness, you get better at finding alternatives.”
Basil reached across the table for my good hand, cupping it in his. “I’m glad you’re here, Lark. I can stay if you’re with me. Maybe you’re what I needed all along.”
I fell silent. A few weeks ago all I’d wanted was to have my big brother hold my hand and tell me I could spend the rest of my life at his side. Now, though . . . now it was different.
“I can’t stay,” I whispered.
“What?” His hand tightened. “No. No, don’t even joke about that.”
“Something isn’t right. Everything they told us in the city, about the wars, about how the world came to be what it is; it doesn’t make sense.”
“What could that possibly matter to you now?”
“Everyone here—they believed the Renewables caused the world to be what it was, because that was convenient for you. If they feared the Renewables, then it’d be harder for them to hide. Easier for you to find and use them.” I ran the fingers of my good hand through my hair, wishing I could straighten out my thoughts so easily. “Back home, we believed it was from a war, because it helped keep us in line, all working to run the city.”
Basil shook his head. “And to find the truth you’re willing to go back to a place where they torture children to power their lights?”
I thought of Oren and his secret, and of how we’d both wished we could unlearn it. The truth was never comfortable or easy. “The architects know something that no one else does. And if they know how this cursed world came to be, maybe they know how to heal it. At the very least, I have to know.”
“But why you?” Basil’s voice was fierce. “You’ve done enough. Stay with me, rebuild this place. Why does it have to be you that goes?”
Even as it all solidified into certainty, I felt a flicker of fear for what I knew I had to do. “I ran away, Basil.” I swallowed. “I turned my back on our home the way you wanted to turn your back on Lethe. Our people are desperate, more desperate than you or Adjutant or anyone here in Lethe. I was the only hope they had, and I ran away from them.”
He shook his head wordlessly, his eyes on mine.
“I have to go back.”
I ate a quiet dinner in my room, alone but for Nix’s company. At least this time my isolation was by choice —though the others didn’t quite know what to do with me, they wouldn’t have turned me away. Hero, villain—the lines blurred, and for now I was content to let the line stay blurry. Part of me knew that I ought to go out anyway, enjoy the company. I was never a social person back in my city, but my time alone in the wilderness had proven to me that even I got lonely. I felt almost as though I ought to store it up, like water collecting in a rainstorm, to last me through the drought to come. But I didn’t want a drawn-out farewell.
I had my pack all set out. Basil knew I was leaving, and we’d made our farewells. When he realized he couldn’t change my mind, he settled for telling me that we’d see each other again, when Lethe was safe. When our city was safe, too. There was my paper bird, crumpled, rescued from the depths of CeePo where I’d thrown it in Basil’s face. Oren’s knife in its sheath. Some cheese, some of the rebel-made grain bars that lasted for weeks, a packet of crackers. A water canteen. My running shoes, and my leather jacket with the tear in the shoulder neatly stitched up.
And the newest addition: a little metal flask of a clear, odorless liquid. Basil had given it to me, saying it was the way back through the Wall enclosing my city. When the Institute had sent him out, they did so intending him to come back and report on the location of the Iron Wood—it was Basil’s defection from the plan that made
