The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(111)

“Don’t what?” Lehrer asked. His fingertips slipped into Noam’s hair. Noam couldn’t have moved even if he wanted to. Lehrer was too strong. He kept him in place with barely any effort at all. “Kill him? My dear boy, there’s an easier way. Pay attention. This lesson should be well learned. Now . . . Noam.”

Lehrer leaned closer.

He smelled like iron. His words were soft.

“Forget everything Dara just told you.”

And Noam did.

The moments that followed would return in fractured pieces, later, like images shot in a darkroom, the flash of a bulb illuminating still frames and freezing them in time.

Dara, sick with fevermadness, his hands on Noam’s face. Saying, “You have to listen to me.”

Over and over.

Lehrer, pulling Dara away like it was easy.

Dara screaming, Don’t let them and Please and Noam’s name, like someone praying the Shema.

The sickness in Noam’s stomach.

Knowing he did the right thing. Hating himself anyway.

Gold-glitter magic.

The moment they won the day, Carolinia’s blue banner unfurling anew over the government complex.

The crowd chanting Lehrer’s name.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

It was three days after the coup—three days after the military junta seized control, two days after the Atlantian refugees were granted citizenship by executive order, one day after Brennan’s body was put in the ground—before Noam saw Lehrer again.

They lit fireworks in west Durham, dazzling bursts of color lighting up the sky, visible even from the courtyard of the government complex. Noam sat on a bench with Dara’s flask of bourbon between his knees, face lifted starward.

He ought to be happy. They won.

He wasn’t happy. His blood sludged through his veins, breath stale in his lungs and stomach swollen with something rotten.

Guilt, of course. He knew that. It was natural. Of course it was. He killed a man. He killed Brennan.

That’s all he saw every time he shut his eyes. Brennan’s dead gaze and the flare of blood on the wall behind his desk, red and vibrant as one of those fireworks.

Sometimes he saw Dara instead. Those times were worse, somehow, because he deserved to feel guilty over Brennan. He deserved worse than guilt. But Dara? There, at least, he’d done the right thing. Dara would be okay. Dara would be safe. Dara might not realize it yet, but soon he’d be healthy and happy and back to his old self.

If he survived these next few months, that is.

The last thing Dara shouted—the last thing Noam understood, anyway, before Lehrer’s men took him away—was kill me.

“I thought I might find you here.”

Noam looked up.

Lehrer had discarded his military uniform in favor of a plain suit. Understated. Political.

“Is everything all right?” Lehrer said.

He must have noticed the bourbon but pretended not to.

“I’m fine,” Noam said. “Just . . . thinking.”

Lehrer gestured toward the bench. “Do you mind if I join you?”

Noam nodded. After a beat, he even thought to pick up the bottle cap and screw it back on the flask.

Even sitting, Lehrer’s body took up far more room than Noam’s. He rested an arm along the back of the bench and shifted to face Noam properly. He looked at Noam like Noam was the only person in the world.

“This past week has been difficult,” Lehrer said. “I know that. And I hope you realize you can talk to me.”

Noam sat on his hands to keep from reaching for his flask. “I’m fine,” he said eventually. He couldn’t quite meet Lehrer’s gaze, even now. Even after everything Lehrer had done for him, for Atlantians. For Carolinia. He stared at his knees instead and said, “Sacha told me about your power. Mind control. I thought you should know that I know.”

He stole a glance, quick enough to catch the flicker of emotion darting across Lehrer’s face: shock, uncertainty, a sudden tension. Noam braced himself for Lehrer to—what? Kill him, like Sacha said he would?

Noam knew Lehrer better than that, or so he liked to think.

“It’s not mind control, Noam.”

“Persuasion, then.” Noam shook his head, discarding the semantics. That fear still gripped the base of his skull, white knuckled and refusing to let go. “I thought about it. I decided . . . I won’t tell anyone. I’m sure you could persuade me to keep silent, or whatever, but you won’t have to. Just for the record.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Lehrer said wryly.

In the far distance, someone set off a firecracker: a sharp snap and someone’s answering whoop of ecstasy.

Eventually, Noam made himself say it.

“Have you used your power on me?”

“No.”

Noam grimaced. “I suppose you’d say that either way.”

“Probably,” Lehrer admitted. “So, you’re just going to have to trust me.”

A hard gift to grant. Lehrer must understand that. He and Noam were alike in that way. They’d both grown up in environments where trusting the wrong person would get you killed.

When Noam was a young child, his grandmother used to tell him terrifying stories meant to keep him close to home—or make him Catholic, as his mother had always implied. It was no secret Noam’s grandmother disapproved of her son’s conversion to Judaism. So she told him stories about La Llorona, about El Boraro. About El Mandinga: the Evil One, a silver-tongued devil wearing the guise of a handsome man.