Page 86 of Fable for the End of the World

The helicopter is sleek and jet-black, with Caerus’s familiar logo painted on the door. The six-sided white gemstone. Or maybeit’s a die. Wealth and fortune, or luck and chance? I’ve never known. No one has ever told me.

The helicopter doesn’t land, just hovers about twenty feet in the air. The door slides open. Standing in the threshold, tall and leather-clad, is Azrael.

It’s not surprise that floods me—how many times have I seen him in the same helicopter, coming to collect me after a Gauntlet? Instead, I’m filled with a fierce and burning rush of rage. Because ghosts are flowering up in front of my eyes. Keres, with his gun pressed to her temple. His huge body, arcing on top of mine.

“It’s over!” I cry, though the deafening beat of the helicopter blades means it’s unlikely he can hear me. “You’re not getting your perfect ending! I’m finished!”

In spite of everything, hedoeshear. Anger whips across his cold, artificially youthful face.

“You promised, Melinoë,” he shouts back. “You swore that she would die.”

At the beginning of the Gauntlet, in the belly of this very same helicopter.The Lamb has to die, he’d mouthed to me, and I’d mouthed back,She will.It feels like a lifetime has passed since then. A lifetime in which I’ve become so much more than the creature he made me.

“I don’t care!” The debris flying up into my face makes my eye sting, and water gathers along my lash line, trying to flush the foreign matter out. “I’m done! I’m not your Angel anymore!”

There’s another flash of fury on Azrael’s face. And then, rather than reply, he steps to the side. Two Masks appear in the opendoorway. They’re hefting a body between them, and the body is Luka’s.

“No!” Inesa screams, tearing away from me. I reach out and catch her around the waist, before she can trip forward and fall.

But Luka stirs. He’s not dead. Not yet. The Masks heft him onto his knees.

Azrael removes his gun from the holster at his hip. The same sleek, silver pistol that Keres once held. In one fluid motion, Azrael cocks the gun and presses the muzzle to the back of Luka’s head.

“It’s a pity,” Azrael calls out, “that your brother’s earnest entreaty wasn’t enough to convince you to at least try to fight for your life. I thought the script I wrote for him was very moving.”

“Please!” Tears streak down Inesa’s cheeks. “Please just let him go. Please don’t hurt him.”

Luka’s face is angled downward, half obscured in shadow. But I can see that his left eye is swollen and there’s a gash across his forehead. I can see tears washing his cheeks, too—silent tears that turn his skin almost iridescent in the meager gray light. I remember Inesa telling me she hadn’t seen him cry since they were children.

But he is a child, really. Younger than Inesa. Younger than me. And I’m sure the wounds are worse than just what shows on his face.

Over the brutal whirring of the helicopter blades, Azrael says, “I’ll give you one more chance to make this right.”

He never turned off the cameras. I know that now. While Inesa and I planned our escape, he was planning his own climax. This confrontation. What better way for Caerus to eradicate allhope than to let the audience watch us try and fail?

My rifle suddenly feels heavy on my back, its ridged edges pressing into my shoulder blades. It’s not only Caerus’s instrument now; it’s mine. I can end this on my own terms.

Inesa just stares up at Luka, agony in her eyes. He lifts his head and stares back. Something unspoken passes between them, something I’ll never be able to understand.

The rifle is slippery in my trembling hands, but I manage to get it aloft on my shoulder. Peering through the scope, I aim it right at Azrael’s heart. Then I reassess. He’s probably wearing Kevlar. I tilt the barrel upward, aiming it right between his eyes. Instant death, if I pull the trigger.

Azrael doesn’t even flinch. And he doesn’t speak, but his voice echoes in my mind anyway.You are my perfect creation.

Anger is what steadies my aim, what makes my finger brush the trigger.Then you should never have put a weapon in my hand.I’m furious at his arrogance, at his lack of fear. He could never believe that his own creature would turn her gun on him. As much as he wanted me to be strong, he’s always known he was stronger.

Not anymore. I feel the warmth of Inesa’s body, pulsing beside me, and I start to pull the trigger.

But in the millisecond before my bullet flies, Azrael shifts away. Closer to Luka and to the Masks, to make room for another figure to emerge in the doorway. A slim, petite, white-clad body, auburn hair laced in its customary crown of braids.

Lethe.

The shock of seeing her there unbalances me; the rifle slidesdown my arm. Lethe leaps down from the helicopter in one clean, perfect arc. She lands in front of me, one hand on the ground to take the pressure off her knees. Then she stands. The top of her head barely reaches my chin—this was always her archetype, the tiny spitfire. Her hunting suit is identical to mine, only white. Azrael must have thought about the staging of it all. The cinematic qualities. The contrast of our height, our clothes, even our personas. I’m the ice to her fire.

Not anymore.

But I’ve never stared her down like this before. Like an enemy. It’s one of Azrael’s rules, that we never fight each other, not even to practice. I realize now that this is why. It’s because he always wanted to have this trump card; he always wanted to be able to use us against each other.

Lethe’s prosthetic gleams black; her real eye is a tiger-striped, synthetic amber.

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