Part Nine

For the first time in her life, Thursy wasn’t the one being held.

She sat next to Yared with both arms around him as the plane soared through the sky. There were cuts on his shoulders and his arms and his ribs hadn’t healed from his fall down the ravine. All she had been able to do was find him a clean set of clothes.

Before, all she would have been able to do was nothing.

If this had happened a week before, two days before, an hour before her execution, she would have been useless, weak-kneed and crying. She probably would have fainted as soon as she saw him curled up in his cell like the runt of a litter left to die. It would have been too much for her, and never mind how it was for him.

But today she had saved him.

Not on her own, and not without help, but she had been there. She had said, "We have to go get him," and made Scotch call home to find out where he was and then dragged him through the hole in the ceiling. Now he was safe, in her arms.

Safe because of her.

She was starting to wonder what else she might have the strength to fix.

Scotch was sitting on his other side, Yared a huge blanketed armrest between them. Yared wasn’t asleep – Thursy didn’t think he had slept since Kiria died – but his eyes were glazed over and he had fallen silent.

"It’s all right," she told him, brushing the hair out of his eyes. "We’ll make it all right."

Her gaze met Scotch’s. He smiled weakly through the amazement on his face, and Thursy didn’t feel the wracking pain she had every other time she looked at him since this morning. Their lives might have taken completely different paths, but they still had Yared to draw them together.

"Go to sleep," she told her brother. His eyes didn’t close no matter how many times she said it, and she finally fell silent.

"You were incredible back there," Scotch said softly.

Thursy started to shrug and then nodded. "I guess I was."

He hesitated and then touched her hand. For some reason she was startled by the chill on his skin, that his touch didn’t feel like an electrical thrum.

"About me and Coalise," he said.

He stopped as if he had expected her to interrupt. When she didn’t, he went on, "It’s nothing deliberate. If you and I had grown up and gotten married and been really happy, when I met her I still would have felt this way."

"What way?" she asked. The words came out less angry than they did mystified. Her anger at him was all mixed up with her fury at the pack and her fear, and when she asked, she honestly wanted to know.

Scotch swallowed. "Just less afraid. Of everything. The big things and the little things. Less scared of facing them."

Thursy leaned her head against the seat, drawing her fingers through Yared’s hair. It hurt to listen to the boy she was in love with talk about someone else. A feeling of unease began to steal through her.

"I feel like even if everything else falls apart, I’m still going to have her. And I know you would always have been there for me, and vice versa, and nothing has changed that, but…I don’t know. I would die for her, I really would. She would sacrifice herself for me."

Sacrifice.

Thursy sat up, startling Yared. His hand snaked around her arm and she gently pulled his fingers away. "Take care of him for a minute," she said as she stood up.

"Wait, where are you going?" Scotch asked.

"I have to talk to Osprey."

She was halfway to the cabin door when she realized he probably thought she was mad at him. She turned back and saw him drawing Yared close and adjusting the blankets with the same love and care he had always lavished on her, and all of her anger toward him melted away.

Scotch would never have hurt her on purpose. That he was doing it now only proved that he truly had no choice. Whatever there was between him and the human, it was beyond his control, just as her execution had been.

"Scotch," she said, and he looked up at her. She smiled. "Don’t worry about it."

The hope in his eyes blossomed and he smiled back at her. She opened the pressed-wood door at the back of the cabin and walked through it.

Osprey’s private jet held six seats, a tiny bathroom, and a truly closet-like bedroom. The short, single-width bed took up the entire bedroom except for a two square foot entry way where a person could squeeze in.

Above the bed were cabinets that hung heavily, making the room feel even more like a cave. Thursy had found several changes of clothes and a pile of blankets inside.

Osprey jerked away when he heard the door open, and his hand hit the light switch before Thursy could tell him not to bother. The room was pitch dark, but she could see perfectly well.

A row of fluorescents set into the underside of the cupboard blazed to life, and Osprey winced, covering his eyes with one hand. The blood on his shirt had dried a burnt umber color and his face was pale with high spots of color in his cheeks. He blinked as he looked at Thursy again.

"What happened?" he asked.

He sat up, kicking the blankets off. The knee of one pant leg had been torn open by the rock.

"We're in the air," Thursy told him.

"I don't understand. How did I get out?"

She slowly sat down on the edge of the bed, and he made room for her. His eyes were still piercing, still intimidating to look into, but she could see the circles growing beneath them. Even the smallest sign of his fragility spoke to her.

"You passed out in Attendance Row," she told him.

"I remember. Did you…" He trailed off, disbelieving.

"I pulled you out."

"But you were already all the way out. You didn't climb back inside and drag me up, did you?"

She nodded, and Osprey swore. "What the hell were you thinking?"

