Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
We haven’t even made it onto the train yet. There are fourteen more hours of this.
But I can’t think about it. All I can do is give her what I have and run.
The ground is no longer rumbling now, it’s sliding back and forth. Shaking everything. We crash into the walls as they begin to crumble.
The overlay begins to react again, and that’s when I see him.
Finn. Running up ahead of us. Carrying the redhead girl, Jasina Bell, in his arms.
“Keep going!” Tyse sees him too. I know he does.
But they’re not here. They’re there.
And we don’t have time to worry about them or there.
Because something above us explodes, forcing the bubble of spark to form around us again, and all that’s left is us and here.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
It’s just noise.
Then pain.
Then dust.
I can’t hear. My ears are ringing.
I can’t move. Something is on top of me.
I can’t breathe. The air is nothing but sand.
And then I’m just tired.
So I sleep.
It’s a nice sleep. I am a Little Sister living in the dorm. Making pretty dresses, and gathering up new friends, and giggling as we go to gala, after gala, after gala.
I am Chosen again. Top fifty.
Then again. Top twenty-five.
Then again. Top ten.
Number ten, like Gemna. So I will never have to go into that tower.
Even though I know it’s not a tower now, it’s just a door. Like any other door, really. On one side it is this and on the other it is that. They all work that way.
I never walk through that door.
I fall in love with Finn Scott, who is not the Extraction Master, because his father never died. He’s just an apprentice. And we wait, in love, while I serve the god in the tower as a Spark Maiden. I get rich, and marry him, and we have a family.
The Matrons never start a Rebellion to usurp the gods that live on the other side of the Looking Glass.
The Council never rounds up all the Little Sisters so Donal Oslin can eat their spark and open the door to another world.
Nothing explodes and there’s no such thing as working trains.
We just… keep going. We go on like we always have.
Living, and laughing, and drinking coffee. Eating pastries, and walking on the sand, and having parties. We live in towers or in the cute, winding, canal-front neighborhoods behind them. We have children that we dote on and spoil.
They grow up. Our girls pledge. Then pledge again.
And it’s fine.
One Maiden must die, that’s all. Just one.
It’s worth it because we get to grow old, we get to die, and it’s OK because there’s always someone coming up behind us to take the burdens we leave behind.
We live in ignorance and it is nothing but bliss.
“Jasina.” Finn is whispering into my ear and for a moment I’m in bed with him. There’s a festival down below. People celebrating because it’s Choosing Day. And I have been Chosen. “Jasina? Can you hear me?”
But it’s not me in bed with him. It’s Clara.
She’s the one he loves. She’s the one in bed with him. She’s the Spark Maiden. And he waits for her.
“Jasina? Can you get up?”
I let out a long sigh. Because what’s the point? What’s the point of any of this?
“I knew you’d be OK.”
OK? I don’t know what world he’s living in right now, but I am not OK. Ceela is dead. She couldn’t help us when I came up with the plan to overwhelm the system with spark. It killed Donal. And when I think about it—how his body went stiff and blue light started burning holes where his eyes were—it makes me happy.
“Come on, Jasina. We have to go.”
I am pulled to my feet, eyes still closed, because I do not want to open them and see the truth. I’ve seen enough truth, thank you.
They’re all dead.
All those Little Sisters. I mean, maybe one or two survived—but it wasn’t Harlow, or Lucindy, or Britley, or Ceela. Ceela died when she didn’t push out her spark with Gemna and I. We simply—burned her up. Not as badly as we burned Donal, but the last memory I have of Ceela is of her blackened body still strung up on that circle as the cyan-blue spark coming out of Gemna and me danced against the glass.
She was the first to die, actually. And even though we were falling apart at the end, I would not wish that death of hers on my worst enemy. Harlow, Lucindy, and Britley were in the middle of the line. So when Gemna and I broke the Looking Glass, they were already passed out on the floor.
They’re probably still buried there now.
They might stay there forever.
“Jasina! Do you understand what happened? The Extraction Tower blew. We’re done here. We need to go! For fuck’s sake, pull yourself together!”