Sing Me Your Scars (Apex Voices Book 3) (22 page)

“No, I will not do this. I will not.”

But inside, the twisted magic says
yes
.

She struggles to break free. The guards shove her toward the man.
She lifts her hands. A reflex. Not on purpose. When her skin touches his, when
she realizes what she’s done, it’s too late.

Pain radiates through her belly like claws and fangs tearing
free. Her fingers clench, digging into the man’s flesh. She tries to hold the
magic in, but it will not stay. She cannot make it bend to her will. It rips
free, an animal in search of prey, and leaves the taste of rage in its wake. A
vile brew filled with bitterness.

The man’s eyes widen. His mouth opens. His face contorts in pain.
His body spasms.

He falls.

For one quick moment, a feeling of power, of possibility, rushes
through her. Then she shoves it deep down inside, and shame floods her. One of
the guards nudges the man with his foot. He does not move. The liar smiles.

“Do you see what you are?” he says.

She closes her eyes. She doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want to
know.

§

The night guard pauses in front of her cell again. Isabel
wipes away her tears.

“They will take you from here when you agree. You will have meat,
wine, clean clothes.”

She shakes her head. She is not a monster. But she thinks of the
man, the way it felt to take his life, and she shudders.

§

“Will you serve?”

“No,” she whispers.

“You don’t really want us to
tear up your pretty flesh, do you?”

“I will not serve,” she says between clenched teeth.

It is her turn to scream. To leave a trail of blood on the
stones.

§

She dreams of the field of knives. Of Ayleth, her blood
pouring from a wound Isabel can no longer heal, her arms outstretched. Isabel
tells her no, but Ayleth doesn’t listen. She grabs Isabel’s hands and falls to
the floor, her eyes open. Unseeing.

In her dream, Isabel laughs.

She wakes with a cry in her throat; her mangled body answers with
a shriek of its own.
She catches movement from the corner of her eye—the
night guard, walking away.

§

Death came for her father in the shape of a lingering
illness that caused his limbs to wither and his skin to turn grey. Her mother
forbade her to help.

“I cannot lose you both,” she said.

So Isabel held her magic in, no matter how hard it fluttered,
yearning to help.

The twisted thing inside her now scrapes and pushes, burning to
hurt.

§

The night guard taps the bars of her cell.

“What do you want?” she asks.

“Why do you fight?”

She doesn’t answer. He would not understand.

“They’re looking for your friend.”

A whimper escapes before she can steal it back. Not Ayleth.
Anything but that.

“Why do you care?” she whispers.

“The king’s sister is next in line for the throne. She does not
share her brother’s penchant for cruelty. She would be a good queen, I think.”

She looks up. He is staring at the window.

“The king is coming to the prison tomorrow. He is not happy with
the progress of late.” The guard steps close to the bars. Looks into her eyes.
“He does not wear gloves,” he says, his words so low that, save for the movement
of his mouth, she might have imagined them.

The breath catches in her throat.

He gives her a small half-smile, the expression strange on such a
harsh face. “You remind me of my sister.”

As he walks away, she steps back with her hands held between her breasts.
Why would he tell her such a thing?

How long until they find Ayleth? How long until they force Isabel
to watch while they press the blades against Ayleth’s skin? Her eyes burn with
tears, and she covers her mouth to hold in the sound.

The waves crash upon the rocks. The wind blows in through the
bars on the window. The cell fills with the smell of the sea.

She thinks of the girl who could make fire. The dark haired
woman. The old woman crying for someone to save her. She thinks of all those
living in fear, the ones they haven’t found yet.

§

In the morning, she hears a strange coarse laugh. Heavy
footsteps move down the hallway, and she steps close to the bars. Waits. The
metal is cold beneath her fingers. The footsteps move closer.

Will they kill her once the king is dead?

She looks down at her hands. Her weapons. Not perverted.
Perfected. The monster inside her extends its claws.

Let them try, she thinks. Let them try.