Was he serious? "That I couldn't leave you there."

"Of course you could!" he exclaimed. "The guards were already halfway inside. You should have left me, I can take care of myself."

Now she was starting to feel hurt. "What if they had known what you are?" she asked. "They could have cut you up and held you prisoner."

"You should have thought of yourself first."

"If I'd been thinking of myself, I never would have gone in there."

He turned his face away from her and she softened. "Look," she said, "you were willing to stay down there for me when you didn't know what might happen. I was willing to take the risk to get you out. I think we're even."

He ran his hands through his hair and then rubbed his temples. "Are Scotch and Yared all right?"

She smiled. "Yes."

"You could have been shot with a flame-thrower."

"I was. Twice. I'm so much stronger now, I barely even felt it."

He nodded. "You didn't realize until then, did you?"

"No. And the way you…" She didn't even have the words. "What you did with the guards was amazing."

"It's exhausting. One person isn't so hard, but four or five will drain you in half a minute, and more than half a dozen is impossible."

"Do you think I could do it?"

He paused to consider, and then admitted, "Yes."

"Good, because I'm going back to the village."

He made no response. In fact, he grew stiller until the room felt dead.

"Osprey?" she asked. "As far as the pack is concerned, I'm dead. My going back would just freak everybody out. But if Yared goes back and they think he's normal, they'll listen to him. The vote is tonight, all I have to do is keep him appearing sane until it's over. I can't sit back while Galdwyn destroys everything."

He didn't reply.

"I know you're scared I'll get captured the way you did-"

He stood up quickly in the tiny entry way, his back to her. "I didn't mean for you to see that," he said.

One of them had to say it. "But I did. I see it inside your head every time you touch me, like I'm right there living it. I know how your mother and her boyfriend betrayed you and how Hunter Redfern made you his slave."

He put his hands against the doorframe and lowered his head. Did Elomi and Reka even know? Thursy stood up, unable to help brushing against his back.

"I know that today you were willing to sacrifice yourself for my safety."

She stretched, reaching to put her hand against the exposed skin on his arm. Her fingers tingled.

"I know what that means about you and me."

Suddenly Osprey spun around, clasping both of her hands to his chest. She felt her skin go warm as though she had just pulled on a heavy sweater.

"Yes," he told her, "it means a world about you and me. Most of all, that whatever power decides these things knew that you were supposed to be with me, so that I could protect you."

"But I don’t need your protection tonight," she said. "I need your help."

He fell silent, rubbing her hands between his own. His touch was strange, so much more confident than Scotch’s had ever been, more tender than Yared’s, more interested than Kiria’s. His eyes were frighteningly narrow, but Thursy knew better than to look to them for a clue about what he was thinking.

Her skin expanded outward until her warmth merged with his and she felt his mind brushing against hers. One thought, he whispered, that’s all I want to give you…

She saw herself walking, seemingly alone except for the hand that clasped around her, moving through streets, cities, forests and fields, up into the sky on airplane and balloons, down into the ocean in the calm beneath the waves, always his hand holding onto hers. He never spoke, never guided her, never interfered. He just held on, in case she needed him.

He just wanted her to stay close by, so that if anything happened, he could be there for her.

You don’t understand, Thursy told him, running in circles through his head. I’m not your responsibility, I’m your companion.

The empty street that was his entire life was no longer empty. She would stop him from sinking away into himself and he would teach her how to survive in this jungle.

You don’t have to live like a monk anymore. You don’t have to sleep alone or make every word to Elomi an apology or share Reka’s paralysis.

He didn’t think she understood. She touched his chin and turned it so that he saw her entire life in the village stretched out around them. Such a little village, with little people who were as faulted as any, and none of them with any real culture or education, with nothing compared to Osprey’s experience, and yet they had been happy. For years, Thursy had been happy.

Give me rocks and I’ll pound out a diamond, she said. This is the end of your misery.

He was afraid to hope. Too many blows had left him crippled.

Now that we’ve saved my brother, she added, we could probably go save yours.

At the thought of Zion and baby Alyanna, he crumbled against her. Everything he wanted and everything he had lost were tied up in Zion and Alyanna.

Thursy felt herself against for a moment, her true body, which was pressed against the wall, Osprey’s face buried in her stomach, her hands in his hair. She could feel his breath and his tears soaking through the front of Elomi’s sweater.

Then he rose up around her, his heart two giant wings, and she felt her bones aching, her spine shedding itself like a snake’s skin. The pain was tremendous, but the harder she fought to get free the stronger she was. Osprey dug at the shell around her until it shattered. She crawled out, bloody and in pieces, and then she collapsed limply in the hammock of feathers he drew beneath her, knowing that when she woke up the two of them would put her back together.