Burn (Pure #3)(37)

“A fairy tale?” Lyda says. “Happily ever after?”

“Purdy and Hoppes told me to ask you. It wasn’t my idea,” Foresteed says, tapping his fingers across her folder. “But it’s not a bad one, considering we don’t really have any others. Why not give them a wedding? The one they were promised.”

Lyda looks at Partridge. She lets go of his hand. She laces her fingers together and stares down at them. “Iralene.” She wants to be sure she understands.

“Iralene,” Foresteed says.

“A wedding. Partridge and Iralene,” she says, her voice now a whisper. She presses her hand to her forehead. Her skin is cold and damp.

Foresteed speaks quickly. “We can put out a press release within the hour. We feel that it will distract them, at the very least, and put a stop to the explosion of deaths. We have to do something.” And then he takes a deep breath and sighs. “Do you want your very own child to be born in a world with this much instability, violence, death?”

Lyda hates that Foresteed has even mentioned her child. She feels suddenly protective. “This isn’t about my child,” she says.

“Well, think of other people’s children, then,” Foresteed says. “The ones who will grow up without one of their parents—like you did, losing your father so young.”

She knows that Foresteed is trying to manipulate her, and she hates him for it, but she misses her father and wants these unnecessary deaths to end. He smiles at her grotesquely.

“It’s just a fairy tale,” Lyda says. “They want a fairy tale. A happily ever after. It can be a temporary marriage until things are stable again?”

“Exactly,” Foresteed says.

Then why does she feel such a deep well of sadness open up inside of her?

“We don’t have to do this,” Partridge says to her. “We really don’t.”

“People have jumped off roofs. There are gunshots going off in bedrooms.” She looks at Partridge. There’s nothing else. He takes a breath but doesn’t say anything. She turns back to Foresteed. “Do it,” she says. “Tell them what they want. See if it works.”

It’s silent and then Lyda whispers to Partridge, “No more blood on your hands. No more.”





PRESSIA





LOOKING GLASS




The air is stagnant, the engines loud. The airship buffets in the wind. The entire trip will take over fifty hours. She’s checked the metal box a few times, touching the vial and the formula—both intact, thankfully; it’s become a nervous habit. Much of that time has passed, but still the remaining hours—how many exactly?—stretch out before Pressia restlessly. On the one hand, there’s only the view out the porthole down at the glinting sea; on the other, the airship is dangerous. El Capitan is a novice pilot, and he was angry when he realized they’d be heading back without his guns. He looked lost and desperate. “How the hell does Kelly expect us to get anywhere without guns?” He settled down enough to take off, and occasionally he sends out a laser-reflecting tracking buoy. The noise is deafening as it blasts from the airship, lighting up the portholes, rattling the airship itself. They could die out here—plummet, crash, and then sink, soundlessly, to the ocean floor. This scares her, but she’s been scared of death for so long that it doesn’t hold as much power over her as it once did.

Instead, the sinking feeling she has in her chest—relentless and awful—is because of Bradwell. He sits just across the aisle from her, and even though he saved her life, they still haven’t spoken. How does it feel to be trapped in a small space with someone who hates her? It makes her want to be smaller and smaller until she disappears.

She’s hoping there will be a moment when Bradwell lets his guard slip a little, when he’ll let himself soften, open up some. But even when he sleeps, he looks angry. His brow furrows in dreams, maybe nightmares. He kicks restlessly. It’s hard for him to simply sit in the seat. Stiff and awkward, his wings seem to jut his shoulders forward, forcing him to slouch.

El Capitan and Helmud are in the cockpit, Fignan at their side. El Capitan is singing old songs—nothing about love, though. She assumes he’s being careful now.

But there’s no time to be careful with each other. They have to talk about their next move.

“Bradwell!” Pressia says.

He doesn’t stir.

“Bradwell!”

Again, nothing.

She unfastens her seatbelt, crosses the aisle, and shoves his shoulder. “Bradwell, wake up!”

He wakes from a dream the way he used to in the mossy cottage where he recuperated after they almost froze to death on the forest floor—his arms and legs jerk, he gasps for air. “What? What is it?”

“We need to talk.”

He looks around, wide-eyed, then out the porthole—most likely startled to find himself on the airship careening over the ocean. “I don’t want to talk about us,” he says. “I can’t.”

“Not about us,” she says, but she wishes they could talk about what they mean to each other. Will they ever? “We need a plan. We need to talk to El Capitan and Helmud too.”

He rubs his eyes and nods. “You’re right.”

Bradwell follows Pressia to the cockpit. El Capitan is singing, and Helmud seems to be humming harmony. It’s beautiful. Fignan appears to be in sleep mode, as if the singing lulled him. She hates to interrupt.