Page 44 of Fable for the End of the World

“You said it yourself—I’m barely human.”

“I didn’t mean that. I was wrong.” Her gaze flicks up and down my body, and red tinges her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

The absurdity of her apologizing to me when my bruises are pulsing on her throat almost makes me laugh.

“I’d rather die quickly than starve to death out here. I’ll even show you where to cut.”

I’m bluffing, of course. Sort of. With no connection to the Caerus mainframe, only a few days’ worth of meal replacement packets in my suit, and no way of navigating out of the woods, the odds of survival aren’t exactly in my favor. The only thing I can hope is that Azrael is looking for me. That he’ll find me.

Please, that pitiful voice in my mind cries out.Save me, please, get me out of here.

“I know where to cut,” Inesa says. For the first time, her voice is sharp.

Right.“You’re not a murderer, but you have plenty of experience with dead things.”

“Animals. Not people.” She glares at me. “Are you really trying to convince me to kill you?”

“Are you really going to refuse the quickest and easiest way to win your Gauntlet?”

She falls silent. We stare at each other as the seconds pass, punctuated by the trickle of rainwater from the cave overhang. Her eyes shift from green to brown to green again, changing, like nature does all the time.

“Has it ever happened before?” she asks finally. Softly.

Even without elaboration, I know what she means.

“Of course it has. Not often. But there’s always a chance. That’s what makes the Gauntlet entertaining. The possibility that the roles could reverse. That one of you could kill one of us.”

Inesa just watches me, frowning.

“Haven’t you ever heard of Mara?”

She shakes her head.

“Mara was an Angel before me. Twelve years ago.” I was too young to remember it when it happened, or maybe my original memory has been mangled, cut into pieces, like so many others. But Azrael has forced us to watch the recording of her Gauntlet over and over and over again. “She was... a child. Well, not really. She was seventeen, like me. But she was small. She looked younger. So Azrael always sent her on Gauntlets against these enormous, burly men, because the contrast was fascinating. It seemed like it might be an even match.”

Inesa purses her lips. “I didn’t realize so much thought went into it. The... the pairings.”

“It’s never supposed to look like cold brutality.” I glance down at my fingers, then back up at Inesa. I can’t risk taking my eyes off her for too long. “Azrael works very hard, deciding who to send on which Gauntlet. The optics of it.”

“So we’re always supposed to believe we have a chance.” Inesa’s voice is low. “Even when we don’t.”

I nod.

Silence again. Inesa stares at me intently, but I can’t read the emotion in her gaze.

“What happened to Mara?” she asks.

“Exactly what you’d expect to happen, eventually.” I press my nails into my palm. “Azrael sent her out on a Gauntlet against some bigger, stronger-looking man. It turns out he actuallywasstronger. He bashed her head in with a rock. So hard you could see the white of her skull. The cameras caught a very good angle of it. Of her brain seeping out between the splinters of bone.”

Inesa’s face goes pale, then slightly green.

“I’m surprised you haven’t seen it before,” I say. “The footage is famous.”

“I don’t like watching them. The Gauntlets.” Inesa’s gaze drops, but just for a moment. “It’s easier to pretend they don’t happen. Even when they do.”

For some reason, I feel my chest tighten with some emotion—relief?She hasn’t seen my last Gauntlet.The dead girl, my pitiful breakdown. And maybe that means she never saw the hackedholoboard, projecting my image into the skies with the headlineThe Most Hated Face in New Amsterdam. Maybe, somehow, I’m less of a monster to her than I am to the rest of her kind.

I shouldn’t care what she thinks of me. Not when I still have to kill her. I draw in a breath and reply, “Fair enough.”

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