Page 45 of Give the Dark My Love

I hadn’t been expecting the slim little envelope. The letter from home that came in time for Burial Day had been large enough to sustain me for weeks. But when I’d finally gotten home after such a disastrous day at the hospital, I’d seen my sister’s handwriting, and my heart had surged with hope. I needed her cheerful voice in my head. I needed it to drown out the screams of the mother whose baby had died, the rage of Ronan’s father, the taste of my own blood on my teeth.

I opened it again now.

Dearest Nedra,it started, in Ernesta’s almost illegible script. For a page, she talked about small things. How she hoped I was happy, how Mama burned the bread and she and Papa ate it anyway to spare Mama’s feelings, how a new kitten had taken residence in Jojo’s stall.

Then she said that Kava had died. The shoemaker’s apprentice, the one she planned to flirt with when I left for Yugen.

Her fingers turned black, Neddie,she wrote.Withered up like dead sticks. She said it hurt so much, but then she didn’t feel it at all anymore. And then she died.

She scratched something out after that. Heavy black ink, gouged into the page so hard that it had started to rip.

Maybe it’s best you’re not here now. Her words bit at me, a wolf nipping at my heels.I worry about Papa all the time. He won’t quit going out with his book cart, even though so many villages are draped in black bunting, warning people not to enter.

She had crossed through something else then, a little less violently, but not more legible.

I worry,she wrote instead.

Nessieneverworried. It wasn’t her style.Iwas supposed to be the twin who worried for the both of us.

It was too easy here in the city. Too easy to forget about the bustling world beyond the walls of Yugen. Too easy to believe that I had done enough, that the plague existed in the hospital but not out there. Not where they were.

Too easy to put an iron circle on the graves, and promise myself it would never bethem.

You!Dannix had roared.It’s all your fault!

After I read the letter the first time, there had still been about an hour before I needed to go to the party. I washed my skin and imagined the soap could seep into my soul. And then I read the book Master Ostrum had given to me. I read the whole thing, cover to cover, and I was almost late to the party. Every time I heard Dannix’s voice again, I forced more words fromThe Fourth Alchemyinto my head.

I had tried to pretend the letter didn’t exist, at least for the night. But it had been there the whole time, in my pocket, blacker and heavier than coal. It dragged me down like an anchor, pulling me under the waves until I couldn’t breathe.

One night,I had promised myself. I would give myself one night to forget.

Just the one.

But even that had proven too much.

TWENTY-TWO

Grey

I chased afterher. I didn’t care what the others thought, the whispers that tried to follow me as I ran down the steps of the clock tower. I chased after her, and the only thing in my head was the hope I could find her before whatever magic had made her open up to me disappeared.

By the time my feet hit the grass, she was gone. I thought I saw her near the statue of Bennum Wellebourne, so I ran down the quad, but she wasn’t there.

The clock on top of the administration building tolled the time—midnight. Echoing across the bay, the clock in the quarantine hospital rang.

And suddenly, I knew where Nedra had gone.

It was late, but not too late for the ferries.

•••

The hospital at this hour was a different creature than when I had visited during Master Ostrum’s morning lectures. With each new day, there was hope. But a hospital at night was a desolate place. Families gathered in small clusters in the foyer, praying for the dark to last forever because they knew this would be the last night with the person they loved still in this world. Mini tragedies played out on the edges of the hospital—a couple holding each other near the door, a family with three small, tired children, pulling chairs into a row to make abed for the young ones to sleep on while the adults whispered among themselves.

I approached the receptionist. “Who are you here to see?” she asked, pulling the patient registry closer to her.

I opened my mouth, unsure of how to answer. “Er—” I started. “Not a patient. Someone who volunteers here? Her name is Nedra Bryss—”

“Oh, she went up the clock tower,” the receptionist said, pointing to the spiral staircase. Her eyes narrowed at me.

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