Folding the Sky

-42-

The warehouse seemed different than it had when they'd left it earlier that night. It was darker, somehow, more grotesque, like it'd been haunted now for millennia. Jem knew that more than likely it was just her sour mood and the steadily worsening moods of all the others, too. A map of Naino meant nothing, not when so many people had lost their lives, not when she could still taste catastrophe on her tongue, bitter as smoke.

She sank down on one of the pallets, letting her weariness claim her, as Chike hefted Aldric up the stairs, Sorin not far behind him with Zuri dozing in his arms. Despite being so close to the blast, Aldric and Zuri were both okay. Unconscious and bruised, but okay. Still, Jem didn't think she was imagining the strain to Sorin's face, the way he kept his eyes forward instead of down, as if the sight of Zuri so weak, so vulnerable, nearly made him implode.

Their footsteps thudded up the stairs, and then faded. A hand brushed her knee; Jem looked up as Kalindi settled on the pallet beside her, gathering her rose-tinted skirts in her lap. "We're fortunate," she said with a low sigh. "It's a good thing their injuries aren't beyond what we can handle ourselves. If we went to a hospital right now—"

"They'd find some way to blame us for this," Jem said, tracing the makeshift bandage at her eye, fastened with fabric ripped from the bottom of Kalindi's dress and the laces on Sorin's shoes. Kalindi was right. After everything Enzi had said, amongst the growing fear of the war on the horizon, it was probably best to lay low. "I know."

They sat, letting the silence swell between them like an orchid in midnight bloom. Kalindi turned her head, earrings trembling, her eyes gentle, so gentle, as she traced a thumb along Jem's jawbone. "How are your eyes feeling?" she asked, in what was almost a whisper. "It's my fault. If I hadn't wasted that time getting down into the tunnel, then—"

Jem caught Kalindi's hand, closing it in her own. "Don't worry about me," she said, though in truth her eyes were throbbing in her head, like tiny fingers of fire groping at the back of her corneas. She'd rinsed her eyes in the river, but she had the feeling it would take more than that before they were back to normal again. "Everything Enzi said...are you okay?"

Kalindi nodded her head. "I'm fine. In earnest I shouldn't be all that surprised that my mother would do something like this. Say what you like about her, but she has always been overly ambitious."

Jem smirked. "Stellar performance. Your acting could rival my mom's, did you know that? Now tell me the truth, Kali."

Kalindi lowered their hands, still entangled, to rest on Jem's thigh. When she closed her eyes, exhaled, then opened them again, a rim of tears quivered at her waterline. Inside Jem, something crumbled and broke.

"This changes everything," Kalindi said, her voice quavering as it left her throat. She sniffled, swiping almost angrily at her tears, as if that did anything but make them fall faster. "It changes everything, doesn't it? We can't let my mother reach Vernon, and yet we can't let Vernon just—just do what he wants, either. So what do we do? I'm not sure where this leaves us, Jem. What am I—what are we supposed to do?"

Somewhere in the very back of her mind, it dawned on Jem that she had never seen Kalindi in this state before, so lost, so despaired, so utterly and painfully human. The princess wore her royal skin so well that it sometimes melded into something else, a sort of invulnerable armor. But that, Jem realized now, was just a facade.

Jem sighed, bringing Kalindi closer, kissing away the salty tears that lingered on her cheeks. "That's the sad part," she whispered to her. "I think we already know what we have to do, and I think we know that there's no other option."

Sunlight, warm and subtle as a kiss upon her cheek, brought Zuri out of a deep sleep. Behind her closed eyes, she'd dreamt first of hands around her, holding her close, a soft voice in her ear—and then of her mother, pulling her in, raking gentle fingers through the coils of a younger Zuri's hair. She woke not in her mother's arms but in a blanketed wooden pallet on the warehouse's upper deck, still in the tattered remains of her ballgown, an incessant headache throbbing at her temples.