Emilia and Hyr are whispering about something in their other language, the one Astra taught me how to introduce myself in. Hyr gave me a funny look when I did, though. I thought maybe I’d gotten something wrong, at first, but I don’t think that’s it—they give me that look sometimes, like I’m a puzzle piece they can’t quite place.

  They used to look at me like that, anyways.

  My lips twitch against the soft skin on Hyr’s neck. I feel like I’ve known them forever, and the way I think definitely seems to give that impression, too. They used to, like we didn’t meet for the first time only a few hours ago. They used to, like for more than half the time we’ve known each other, they haven’t been looking at me like they want to save me and know they can’t.

  Emilia is looking at me that way now. Her eyes are so wide—so scared—and when she reaches out to ruffle my hair, I lean up into it. A little touch of love, more love than I’ve felt from almost anyone, even my own parents. My mom and dad like me, sure, but I’m work and I know they don’t love me the way they wish they could—the way I wish they could.

  We’re moving again, Hyr tugging Emilia along as we go, and they continue to argue in Hyr’s strange language, sounds I’ve never heard registering only as other to my ears as Emilia speaks. I suppose Hyr might be speaking back to her in her normal language, and every so often as we wander through room after room, Emilia says the same thing: ?vy mor’k.?

  Every time, without fail, Hyr’s chest will rise and fall, a small puff of air brushing over my cheek. I think they’re laughing, but also a little exasperated—I think that’s the word, anyways. Exasperated: annoyed, done with. My parents are exasperated with me a lot—so were a lot of the adults in Livery, at the Risen Guard compound. The only ones who have never seemed done with me are Emilia and Hyr. V, a little bit, and I think if we hadn’t been trapped together for so many days, he would have been okay with me? Mostly, I just think sometimes he wanted to rest, but because we were trapped, he knew he couldn’t leave me to go crazy and annoy Gale and Astra.

  Astra, who is dead and gone, even if that’s not completely true: she still exists outside this world.

  No one told me that—I can’t hear Hyr, and Carne doesn’t really speak to me—but I know. I know a lot of things now, since I got too close to the universe.

  It was an accident, mostly. We were gonna die, was the thing. Astra tried her best to teach V how to use his core the way she and her family did—or was it her entire… Free Colony?—but he wasn’t learning fast enough.

  The ice was coming for us.

  It was going to kill us—kill Gale, who had been trying to be so nice to me since we left Livery. Sometimes, she wasn’t so good at it—especially when we were trapped together—but she was trying. So I wanted to try for her.

  Whatever I did… it wasn’t right. I don’t know what I did. I don’t remember a lot of those moments, just the ice coming for us. V saying he couldn’t. I remember knowing that this time he wasn’t wrong—this time, it wasn’t just in his head. He really couldn’t save us, and I figured, well, if we’re gonna die anyways, I might as well try to save us.

  I did save us, but I don’t really remember how.

  There was red—blood, but not blood. There was a pounding all around me, like a heartbeat.

  Pound.

  Pound.

  Pound.

  I knew I was somewhere I wasn’t meant to be. I remember thinking that I’d gone too far—gotten too close.

  It was such a strange thought to have, and I still don’t know where it came from, or what it meant, or even where I was. I do know it was right: I got too close to something, and now, I’m going to die for.

  I know I’m going to die, and mostly, I’m okay with that. I’m going to die because I saved my friends—because whatever I did, it saved us from that guy who was chasing Key. I blasted his attack away. I did that, and then Astra tried to kill him. Something went wrong, though. I don’t really know what it was. V said something about a seizure, but I don’t know what that is. I think it must be whatever caused a black spot in my memory? There are bits that are blurry, when I was saving us, but afterwards, there’s just a big black spot.

  Whatever happened, we couldn’t stay, so we ran, and the world blurred by, and I knew, even in those first moments of consciousness, that I was going to die.

  I was seeing too much, and I knew from Carne and the homeless grannies’ lessons about reading the universe that seeing too much was dangerous—was a bad omen. I was seeing—now see—too much. Something is wrong with me, but I don’t think that’s what will kill me.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  No, it will be my own actions that kill me. I know that. So do Emilia and Hyr, I think. Hyr, definitely. Maybe they haven’t told Emilia as much yet, this inevitability—that’s another word that I think I know the meaning of, but I might be wrong. People in Livery were always saying it was inevitable my parents would get sick of me one day, if I didn’t calm down.

  I guess they were right—the first chance they got to let me go, they did. I’m trying not to let that hurt. Some people just aren’t meant for each other. I wasn’t meant for my parents. Sawyer once said something like that—said that the universe must have given me to them for another reason, because it definitely wasn’t that I was the perfect kid for them or anything like that.

