Page 35 of Fable for the End of the World

“Luka!” I cry.

He turns, but it’s too late. In that moment of hesitation, the Wends are on him. Their gray limbs pull and grasp.

“Inesa!” he yells back. The blanched look of horror on his face is more terrifying than anything else. I’ve never seen him so afraid.

My fingers scrabble against the earth, but they can’t find purchase. My heart drops into my stomach.

Please—

And then I fall.

Twelve

Melinoë

I should have slit her throat.

That’s my first thought upon waking. Blood in my mouth and mud caked to my face, I push myself up on trembling limbs. Rainwater is beading along my lash line; I wipe it away. Then I scrub at the mud. But I don’t make much progress before a searing, fiery pain splits through my head.

I double over, gripping my temples and squeezing my eyes shut, as if I can will the pain away. Instead, I vomit.

Bile splatters the mud and burns my throat. I sit back on my heels and draw in a shaky breath.

I’m not dead. At least there’s that. But every nerve ending in my body is burning like a live wire and a quick glance around the clearing tells me that my rifle is gone.

A heaviness settles in my stomach. It’s more grief than fear. The rifle is my signature weapon. It feels as much a part of me as my own limbs. Without it—

I stand, with another tremor of nausea. I manage to cross theclearing to the tree where my knife had pinned down the Lamb’s brother. There’s nothing except a nick in the bark. They must’ve taken my knife with them, too.

My body feels unbearably heavy. The adrenaline from the stimulants has obviously long faded, and although I was unconscious through most of the withdrawal, the wash of the drugs through my system leaves me exhausted, barely able to walk. I put my hand against the tree and lean over, bile rising again in my throat.

I try to stay rational. I try to consider my options. But I just end up berating myself.

I was too reckless. I thought this would be easy. The Lamb looked so defenseless in her file. I underestimated the brother—not just his strength, but his tenacity. I didn’t really believe he would fight so hard for his sister. Azrael tells us to think of the other Angels as our sisters, but I can’t imagine putting myself in the line of fire for any of them. Except Keres. And if anything, Keres was just a lesson in the futility of fighting for anyone who isn’t yourself.

Maybe I wasn’t reckless. I was just desperate. Keres’s face flashes through my mind—her blank stare, her eyes wide and dull, nothing behind them. No memory of me, of anything. I feel sick again and clap a hand over my mouth. I don’t want to keep vomiting on camera.

The cameras. I listen for them—if I’m very still, I can usually hear them buzzing faintly around my head, like tiny winged insects. But as I stand and wait in the silence, I hear nothing. Just the breeze through the wiry branches and the wet leaves. And ofcourse the pulse of the tracker, dimmer now, as the Lamb moves hopelessly far away.

My veins turn to ice. I try to remind myself that this isn’t the first time I’ve failed to hear the cameras; sometimes they just take a little while to catch up with me. Sometimes there are glitches in the system. Gaps. Even with Caerus technology, there’s always a margin for error.

I’m really just trying to put off the inevitable: calling Azrael. I don’t want to hear the disappointment or the barely cloaked anger in his voice. I don’t want him to tell me how the chat is flooded with comments celebrating my failure. Maybe they’re even disappointed to see me getting up now. After all, there’s no bigger plot twist than an Angel dying.

I examine my face in the small piece of reflective metal affixed to my wrist. It’s supposed to help my peripheral vision when I’m fighting, but I always end up using it more for vanity purposes. My eyes are bloodshot and my face is a waxy yellowish color. My hair has come loose from its neat ponytail and falls in damp tendrils over my shoulders, down to the middle of my back.

Every cruel comment comes ringing to life: the people who called me too skinny, too fat, too ugly to be an Angel, too pretty to be kept under lock and key in Caerus’s clutches, too sexy for seventeen, not sexy enough.

My fingers tremble as I brush the rest of the mud from my face.

I can’t put it off any longer. I’m shivering even inside my insulated hunting suit. I tap my temple and wait for the fizzle of static that tells me I’m connected to the Caerus mainframe.

Silence.

I blink my prosthetic eye, expecting the map to layer across my vision.

Nothing.

Panic rises in me, with astonishing coldness. I tap again, blink and blink and blink, but everything is still quiet.

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