Page 75 of Fable for the End of the World

“You saw me get hit in the head,” I go on, feeling almost breathless with fury. “You saw me almost get killed by the Wends. I could have starved or frozen, and you didn’t help.”

Azrael lets out a breath, full of indulgent contempt. “You must have forgotten how this works, Melinoë.”

“No,” I say, “I haven’t forgotten. I remember everything now.”

Silence. The static skips and hums irregularly, like the staggered beating of my own heart. I know the cameras are on now, hovering close to pick up every twitch of my mouth, every flash of emotion in my gaze, but I don’t care. I want to claw out the hideous machine they’ve given me in place of my real eye. I want to scream until it tears my lungs.

“I remember everything,” I say again, bitterly. “I remember what you did to Keres. What you did to me. What you’ve done, this whole time, to all of us...”

The buzzing static in my ear is wretched and almost painful. I hear Azrael inhale sharply.

“And what good has it done you, to remember?”

My righteous fury starts to wither. I feel myself slipping back into the body of the girl who was happy to forget. Who begged for the Wipes. Who had lain still as cold hands worked on her, as a black-clad body arched over her—I remember that, too. And the words I want to speak turn to ash in my mouth.

“I have been kind,” Azrael says. “I have been merciful. Do you wish I had let Keres put a bullet in her brain? Do you wish I had left you mired in guilt and misery forever? I’ve given you the gift of oblivion. It’s something many would kill for, or die for.”

Something essential inside me cracks. Because he’s right. It hurts to remember. As painful as it was to become this icy, unfeeling creature, it’s even more painful to revert. The backwardmetamorphosis is like a thousand small deaths. Terror, grief, and shame all hammering into my titanium-grafted bones.

“You never gave me a choice,” I say. “And now I’ll never know what I might have chosen.”

Azrael lets out a short, cold laugh. “All of New Amsterdam has witnessed your choices, Melinoë. They’ve seen what you’ve done when you thought you were alone. They’ve seen everything.”

I lean over, bile rising in my throat.

The only thing that stops me from vomiting into the snow is the cameras. I was an idiot to think they haven’t always been there, carefully keeping just out of earshot. Seventeen years of life, nine years of Angel programming, and I’m still so naive and stupid. I should have known.

“Everything,” Azrael repeats in my ear. His tone is lofty, gloating.

They saw me save Inesa’s life, over and over again. They saw her save mine. They heard me talk about the little girl on my last Gauntlet. Sanne. They heard me talk about Keres. They watched me strip off my hunting suit, baring my whole naked body to their unblinking eyes. They watched me sayI want to do more than just survive.

They saw me kiss her. They saw me do far more than kiss her. Our bodies running under the blankets, her mouth grazing my shoulder, my hands running the length of her thighs.

I tip forward, catching myself before I land face-first in the melting snow. My breaths are coming in short, hot gasps. It’s the very last thought that breaks me. The realization that they’ve seen Inesa, too. I’ve always been strung up, stretched out for theconsumption of the audience. I’ve seen every comment, from the most laudatory to the most contemptuous and every intrusive, vile thing in between. I was shaped and trained for the cameras. But she wasn’t.

Now the audience is dissecting Inesa, too. Zeroing in on all the places she has a right to keep hidden, the quiet words that passed between the two of us, the tender, secret, wounded places she thought she was showing to me and me alone.

“Please,” I whisper. “Please—turn them off. Just...”

Azrael doesn’t reply. He merely sighs, with the disdainful pity I know as well as I know my own heartbeat.

“What do you want from me?” I finally choke out.

“The only thing I’ve ever asked of you, Melinoë. To do what you’ve been made for.”

I draw in a breath, try to prepare an answer, but my tongue feels numb in my mouth.

“Don’t speak now,” Azrael says. “Just listen. You have plenty of time, still, to make this right. But it can’t be done just any which way. You know that. Especially not after everything the audience has witnessed between you two. This is the most-viewed Gauntlet in history. There’s not a household in New Amsterdam that hasn’t clicked on the live stream at least once. The CEO is very, very pleased.”

Millions of people. My face plastered across their tablet screens. Inesa’s bare body. I’ve protected her from Wends and Dogs, from freezing and starving, but I couldn’t protect her from this.

“Obviously they are very invested in the narrative you’vecreated. The Angel who fell in love with the Lamb. They don’t know, of course, that you aren’t capable of such a sentiment. None of you are.”

I swallow, tasting blood and bile. “Just turn the cameras off,” I beg. “Please. Just for a little while—”

“It’s too late for that now. All of New Amsterdam is watching.”

They’ll only be able to hear my end of the conversation, not Azrael’s voice in my ear. And I don’t want them to hear my pathetic wheedling anymore. I force myself to sit up, ignoring the agonizing pain in my legs and the urge to whimper.

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