“Siena,” a voice says. Not close. Not far either. A dream voice. Soft and caring, smooth and gentle. My best friend, the one I love, the one I’ve always loved. Circ, in a dream.
I got my wish. I’ve died and joined him. Worth it—so worth it!—just to hear his voice.
I open my eyes to Confinement. Dread washes over me. Not a dream, a nightmare, a haunting voice of torment, sent by my father from Scorch. A voice that may very well drive me insane if I hear it again.
“Siena.” The voice again, closer, so heart-warming it’s maddening.
I look ’round, see him, so strong and perfect and real that I know my dead father’s behind it. A cruel, cruel joke. “It’s me. Circ,” nightmare-Circ says.
I wanna go to him, to pretend he’s not a ghost, the walking dead, but I can’t. My heart can’t take it. “No, Circ. Go away,” I say.
He comes closer. Skye and Lara and Raja appear behind him, others, too. The prisoners they’ve released, skinny and beaten, but not dead. Not like Circ.
“I tried to stop you,” Raja says. “Tried to tell you yer friend wasn’t in a cage. He was in the hut with Keep. Not a prisoner. Not technically.”
I don’t know what to think—my head is a sand puddle. I’m exhausted from it all. From the death, the fighting, the searching, the hoping, the losing. My lips taste like salt and my eyes sting.
Finding a strength beyond my own, I stand, take a step forward, then another. When I start running, he does, too. I already know how this ends, how when I go to grab him, to clutch him to me, he disappears—a wraith from a world beyond. But even running through Circ is better’n nothing at all, so I keep running, taking in his beautiful skin, his perfect smile, his natural grace through my blurry vision.
Just ’fore I slide through him, I close my eyes.
The collision jars my eyelids open, and then I’m in his arms, and I am clutching him, my legs wrapped ’round his waist, my head nestled against his neck, feeling the warmth of his blood, the beat of his heart, the brush of his lips on my cheeks. It’s all the proof I need to know—
—Circ’s alive.
“Your hair,” he murmurs into my neck.
“Skye cut it,” I say, worried all of sudden. Perhaps the only thing he thought was pretty ’bout me was my hair. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” he says. “I love it. You look beautiful.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
We laugh loud enough that we can’t hear the bad memories.
Sometimes it’s at Circ cracking a joke, sometimes it’s at me, sometimes it’s at nothing at all, just ’cause our knees are touching, our hands are intertwined, our lips keep finding each other’s again and again. In our spot, in the crook of the dunes that we call the Mouth, we find happiness.
After being friends for so long, it’s strange being like this with Circ. We only had that one kiss ’fore I thought he died, and yet that was enough for us both to know we wanted more. So much more, if it was the sun goddess’s will.
Circ kisses me again and then pulls away, looking at me like he always does, like he sees everything—not just what he can see, but what he can’t too.
“You’re happy,” he says. It ain’t a question.
“More happy’n ever,” I say.
“But your mother…”
My smile fades and I raise my chin to the sky. Tears wanna come, but I won’t let them. Not today. “She’s up there watching,” I say. “Smiling. Like I always knew you were.”
Circ nods. “And your father?”
I look down, into the sand. I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand my father’s motivations for his actions. Fear of death, perhaps? Fear of life, too, I think. But none of that matters now. I understand why Circ did what he did, and that’s enough. My father threatened to kill me with his own two hands if Circ didn’t fake his own death, leave the village forever, spend the rest of his days not as a prisoner, but as an assistant to Keeper, taking over as Keep one day. Circ believed my father would do it—kill me, that is. Circ told me the only reason my father didn’t kill him is that he’s too talented a Hunter, and he’d be used in that regard only, sent on the Hunts furthest from the village so I’d never see him. I don’t know if that’s true, but I prefer to hope that maybe my father let him live ’cause of me, ’cause he knew I cared for Circ. Even from the grave, his words haunt me: I don’t want to keep you apart, Siena, but you leave me no choice.
“I’m sad he died, too,” I say, and I think it might be true, if only ’cause of the good memories I still got, the ones that’ve never faded with time or with what he’s done to me.
Circ chews at the inside of his mouth like he’s trying to eat through it.
“What?” I say.
More chewing. “And me?” he asks.
I laugh. “Do I hafta spell it out for you?”
I don’t blame Circ for any of it. I know he did what he thought he needed to do protect me. He did it ’cause he cared ’bout me enough to live without me.
“Could you?” he says, grinning that grin. Sometimes I wish I could just turn it off ’cause it can be a little weird feeling those bubbles in my chest all the time. I punch him, but it don’t change nothing.
He won’t stop grinning until I answer him. So I do. “I’m glad I’m here with you,” I say.
“That all?” he says, those dimples staring me down.
“What the scorch else do you want?”
“I dunno. I thought maybe you’d say something about how you’ve loved me for a long time, or that you’ve always loved me, or that you won’t never let me go. Something like that.” I try to hold it back—my smile, that is—but I can’t, not for one moment. ’Cause I know he’s not giving me words to say. Nope. He’s telling me everything he’s wanted to tell me for a long time.
“Yeah,” I say. “All that.”
He sticks his smile next to mine and I lean into him, feeling all his words in the heat of his body, not saying anything for a while.
Everyone’s been so busy for the last few days that this is the first time me and Circ have really been alone. At Wilde’s suggestion, we buried, rather’n burned, the dead. The quicker we get away from the old ways the better. Everyone agrees that much. I cried for each’n every Wilde we put in the ground, my friends, my sisters. Several Marked died, too, but not as many due to their late arrival and overwhelming numbers. The Heaters took the most casualties, hundreds. I cried for them, too.
We burned the pale Glassy bodies.
“Do you think the Tri-Tribes will work?” Circ says all of a sudden, like he’s just thought to ask.
I close my eyes, remember all that’s happened since the battle. After a lot of arguments and plenty of fights, a tenuous decision was made to join forces, at least for now, creating a new tribe, called the Tri-Tribes, comprised of the Marked, the Heaters, and the Wildes, with shared leadership amongst all three groups. I don’t know how long it’ll last, considering everyone seems to pretty much hate each other right now, but it’s nice to have a little peace and stability for a while. Wilde and Skye’ll represent the Wildes. Circ’s father and Lara’s mother’ll vote on behalf of the Heaters. Two dark, mysterious Marked men who I don’t know stepped forward for them. Not Feve, that’s the important thing.
“It could,” I say, trying hard to believe it while shooting prayers to the sun goddess.
Circ pushes his foot into mine. “I think it will,” he says. “The Heaters seem to be falling into line with it.”
“After the beating they took, they better,” I grumble. “But it’s not them I’m worried about. I don’t trust the Marked any further’n I can throw them.”
As it turns out, the mysterious Marked weren’t so mysterious after all. They’ve been struggling for a long time, barely surviving the winters, losing numbers every year. Which is why they’d been working with the Greynotes the whole time—to survive. But still, with men like Feve amongst them, I’ll be keeping my eyes on every last one of them.