Page 161 of Architecti
She presses a kiss to my forehead.It’s like being kissed by every ocean and every wind and every fire in the world.Architect moths materialise, colour blooming everywhere.Wings flutter and kiss my cheeks, my arms, and I am filled with hope and sorrow and wonder and disdain.
Midnight fills my mind, her smile, her piercing blue eyes and slicked back hair.Over and over, she appears.
A million futures, a million possibilities, a million dreams scatter across my vision.
Tears flow down my cheeks as my mind and body are overwhelmed with all her futures.I buckle under the weight of her glorious life.Shecanchange her fate.Hope surges through me, my heart ready to explode.
She can beat my father.
One way or another, she will find a way.
Until I realise there is one thing all of her possibilities share.
My heart plummets.
A single horrifying truth settles like lead in my bones.
Inevitable.
As if this truth were stitched into the very fabric of my being.I always knew.Deep down, this is why I held myself back.Why I never gave myself to her.
Inevitable.
It was always inevitable.
I want to claw the visions from my soul, scour my fate from time with wire bristles and bleach and poison.
But the more I scream, the more I fight, the heavier the realisation settles.
While she is in every future I see…
I am in none.
48
Lucy
Midnight lays me in bed.The soft comfort of silk pillows and the faint scent of perfume are the last things I remember.Time must pass because even as I sleep, my dreams cross from night to day to night, the sun skimming my cheeks and warming my body.
There is something foreign in the air.A slow coagulation.The thickening of a pool of blood destined to be nothing more than a distant stain and fading memory of violence.
It all feels inevitable.
My stomach coils, the weight of dread pressing thick and fibrous on my ribs.
The Societas nearly killed me.I might be safe for now, but it doesn’t feel over.
Not yet.
There is something missing, some piece of information that will make it all make sense.
When I wake, Midnight carries me into the bathroom and lowers me into a bath.She soaps my body, cleanses my hair and razes the hair from my legs.She dries me, dresses me in nothing but a silk gown.
And she does it all in silence, as if savouring every second, every touch, every moment we have left.
Because that’s what these are, our last moments.I don’t know how I know that, but it’s a truth that lingers between the threads of my soul.
“Just stop it, okay?”Midnight snaps as she follows me back to the bedroom.
