Page 66 of Fable for the End of the World

I hear the rustle of fabric, the gentle swishing as her hair falls down against her naked back. I bite my lip, gaze boring into the wall. But I can’t see what’s in front of me anymore. Even the fire is gone. All I see is Inesa. She grows like ivy on the insides of my eyelids. The roots of her are in my rib cage, winding up around my heart. I can’t help imagining what her bare skin would feel like under my hands.

Twenty-Five

Inesa

It’s my turn to keep watch. I add more kerosene to the lamps andcarry one over to the side of the bed. Melinoë is lying down, but her body is stiff beneath the covers, and her eyes are open. I sink down on the floor next to her. Close enough that I can hear her breathing, even over the vicious howling of the wind.

A voice in the recesses of my brain keeps telling me I should hate her. It sounds like Luka, like Dad, even like Mom. It sounds like Jacob and everyone I’ve ever known in Esopus Creek. It sounds like the robotic drone of the commenters in my stream.

But it’s not my voice.

She killed Sanne. I knew that already, of course, but it was too easy to forget, when her hands were wrapping my wounds so gently and her gaze was full of very urgent, very human grief. She’s killed dozens of people whose names and faces I’ll never learn, and she tried to kill me, too.

Yet the pressure of her grip around my throat is a memory so distant that even if I try to summon it, it just lingers at my mind’speriphery, like a ghost. The more immediate memory is her mouth grazing my finger.

I ball my hands into fists. The storm has come, cold and sudden and furious, beating at the walls of the cabin. I’m very aware of how thin the wood is, how it creaks and moans around us, how the chill slips in through the cracks. Even with the woodstove blazing, my skin rises with gooseflesh and my teeth are chattering. The worst is the chill at the tip of my nose.

Melinoë’s eyes remain open. Watching me. Even at the best of times she’s pale, and her skin has that slightly purple cast, but now it looks almost gray. Whatever modifications Caerus has made to her, she’s obviously not immune to the cold.

Surgeries upon surgeries, syringes in her neck, like the one that injected my tracker. Digging into her brain, as if with a scalpel, prying loose all the unsavory memories, optimizing her into a machine: sleek, immaculate, ruthless. Incapable of mercy, incapable of regret. And despite all of it, I’ve seen the memories cresting through, surfacing from the deep, dark water. Those illicit, stolen moments that should be impossible, the smiles and laughs and even the grief that Caerus couldn’t manage to steal.

It’s too cold for me to relax into the silence. I have to speak, to distract myself from the chill that seems to be settling in my very marrow.

“I remember the last time it stormed like this,” I say. “We lost power for a week. We kept having to borrow a generator from the Wesselses and haul it over on our rafts. Luka and I both fell overboard at least twice.”

Melinoë bites a blue lip. “The Wesselses?”

“They’re another family in Esopus. Upper Esopus.” I give a small smile. “Where it doesn’t flood quite so badly. The father is Dr. Wessels. He treats all our broken bones and cures our fevers. And his son is Jacob...”

Jacob. I can’t think of him without thinking of the kiss. It feels slippery in my mind, like scum on stale water. Something I don’t want to touch.

Melinoë watches me expectantly.

“He’s a friend,” I say at last. “The Wesselses are the ones who loaned us the car.”

“He sounds like a good friend,” Melinoë says, and I can’t read the tone in her voice.

The memory sloshes around in my head unpleasantly. “I guess so. But not—not like Keres.”

Suddenly Melinoë is tense. She props herself up on her elbows, eyes shifting.

“I just mean,” I go on in a rush, “we would never sleep with each other. Sleep next to each other, I mean.”

My mouth tastes a little sour as I say the words. I can’t pretend I haven’t pictured it: Melinoë in bed with this other girl. Maybe they curled around each other, like twin mollusks. Maybe they just joined hands, linked pinkies. Either way, it makes my stomach simmer with a strange emotion. Jealousy? I have no reason to be jealous of a girl I’ve never met, and one who is lost to Melinoë anyway.

“I see.” Melinoë’s tone is curt.

Silence falls across the cabin. Well, not really silence. Thewind is keening like a wounded animal. With each blast of air, a new wave of cold washes over me, and my teeth chatter even more furiously. I’m starting to regret washing up earlier. My hair is still slightly damp around the nape of my neck, and it’s making me even chillier.

“It wasn’t like that,” Melinoë says suddenly.

I blink. “What?”

“With Keres.” She looks down at the worn bedspread. I can’t see very well, in the chiaroscuro of the room, but it almost looks like she’s blushing. “It couldn’t have been. We’re not allowed... Azrael would never...”

She’s definitely blushing—that odd violet color, which I’m starting to think is sort of beautiful. Like the underside of a lilac petal when it’s shot through with sunlight.

“I see,” I echo. I have to bite the inside of my cheek, because a smile is threatening to push across my face. Another gust of wind makes the whole cabin shudder. Frigid air slithers in under the beaten door. I shiver violently. I can hear Melinoë’s teeth chattering now, too. After a beat, I add, “I’m sure it never gets this cold in the City.”

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