Ch. 60

Xander woke her with the cushion of his palm against her cheek, gentle, but with a throb beneath—always that livewire; it was how she’d known it was him, even in sleep. The basement room was dark but not emptily so. Warm, bodies nearby, the muffled symphony of scavenger’s dreams: Wyn’s laugh-snores, the slosh of someone uncorking a bottle in sleep, always Morgan’s slow, deliberate shift under the mountain of blankets.

“We’ve got to go soon,” Xander breathed into the fuzzed tangle of her hair.

She nodded, pushing upright, and realized the fever had passed, but left her hollow as a cut stem. Her head throbbed with the echo of loss she’d refused to name. Xander’s hand didn’t leave her. She let it linger, let herself take the soft thing he offered, and felt shame at how much she wanted it.

They joined the others in the kitchen. Even at this hour, half the house was awake—packing, planning, prepping, a ritual as old as any faith. Morgan handed her a slice of bread studded with the last of the dried figs; Wyn, startled to see her upright, did a poor job hiding their relief.

“Fan out, then,” Carolina told the group. “Lay low. Meet at the old waterworks three days. Anybody tails you—even a whiff—don’t lead them to the meet.”

Lyra, face wan and lovely in the guttering light, rolled her eyes. “No one’s following me. I’m invisible in daylight.”

“Doesn’t count if you’re bleeding from four different places,” Morgan said.

The old ritual: humor in the mouth of terror. Carolina smiled, and suddenly Wyn’s arms were around her waist, tight as sin, and Xander hugged her from the side, and despite the sweat and the blood and the uncured fear, she allowed it—let herself be held, just long enough to remember the taste of safety.

Three hours later, with sun a gauzy bruise over the skyline, the house emptied. Carolina and Xander went last, doubled back, checked windows and alleys and all the haunted places they’d called home. Then they ran.

The city was a lattice of cold and memory, every alley a nervous system of threats and promises. At the edge of a burned-out block, Xander pushed her against a crumbling wall, not rough, not quite gentle. “We have time,” he said, eyes flicking side to side, and she knew it was code for: I need you, right now.

She kissed him like hunger, and he returned it, raw and flawless, her hands up his shirt and his mouth at her collarbone. The world tiptoed past—roving gangs, a scabbed dog, the predawn stench of chemical fire—while they made another bruised memory, pressed between privacy and exposure and heat.

Winded, they crept north. The city’s ruins smoldered in slow motion. At the riverside, they watched the water carry broken furniture and lost shoes away, neither saying anything until a gull’s scream startled them.

“This is what we’re left with?” she asked, almost a joke.

“Could be worse,” Xander shrugged, but his face said: yeah, it could, and it has.

They walked the rest of the day, circled the waterworks twice before ducking in. Wyn had been there, had left a trail only Carolina would spot: a dab of blood on the rail, an arced line of tape in the dark.

The reunion was a mess of limbs, a soft punch to the jaw, the clatter of bad jokes and terrible food. Morgan had found a bottle of whiskey, and by nightfall, they’d all claimed a spot around the rusted boiler. Lyra curled up next to Carolina and fell asleep, fingers knotted in her sleeve. Xander’s head dropped to her thigh. Wyn read aloud from some tattered pulp magazine, their voice cracking from fatigue.

At some point, Carolina stopped expecting the second wave of violence. She heard the rhythm of breath, slow and twined together, and realized that for the first time in as long as she could remember, she did not want to move.

She closed her eyes, tasted the ache in her ribs, and let herself think it: Maybe the world had not ended. Maybe, for a bitter and beautiful second, it was just beginning.