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)
When I take her hand in mine, I realize it’s shaking. But then, when I place my other hand on her hip, I realize her whole body is shaking.
I’ve watched my father console all the others who came before Haryet, so I know he talked to them. Probably in that deep, soothing voice of his. Something I didn’t inherit. And even though the Maiden always looked on the verge of a panic while he danced with them, they held it together. I don’t recall a single one of them crying.
What was that Maiden motto again? Poised, polite, pretty? Something like that. At any rate, that’s what the Spark Maidens going into the tower always looked like to me. Textbook examples of… well… Spark Maidens. All brainwashed up, as Mitch might say.
Haryet is not holding it together. I am not my father and I have no words—none at all—that could possibly console her.
I am sending this woman to her death tonight. In less than three hours, she will be gone.
Forgotten, except as a name in a list in a history book. If any more of those are written, that is. Which seems precarious at the moment. Because the god is dying.
I haven’t told Mitch what the Council said yet. They told me not to tell anyone, ever, but there’s no chance of that—I tell Mitch everything. But so much has happened in the last few days that the dying god isn’t even at the top of my list.
“Finn?”
I look down at Haryet. Despite her red and swollen eyes, she still looks beautiful. She’s so petite that she tips her chin all the way up to meet my gaze. This changes the shape of her face as I look down and makes her softer. Younger. More vulnerable. Which is not the look I need right now. “Hmm?” I ask.
“If I live—”
“Haryet—”
“No, just listen. If I live—I mean, if I’m alive on the other side—I’ve decided to send a signal back. I don’t know how, but I will. I made a promise to myself when Lucy Fisher went in that, if this ever happened to me, I would figure out what is going on. I hadn’t thought about that in a while, but… it’s all I have left, ya know? And so now I’m going in and that’s my goal. Live, number one, but also find answers. So that neither Clara nor any Maiden ever again will have to feel the way I feel right now. I will find a way to tell Clara.”
It’s a dumb thing, I think. But I don’t say that, of course. I just nod. “If anyone can do it, Haryet, it will be you.”
And maybe I do have a little bit of my father inside me after all. Because this seems to finally set her at ease. Her shoulders drop, she lets out a long breath, and she presses her lips together as she forces herself to be stoic despite the large tears still rolling down her sweet cheeks.
She steps in closer to me and my arms automatically tighten around her. Then her cheek is on my chest and my chin is resting on her head.
I don’t know if she closes her eyes, but I do. Because I can feel it. I can feel something bad coming.
Things are not going to go smoothly during my tenure as Extraction Master.
My three minutes with Clara begin at precisely eleven twenty-seven.
She falls into me. Head on my shoulder, arms wrapped around my back, gripping me tight. While I cross my hands at the small of her back in a possessive way.
I didn’t want to watch her dance with all those men, but how could I not?
I didn’t want to be jealous of them, but how could I not?
And I’m in a bad mood now. Which sucks. Because these three minutes are supposed to be my reprieve for the night. This tiny window of time where I could just be with the woman I love before I have to send her best friend into the God’s Tower as a sacrifice.
Instead, I feel hot with anger and filled with resentment. Over everything. All of it. And my place in it. The death of my father, my missing mother—who isn’t here. And now that I think about it, that whole situation is so fucked up, I can’t even process it yet. In the span of two days I’ve lost both my parents and all my hope. Because this whole place is hopeless. I will never marry Clara. We will never have our own home together, or any children.
After an entire decade of patiently waiting, we will never get the reward we earned.
And I’m mad about it.
But by the time all these thoughts have run through my head, my three minutes with Clara are long gone, I’ve already missed my scheduled one minute dancing with Gemna, the gala is over, the clocktower has already chimed the half-past mark, and it’s time to head outside to the God’s Tower stage.