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I just feel numb.
FIVE
ADDIE
Corpses litter the streets of Washington.
I don’t know what I expected—fighting localized to Capitol Hill and the White House, mostly. Civilians left largely unharmed while the power-hungry battle for control.
That’s not what happened.
I stare silently out the tinted windshield from the backseat of the SUV, where I’m squeezed between Jacob and my father. I stare and I stare, and I try not to feel a thing. It’s something I’ve been very good at for a long time—not feeling anything—but somehow I just can’t seem to find that white void of nothingness now.
Men, women, children; they lie scattered across pavement and underneath rubble from still-smoldering buildings. Missile strikes. It’s been, what, twenty-four hours, and Washington already looks war-torn. Like something you watch on the news before you shudder, turn off the TV, and thank the stars such horrors are far away.
I… really didn’t think it would be like this.
Jacob rests a hand on my knee, undoubtedly spurred by whatever he feels through our bond, but the men in the SUV don’t so much as glance twice at the devastation as we drive through the broken streets. The soldiers patrolling, weapons at the ready, must recognize my father’s vehicle, because they don’t accost us.
I look up at my dad—at the man who would scare away the monsters under my bed and tell me he’d never let anything bad happen to me or Mom. Whose plaid shirts smelled like firewood while he told me the most wonderful stories on those few, precious trips we took to the mountains.Hedid this, and I can’t… I can’t—
Jacob flexes his fingers around my knee; gentle pressure just firm enough to bring me back from the brink.
I dig my nails into my palms and focus on my breathing until I’m back in control, and that horrible, swirling sensation of despair is pushed down with all the other awful things I can’t think about, unless I want to spend the rest of my life curled into a useless ball.
“Dad,” I say softly, though of course it’s no use. The men in the car with us have enhanced hearing. “Why… Why are there so many civilian casualties?”
My father glances down at me, his mouth slanting in an unhappy line. “There was some rebellion in the streets. It was… deemed necessary to strike resistance down hard and as early as possible, to quell any further unrest. So far, it seems to have worked.”
A tiny, selfish thread of relief sprouts in my gut.At least he seems regretful. At least it wasn’t his idea.
It won’t matter to the people who died, but… it does to me.
I look at Jacob and wonder if he feels anything at the sight of this much death. I sense nothing through our bond, the connection feeling oddly muted with the lack of his constant, seething resentment. I rub at my chest and try not to wonder why he’s stopped hating me.
I suspect death means very little to him, after the three years he’s spent killing on command. Did it before?
Unbidden, the memory of his hands brushing down my arms and up my legs fills my mind, and I bite my lip against the involuntary rush of warmth that follows. He’s been… so gentle with me. I told myself it’s because he knew I would punish him if he stepped so much as a toe out of line, but he’s been free of my control for a few days now. Since the night my father told him he needed tokeep me in line,I suspect. And still, he’s not hurt me, despite me giving him every reason to.
No, I doubt death and human misery were meaningless to him before.
Jacob glances at me, his attention summoned by the roil of emotion in my gut. When his green eyes lock on mine, whatever he sees there makes them soften, and for just a moment, I allow myself to wonder… if I’d been whole; if we’d met in another life… would I have loved him?
* * *
My father takesus to a reception.
Outside, the grounds of the White House are still strewn with the bodies of Secret Service agents while the city beyond is silent as the grave. Inside, there’s celebration.
I’m so dazed by the contrast that at first I don’t notice the smears of blood on the opulent curtains framing the banquet hall—I only see laughing faces and hear the clink of crystal glass as the people gathered here celebrate their victory.
There are hundreds of them, all jubilant—traitors only hours ago. Now I guess they’re the ruling elite.
I tug self-consciously at my sleeve, but my crinkled appearance isn’t why I feel so out of place here. Most everyone looks disheveled behind their bright smiles, clothes torn, minor wounds and bloody knuckles adorning more than a few. No, it’s that sharpness in their eyes that has me on edge. They have the look of someone who fancies themselves conquering warriors, but I am more reminded of sharks in a feeding frenzy.
I spent so much of my life honing myself into someone who was cold and hard and unafraid—someone who could move among the kind of people my father did, who had enough power and agency to never be seen as easy prey.
I thought I’d succeeded, but in this room, surrounded by the people who have toppled democracy and killed civilians as a warning to the rest of the country, I feel like a calf among hyenas.