Please don’t be angry, Joshua,” Maddie says. Her dark hair
spills down over her shoulders; her blue eyes gleam grey in the candlelight.

“How can I not be angry with this?” He waves his hand toward the
window, his shadow playdancing on the wall. Outside, all is somber, edged in
sepia tones of a forgotten age, all moving closer, a little more each day.

“Please,” she says. “Let it go.”

“How can
you
not be angry?” he asks. “It won’t be long
now. It’s coming faster now. It will be here, and we will—”

“Be immortalized forever,” she says. “Someone will come along one
day and say yes, I remember this. I remember them.”

He laughs, the sound like broken glass ground in a fist. “There
won’t be anyone left.”

“There is always someone left. Always.”

He turns toward the window, giving her his back. He doesn’t
understand this new calm. She threw the phone across the room when it stopped
working, hard enough to gouge the plaster wall. She cried for hours holding a
photograph of her parents and screamed it wasn’t fair.

He had no one to call. No one to mourn.

“Everything will be fine,” she says.

He looks out over the city. Over what’s left. A handful of
streets, apartments, offices, department stores, the edge of a park. The trees
on this side are heavy with green, the buildings all red brick and glass and
shining metal faces, but on the other side, the flat side, they are brown and
tan and cream, reminiscent of a snapshot from the early 1900s. Wind pushes past
the window and blows the curtains into a fabric ripple. The wind travels past
the buildings into the park, and the leaves shake and quiver. The other trees
don’t move, frozen in time with the rest of everything.

Above the sepia world, the sky is a shade of caramel; the clouds,
buttermilk. In the real world, the sky is pale blue and threaded with wisps of
white. As the clouds move across the sky and enter the other world, they stop
and change color so quickly his eyes can’t capture the transformation. When he
glances at the place where movement ceases, a wave of dizziness, complete with
sweaty palms and a racing heart, rushes over him.

He doesn’t need to go to the windows that offer a view from the
back of the building. It’s there, too, creeping closer and closer every day.

“Nothing will be fine. Look at it.” He jabs his finger toward the
window. “Look at it.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t have to. I know what’s there.”

A tiny jingle-jingle drifts through the air, drawing his eyes
down. A child is riding a tricycle in the street, pedaling in wide,
disconsolate circles. A young mother stands off to one side with her arms
wrapped around herself in a cocoon of make-believe solace.

Joshua closes the curtains and lights a cigarette, the smoke
forming a halo around his head. Maddie’s eyes narrow in disapproval. It doesn’t
matter, he almost says, but he holds his words inside. The little bell rings
out again and disappears without an echo.

Maddie might not be afraid anymore, but he’s afraid enough for
the both of them.

§

“Come to bed,” Maddie whispers.

He doesn’t want to sleep (What if it comes during the night,
freezing them in place in their bed?), but he slips beneath the blankets and
curls his fingers around hers.

Once her breathing turns soft and even, Joshua climbs out of bed
and leaves the apartment, locking the door behind him out of habit, not need.
The streets are deserted, the silence absolute, and the pavement swallows up
the sound of his passage.

He steps to the edge of the real city and gazes across the
street, a once busy street that held shoppers, cars, taxis, a choking miasma of
need and want and must have now. The air smells of apples turned sour and old
perfume, but underneath, it holds the musty scent of cardboard boxes filled to
bursting with old paper and ancient memories. He shivers, although the air
isn’t cold.

The sidewalk and most of the street is still real, still concrete
and asphalt. He steps off the curb, takes two steps closer to the buildings,
and stops in front of what used to be an office. Turning his body to the side,
he stares down the street, at the line where real meets unreal. The buildings,
depleted of their natural colors, are all one-dimensional and flat.

From the corner of his eye, he sees a woman dressed in a long
black coat and white gloves, with a tiny hat balanced on the back of her head.
She nods in his direction and continues walking. Joshua follows her, keeping a
safe distance from the other world, until she comes to a stop, twenty feet down
the street. “My children came here,” she says. “They wanted to see. That’s my
daughter.” She points to a woman with short hair and earrings dangling to her
shoulder. “My baby girl.”

