Chapter 03: Don’t DieThey came to see me in the hospital. It did not occur to me then that they came out of kindness or care, though years ter it occurred to me that maybe they did. But at that time, lying broken in that aic bed with its crisp, pale grees, all I could imagine was that they came to firm my failure. I served as memento mori to Sakura’s children—not that I khe term back then—a just-living reminder of the cost of failure and disobedience.

  First, Sofiya, pinch-faced, alert-eyed and cold. She slouched into the hospital room and pced a potted purple orchid o my bed. It ersephone’s flower—her favourite—and somehow Sofiya knew; but then, she always did, she was the cleverest among us.

  “You’re an idiot,” she said. “A fug idiot.” She leaned against the far way, every line in her body exuding disdain; ter, I uood she cared, deeply but cked the means to express this. She visited often, hours spent in silence. “Don’t die,” she said the st time I saw her, and squeezed my hand. “You’ve got a favour to cash in.”

  Dmytro also visited; he also owed me. I remembered how he ducked, instinctively, entering the room and how his bulk filled the spabsp; He towered over the bed, huge hands curled around the bed’s frame, squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing. His was genuine, but also selfish. “I’m not doh you,” he reminded me. “Best out of three, yes? You better get better, yes? Quickly.” I drifted in and out of sciousness often during those early days of recovery, often waking to find him in the room, standing by my side, eyes on the door.

  The st visitor was Kylie.

  “You’re an asshole,” she said. Despite my dition, she punched me in the shoulder, and she derived pleasure from my pain. We’d had a short fling, once, whided when I met Persephone. “A stupid fug asshole.” She didn’t hold my hand or smile or wink to soften her words; she meant what she said, always. “And you’ve gone and fucked it up for all of us.” But whe with me, she leaned in close and whispered, “she knew, all along.” Aime, she said, “You were always her favourite.” And the st time I saw her, “She wants to talk to you.”

  Sakura was both the first and st to visit. I was unscious as she arranged for my care and recovery in the hospital. Four months ter, the day before being discharged, I awoke to fianding at the foot of the bed. The door was closed and the curtains drawn. Even the security camera, with its ever-blinking red light, was stilled. We were alone.

  “L—,” Sakura said, and here she called me by my first name, a name long buried ao the past. I remember her as colours: red lips, nails aals on her dress, bck hair.

  I sat up in the bed. It hurt but I suppressed any outward expression of pain. Even then, I didn’t want to appear weak in front of her. I still yearo please her. I still needed her approbation.

  Silently, eyes glittering, she watched. Sudderilled through me as it occurred to me that she might be there to kill me. My fear was short lived. If she wanted me dead, it would have already happened. I no longer cared. Or perhaps I also believed that I was hers to kill, if she wished it. I already owed her my life: once, wheook me in, and again, when she brought me here to heal.

  I opened my mouth to speak, closed it and stifled my first instinct to lie or deflect or deny any wrongdoing. Instead, I took a deep breath and riding a surge of emotions, simply said, “I’m sorry.”

  She said nothing.

  “I—betrayed you,” I said. “She was… an enemy.” I took a deep breath. It burned my chest. “I knew better but I did it anyway because—” I trailed off, grasping for ae justification for having disobeyed the woman whose approval still meant more to me than anyone else’s. For nearly a decade she’d trained me, sheltered me, taken care of me and yes—used me; but also made me part of something bigger, even if I hardly uood what we did. And I threw it all away for….

  “You betrayed me for…?”

  Her soft, ft voice gave no indication of either anger or disappoi.

  “For love,” I said. And saying it out loud was nearly too much. Something precious and terrible and rare shuddered within me, filed ond died. A cresting wave of overwhelming rage and sadness swept through me a still, and in its wake, I couldn’t meet her gaze. Staring at the bedsheets, I said, “I loved Persephone and now she’s dead.”

  Sakura nodded. Her steps, a whisper carryio my side. With a precise and elegant motion of a single finger, she drew her long bck hair back over her shoulder. She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. I remembered that her lips were surprisingly warm.

  “Goodbye,” she said, and walked away from me.

  I cried out to her before she left the room. “Was it you?”

  She stopped at the door and looked back over her shoulder at me.

  “Did you send the man, the one who killed her, the one who nearly killed me?”

  Even with the distaween us and in the darkness of the room, I saw her thin, red lips curve into a smile.

  And then she was gone. I haven’t seen her since.

  Author's Notes:

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