Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children #5)(31)

12?ALL THE DROWNED CHILDREN


CHRISTOPHER’S SCREAM WAS barely more than a howl. He moved toward the hole in the bridge and Jack was suddenly there, grabbing his arm. He turned to stare at her. She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “You will not.”

“Kade—”

“Kade is with Cora in the hands of the Drowned Gods now. Live or die, he does it at their whim, and your intervention will not change their decision. We need to move before this damned bridge dumps the rest of us in after them. Or do you think you’re a better swimmer than the Goblin Prince and the former mermaid?”

“Not former,” said Sumi. “Cora wears her scales on the inside now, that’s all. Once you’ve been a mermaid, you’ll always be a mermaid. You can’t help it.”

If Jack had been the first to turn away, things might have gone very differently. Jack could be cold; Jack could be heartless; Jack would always, always prioritize Jack above almost anyone else. That didn’t make her a bad person, necessarily—practicality and pragmatism had their places, and as long as people never forgot that Jack would choose what was expedient over what was compassionate, she could be perfectly lovely company. But if she had been the first to give up, Christopher might have insisted on staying and trying to figure out a way to get Kade back, even as the bridge fell to pieces around him.

Instead, it was Sumi who bounced onto the balls of her feet, announced, “We have so much to do, and so little time to do it in,” and turned to run, fleet as anything, to the far end of the bridge, where it joined back up with solid ground.

“She’s right,” said Jack, surprisingly gentle, and followed after Sumi at a more sedate pace.

Christopher stayed where he was for another count of ten, silently willing a head to break the surface of the water.

It didn’t happen.

Christopher glared at the water. He glared at the broken bridge. And when he finally followed the others, he was weeping, making no effort to stop or to wipe the tears from his cheeks.

The cavern formed a tall dome, with the bridge marking its widest point; once across, the ceiling dropped and the walls narrowed, forming a single corridor no more than fifteen feet from the bridge’s end. Jack and Sumi were waiting at the mouth of the corridor. Jack looked at Christopher, expression grave.

“From here, say nothing unless you’re directly questioned, and even then, if you can avoid giving answer, do,” she said, voice low. “The high priest can be … tedious at times, and will look for a way to win without actually joining the game. Do you understand?”

“I don’t like this,” said Christopher.

“Nor should you: it’s dreadful.” Jack’s eyes were dry. That made sense: death was as commonplace to her as breathing. Still, it was easy in that moment to hate her, just a little. This was all her fault. If she hadn’t come back to the school, if she had just stayed in the Moors where she claimed she belonged …

But that wasn’t fair. None of this was fair.

“I didn’t come looking for someone to die for me,” said Jack, voice low and far too calm. It wasn’t serenity: it was rigid control holding her words in place, like shackles around every syllable. “I wanted help. I had nowhere else to turn. This was not my intention, and I will be sorry for it later, I will mourn our friends for all the nights of my life. First we have to secure those nights. If we fail, they died for nothing.”

“If we succeed, they died for nothing,” Christopher snapped.

“That’s not true,” said Sumi. She turned from her contemplation of the walls, bouncing on her toes, filled with the endless energy that had already made her the savior of a spun-sugar fantasyland, and would inevitably make her so again. “If we succeed, they died to save a world. Wouldn’t you have died to save Mariposa? I would have died to save Confection. The only reason I’m sorry Jilly-Jill killed me is because my death was useless. I didn’t save anything. I didn’t even save her. Let Kade be a hero again. It might not be what he wanted, but it’s what he earned, and people have to have the things they’ve earned for those things to matter.”

Christopher sighed, deep and low and defeated. “This isn’t fair.”

Sumi blinked at him. “Whoever said heroism was fair?” she asked. “It’s the unfairest thing of all. ‘Come away, oh human child, and learn to swing a sword for the sake of people who’ve decided the thing you’re best for is dying in their name.’ We were lambs for the slaughter, all of us, and if we survived this long, it’s not because we’re special. Come on. Let’s be heroes one more time.”

She spun on her heel and scampered down the corridor. Jack looked at Christopher, anxious and strained. Christopher shook his head.

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s go save your world.”

They walked on in silence, and if they were privately relieved, they didn’t say so. Christopher plodded. Sumi danced, skipped, and spun, seeming to view this all as some great game. Perhaps it was a side effect of travel in Nonsense, Christopher thought, watching as she played a strange variant of hopscotch with the puddles on the path ahead of them. When even heroism was a game, nothing could be taken seriously, and even the most trivial of situations could end in violence at any time.