“No, don’t touch her,” he cries, but he’s too late, her hand is
already reaching. The sepia pulls her in, expanding all the while to fit her
into the tableau. In an eye blink, her coat turns mahogany and her skin a shade
of parchment; her face wears sorrow mixed with expectation. Joshua backs away.
The street has turned half grey, half walnut brown.

He runs all the way back, back to the apartment, back to Maddie,
safe and real and warm in their bed.

§

They sit in the kitchen with the curtains shut and drink
lukewarm tea and eat peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches. After, he pretends to read while
Maddie rummages around in their spare bedroom. When something crashes to the
floor, he turns the book over on the table and finds her sitting on the floor
surrounded by a tangle of forgotten things on her lap, an old lamp on its side
behind her.

“What are you doing?”

She glances up, bright eyed, and smiles. “Remember the rose you
made for me? On our first date?”

“The one I made from the napkin?”

“Yes.” She holds up a battered and stained scrap of paper that
resembles a squashed pumpkin with a long stem, not a rose. “I want to have it
with me when it happens.”

He sits on the floor and cups his hands around hers, the
misshapen flower in the center of their grip. The night he gave it to her, he
knew he wanted to spend his forever by her side. But not like this. Never like
this.

“Maddie?”

“What?”

He tries to find the words, but a lump sits in his throat
instead. When he finally chokes it down, he shakes his head, afraid he’ll say
everything wrong.

§

He goes outside again the next night and stands in the
quiet. A clock above one of the building doors stands frozen at 11:15. He walks
down to the woman in the dark coat. Her watch shows 2:23.

Time stopped, and the world stopped with it
, he thinks.

He looks down at his own watch; the second hand ticks away the
time. His time hasn’t stopped yet, but it’s close. When he leaves, his cheeks
are wet with tears, tears he doesn’t remember crying.

§

Two nights later, he returns and sits on the curb with his
elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. A wave of anger coils up from
the inside, all scarlet and laced with thorns.

When Maddie sits next to him, his shout of surprise fills the air
for one quick moment before it vanishes away. She slips her hand in his. “You
shouldn’t be afraid. Maybe there’s life inside,” she whispers. “And maybe we’re
just seeing the echoes.”

“There aren’t any echoes.”

“Not on this side, no, but
who knows what’s on the other side.”

“Maddie, there’s nothing. Can’t you see that?”

“If you’re so afraid of it, why do you come here every night?”

He sits up straight. She smiles.

“I’m keeping an eye on it, that’s all,” he finally says.

“But why? It will come for us soon enough.” She squeezes his
hand. “Then we’ll know.”

He grabs her shoulders and gives her a shake. “What’s happened to
you? How can you be so damn calm?”

She takes his hands away one by one and presses a kiss to each
palm in turn, her mouth warm against his skin. “I can’t,” she says in a small,
quiet voice.

He bites back a sound halfway between a groan and a laugh. “What
do you mean, you can’t?”

“I know you don’t understand, but I can’t be angry. I can’t be
afraid anymore.” Her voice breaks; she takes a deep breath. “I know it won’t do
any good, and if I start crying, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop. I pray
every night that this is all a mistake, that everything will be fine in the
morning.” She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. “It hurts too much to
be afraid. It’s better this way. Trust me.”

“Oh, God, Maddie.” He pulls her close.

She trembles in his arms, then pushes him gently away. “Let’s go
home.”

“I’m scared, I’m so scared—”

She puts a finger to his lips. “Shhhh.”

They make love long into the night and fall asleep with their
legs entwined.

§

He wakes alone. He knows as soon as his eyes open; the
weight of the apartment has changed, lifted, the trapped exhalation belonging
only to one, not two.

No, oh, no. Please let me be wrong. She wouldn’t leave me. Not
like this. Not now.