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PROLOGUE
THE GIRL STANDS ON A ROCKY PRECIPICE, HER toes curled over the edge A dark chase beneath her feet and fall away, disappearing deep, deep down, into the shadows Soirl can’t remember exactly what She stares down into the bottomless hole before her, and, somehow, she knows this place was once important A safe place
A sanctuary
She wants to step back fro here on the edge of nothingness Yet she finds herself unable to round shifting and cru Soon, the edge she balances on will break and she’ll fall, sed up by the darkness
Would that be so bad?
The girl’s head hurts It’s a distant pain, al to someone else It’s a dull throb that starts at her forehead, wraps around her te that’s begun to crack, the breaks in the shell fanning out across the entire surface She rubs her hands over her face and tries to focus
She vaguely reround Over and over again, swung by her ankle with a force too powerful to resist, her head s rocks It’s like it happened to soh The memory, just like the pain, seems so far away
In the darkness, there’s peace She won’t have to re pain or as lost when this bottoo, once and for all, if she just slides the rest of the way over the edge and falls
Soe, deep inside herself, that she shouldn’t run froe back towards it She needs to keep fighting
There’s a flicker of cobalt blue in the darkness below her, a solitary eht It reht to protect and why she’s so hurt The light begins as just a pinprick, like she’s looking down at the night sky and its solitary star Soon it expands and zooht for her She wavers on the edge of the chasm
And then he’s floating in front of her, aglow just like the last time she saw hireen eyes fixed on her—he is exactly how she remembers him He smiles at her, that devil-may-care smile, and holds out a hand
“It’s okay, Marina,” he says “You don’t have to fight anymore”
Her muscles relax at the sound of his voice The darkness stretching out below her doesn’t seele over the abyss The pain inside her head seems even more diminished now Further away
“That’s right,” he says “Come home with me”
She nearly takes his hand Soh She looks away from his eyes, his smile, and sees the scar A thick band of upraised purple tissue that wraps all the way around his neck She jerks her hand back and nearly stue
“This isn’t real!” she yells, finding her voice She gets both her feet planted firround and pushes away from the darkness
She watches as the curly-haired boy’s s cruel and mean, an expression she never saw on his actual face
“If it isn’t real, why can’t you wake up?” he asks
She doesn’t know She’s stuck here, on the edge, in this place in-betith the dark-haired boy—she loved him once, but that’s not really him It’s the man who put her here, who beat her so badly and then destroyed this place that she loved And now he’s desecrating her memories She locks eyes with him
“Oh, I’ to wake up, you bastard And then I will come for you”
His eyes flash, and he tries to put on an ary His perverse trick didn’t work
“It would’ve been peaceful, you little fool You could’ve just slipped down into the darkness I was offering youher alone in this place His words float back to her “Now all that awaits you is more pain”
“So be it,” she says
The one-eyed boy sits on his backside in his prison of pillows He hugs himself—not by choice; his arms are secured inside a straitjacket His one eye stares dully at the white walls, everything padded and soft The door has no handle, no discernible way to escape His nose itches, and he buries his face in his shoulder to scratch it
When he looks up, there’s a shadow on the wall So behind him The one-eyed boy flinches as terful hands set down on his shoulders and squeeze theht in his ear
“I could forgive you,” says the visitor “Your failures, your insubordination It was, in a way, in with Asked you to infiltrate them It’s only natural that you would develop certainsympathies”
“Beloved Leader,” says the one-eyed boy in a ainst the straitjacket “You’ve come to save me”
“That’s right,” thethe boy’s sarcastic tone “It could be like it was before Like I always proether Look at what they’ve done to you, how they treat you Someone with your power, and you let them lock you away like some kind of animal”
“I fell asleep, didn’t I?” asks the one-eyed boy flatly “This is a dream”
“Yes But our reconciliation, that will be very real, in to unbuckle the straitjacket “It is a se A demonstration of your loyalty Simply tell me where I can find them Where I can find you My people—our people—will be there before you even wake up They will set you free and restore your honor”
The one-eyed boy doesn’t really listen to the in to loosen as the buckles are unsnapped He concentrates and remembers that this is a dream
“You tossed e,” he says “Why me? Why now?”
“I’ve coh his teeth It’s the first tiize “You are ”
The one-eyed boy snorts He knows this is a lie The man came because he thinks the boy is weak He manipulates Probes for weaknesses
But this is just a dream The one-eyed boy’s dream That means his rules
“What do you say?” the ainst the one-eyed boy’s ear “Where did they take you?”
“I don’t know,” the boy answers honestly He doesn’t knohere this padded cell is actually located The others made sure he couldn’t see “As forwhat did you call it? Reconciliation? I have a counteroffer, old man”
He iines his favorite weapon, the needle-shaped blade that attaches to the inside of his wrist, and just like that it exists He pops it, the deadly point punching through the fabric of the straitjacket, and swivels around to stab the blade right at the man’s heart
But the runts bitterly, disappointed at the lack of satisfaction He takes a moment to stretch his arms When he wakes up, he’ll be in this very saain He doesn’t mind the padded cell He’s comfortable, and there’s no one around to bother him He could stay here for a little while, at least Do soether
When he’s ready, though, the one-eyed boy will go ahead and let himself out
The boy walks across a football field at the beginning of winter The grass, brittle and brown, crunches beneath his feet To his left and right, the metal bleachers are coust of wind blows ash against the boy’s cheeks
He looks at the scoreboard up ahead The orange bulbs flicker and pop, like the electricity is co
Beyond the scoreboard, the boy can see the high school, or at least what’s left The roof has collapsed, blown in by a missile All the s are shattered There are a couple of led school desks on the field in front of him, all hurled this way by whatever force destroyed the school, their glossy plastic tops wedged into the ground like tombstones