Arch-Conspirator(22)

He was at the edges of so many of my memories, after my parents’ deaths, but never in the center of them. I suspected he never wanted to intrude on my time with my siblings, certain he wouldn’t be welcome, thanks to his father. He had been right about that. We would not have welcomed him.

But a year ago Kreon had summoned me to his study, and Haemon had been there already, sitting with his back so straight it looked painful. Kreon had introduced us to each other as future husband and wife. I had been waiting for him to marry me off—I was not foolish enough to believe that the choice would be mine; soul or not, I was still highborn—and so I received the news in silence. But Haemon had laughed, sharply. I had avoided him since then.

He looked me over, almost like he was checking me for injuries. Only—then his eyes lingered, here on my hip, there on my collarbone.

“I came to break a law,” he said.

“I’m not interested in a daring escape,” I said.

“Yeah, I realize that,” he said. “You think I don’t see that you’re walking a path you chose?”

I did think that, in fact. But it was becoming clear that I didn’t really understand Haemon, didn’t really know him. I sat on the edge of my bed, and he moved to stand in front of me. He took a silver Extractor from his back pocket.

It was smaller than the one I had used to try to save Polyneikes. A newer version of the technology. Slim enough to look small in Haemon’s hand. He pressed a button on its side, and a needle extended from it.

“You can’t Extract ichor from the living,” I said.

“I can,” he said. “Do you know the history of Extraction? Initially, when the practice began, it was only tied together with our death customs because it took so long to edit the genes affected by the virus. But this notion that the soul in our cells can only be Extracted properly after death, that came later.”

“You think if you take my cells now, you’ll take my soul with them?” I asked, and I wanted to laugh, but there was no laughter in me.

Haemon shook his head. He cradled the Extractor in both hands.

“Suppose,” he said. “Suppose I think the soul is an eternal, ever-regenerating thing. That your soul can be simultaneously whole in you and whole in your ichor—suppose I think that it’s possible it suffuses every part of you, powerful and potent. Suppose that even if I am not certain of this, I am willing to risk it to preserve you.”

He held the Extractor out to me, and I felt a momentary pain—if he had convinced Pol of this, I could have stored Pol’s ichor while he was still alive—but I pushed it aside. It was too late for that now.

I shook my head, pushing the Extractor away.

“Speak to the mystics,” I said. “Ask them if I even have a soul.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “I don’t need to ask. I already know.”

I shook my head again.

“I don’t care about the law,” he said, and he sank to his knees in front of me. Kneeling, he was almost as tall as I was sitting on my low bed. We were eye to eye, and the Extractor was between us. “What my father is doing is wrong, and only something wrong can make it even a little bit right again.”

“No, it’s not … it’s not that,” I said. “It’s a kind gesture, Haemon, but I don’t want to be stored in the Archive at all.”

His eyes were hard and fixed.

“I don’t believe in immortality,” I said. “I think you could use an ovum from my body—you could bring back the shape of me, refined and edited, but you could never bring me back. And an edited version of me is not me anyway.”

“But Pol—”

“Pol did believe in it,” I said. “The last thing he asked me to do was to use that Extractor. So I did my best.” I shrugged. “Look at what came of that.”

The sky was getting dark. I had read somewhere once that in the dark, our eyes relied more on rods than on cones, meaning that night vision and color vision were incompatible. So I always thought of sunset as the color draining out of the world, like dye leeching out of a garment when you rinsed it. The little courtyard beyond my bedroom window was turning gray.

And then I couldn’t see even that, through tears.

“Sorry,” I said, choking.

Haemon put the Extractor down and took my hands in his.

“Don’t be,” he said. “I can go, if you’d like. But I thought maybe you’d prefer even my company to being alone.”

“Even yours.” I laughed a little. “If you knew what I was thinking about, you’d know why that was funny.”

“You could always tell me. Maybe I’ll laugh.”

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“I was thinking about all the things I won’t do,” I said. “Won’t have a wedding. Won’t walk through the Archive. Won’t get crow’s feet.” I laughed again, and my laugh broke. “I didn’t want to be married, but I thought I would get married. I thought Ismene would put flowers in my hair, and I would wear my mother’s dress, and I would have a wedding night and wake up and decide whether I felt any different. I didn’t want children, either, but I thought I would have them—thought I would walk through the Archive and find someone who looked like my mother, and make the best of the thing I didn’t want. I thought I would find the moments I loved among the moments I didn’t. I thought I would have time.”