Page 5 of Vanish Into Light

“No.”

He didn’t gape at her this time – but glared. “Rose, you’re being unreasonable.”

“And you’re being a condescending dick,” she shot back. Her voice was cold, and flat – as was her anger. Razor-edged, smooth and cool as polished steel. She knew, on some level, that shewasshocked – but not in the way that he meant. Not numb with horror and regret.

This was an old, familiar shock: the same kind that had swept over her that night five years ago, the night Castor had sent men to their home; the night Rose had killed for the first time, and the heat of blood on her hand, on her face, had plucked a chord inside her that Lance had never seen, and could never understand.

She said, “Don’t presume to know what I’m thinking or feeling,” and turned, and left the infirmary, ignoring the startled looks of the medical staff.

He was her superior, but he didn’t call her back or order her to stay.

Tris and Gallo were lingering in the hallway outside, though only Gallo looked worried. Tris gave her a dark side-eye.

“He’s gonna be okay?” Gallo asked.

“He’ll be fine,” Rose said, without slowing.

“Wait, Rose–”

Behind her, she heard Tris say, “Let her go.”

Smart man.

She knew that, at some point, she would be called into Bedlam’s office; would have to face the general at the least, and maybe even a disciplinary committee. People more important than her would have questions.

But a high-level target had been brought in, and she had a window.

And a tug deep in her gut to get to Beck, as quickly as possible.

TWO

His mouth tasted of blood, and that was familiar.

The rain on his upturned face felt like an old echo: something that should have been familiar, but which wasn’t. The Arthur Becket who’d known rain had gone into the ground five years ago, and emerged an eternity later. It slid cold and soothing down his too-hot skin; pricked at his eyes and coursed over his cheeks; tasted faintly of ash when he licked his lips.

Time was a slippery thing, now. Perhaps it had always been, for him at least. He remembered everything, and when that happened, he thought a person lost touch with concepts like hours and days and months and years. His childhood was still a brief, bright flicker, followed by the chasm of loss. The resolution that had come after, the anger, the coldness, the…want. The need for something that mortal vices had never been able to quench.

The knives had helped. The blood had helped.

And then there had been Rose. His Rosie. And to have the thing you wanted most in the world, and to still want…well, that was tricky. That was something that needed careful tending, and perfect balance.

He’d gotten off-balance, five years ago. He’d wound up in the pit.

Dante had written his little fiction piece about it; Puritan preachers had frightened children clutched in their mother’s arms about its horrors, and its tortures. When the Rift first opened, scholars had begun to debate it with true seriousness, rather than dismissing it out of hand.

But the thing about hell was – it was just a place. And like all places, some people belonged there more than others.

There were horrors and tortures, to be sure. The coolness of the rain gliding down his temples was but a fraction of the ice that had blackened his flesh. The heat of the rooftop beneath his feet the faintest memory of the hot nails driven into them. His skin had been peeled from his body a thousand, thousand times, and always there had been the shrieking, the wailing, the buffeting winds and the claws in his gut and the laughter in his ears.

But the other thing about hell was – things were easier if you cooperated. The pain stopped when you becameuseful.

Useful killers were offered gifts, sometimes. Beck had only ever wanted one thing: a glimpse of his Rose. The only part of him that had ever been worth saving; the flower to his thorn.

He had seen her grieve. Too long. Had felt the weight of her sorrow in his own breast.

But he had seen her pull herself together, too. Had watched the light in her eyes be replaced by the steel of self-preservation.

He’d watched her succeed.

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