  I think… if I had been able to choose, I’d pick people like Emilia and Hyr to be my parents. Hyr, always calm and soothing, and Emilia, just like me, if a little subdued. I could see it when she used her hand signs. She’d be talking about one thing, using simple signs we could kinda understand, then something would distract her, and off she’d go, hands moving too fast for us to even pick up the ones we knew. So much passion. I really wish I could have asked what she was talking about.

  Emilia would be a good mom. She took care of us so well, but, I don’t think she thinks that. I saw how sad she was, looking at Kelly’s arm, thinking that she’d failed him. She’ll probably think that about me, won’t she? That somehow this is her fault.

  It’s not. If anything, it’s my parents. If they hadn’t left me with the Risen Guard, I wouldn’t be here—I wouldn’t have ended up with that terrible woman for a babysitter and run away from her and the whole compound.

  When I tell her as much, during one of the brief moments where she and Hyr are quiet—or, I assume Hyr is quiet because I can’t feel his throat vibrating against my nose—she doesn’t seem to believe me, and then, she’s being pulled back into Hyr’s arms. I think she’s crying. I can’t hear her, but I can feel her shaking.

  Will my own parents cry when they learn I died? Will anyone even bother to tell them? A part of me hopes no one will, that one day they’ll realize they can’t just leave me with the Risen Guard forever, but their questions about what happened to me will go unanswered. They’ll be left to wonder what happened, forever. Will they make up kind stories with happy endings in their heads? Or drown their guilt in imagined tales of my death at the hands of the Risen Guard or the visitors?

  Most likely, Boundary will just tell them, or send someone else to tell them. I wonder if they’ll be nice about it, and say I died trying to save this world. I wonder if they’ll be mean about it, and say I died because they left me alone too many times.

  Regardless of what Emilia thinks, this isn’t her fault. I can see it now, the path of my life—a thousand, million decisions that led to this moment, so many of which I had no control of. It's strange, and comforting, in a way, this knowing of how uncontrollable my life has been. All the little pieces, laid out before my eyes in a thousand fragmented images of the world and my past and future—my very short future.

  I’m okay with that. Before coming here, before getting to close to the universe, I would have been sad. Now… I’m a little sad, but mostly, I’m not. Everything is so heavy now, every flick of my eyes a vision I don’t have the capacity to understand or remember.

  It’s all so much.

  Maybe, eventually, I’d get used to it, the way I think Hyr is. If Hyr was with me, their soft energy sliding through me and softening the strain of the universe's visions, I think I’d be okay with going on. They won’t be with me, if I find a way—a will—to live. They’ll leave, and I’ll still have Gale, maybe.

  A thousand fragments of Gale’s future shatter through me, her grumpy and snarky with Key, the two of them with the Risen Guard, helping to guide the future along. Gale and Mira meeting, awkward and strained. Blood, but no curse. Tears, but not for a death—is it a death? did Mira die? I can’t see that right now—but for a lost friendship.

  Somehow, it won’t matter to Mira that Emilia, V and Hyr will help change this world. She will go on, bitter and angry, hoping to create a world where the next batch of visitors will be snuffed out of existence the moment they set foot in this world.

  For Gale, it will be the opposite, and she’ll be happy, eventually. She’ll meet back up with Sawyer and Benny, at some point. Things are blurry where they’re concerned—like they are part of a future with too many options, too many paths. I think they’ll be happy… at least for bits of time. Sad, too, but that’s life, isn’t it? Love and friendship, grief and heartbreak and hatred that runs bone deep.

  I don’t think I would fit into their future, not like this. I see too much, I will be unable to help myself from reaching out and touching the future and past, from melding myself into them and trying—failing—to change the things that are already set.

  It doesn’t matter. Such a future will not come. My future is already set.

  Maybe. Probably.

  There is a bit I cannot see—that I don’t think I’m meant to see: the after. What is there after death? I don’t think I’ll completely cease to exist, but there is something there, some block I cannot get past.

  It’s strange, but that’s okay. I always loved the unknown, and this—knowing the perfect moment to reach up and unpin my {Blood Hairclips} and snap them into Hyr and Emilia’s hair instead, the moment I need to move, hurl myself from Hyr’s arms and reach back into the universe and pull—is a little anti-climactic for me.

  There’s no pain, at least, when the god kills me. There is only light, and Emilia’s sob, a flash of her being held back by Hyr, safe behind the barrier I created for them in the seconds before my death, so much grief spread over their faces that as I die, my only regret is that I was born into this world, with parents who perhaps won’t be happy I died, but will not be able to mourn me the way even these two people I barely know will.

  That’s a little comforting, as the universe consumes me. At least someone will remember me.

  At least someone loved me, even if I wish they could have loved me a bit longer.

  ? ? ?

  “Hello, Caro.”

  My eyes flutter open, met not by the red of the universe, which had greeted me as it sucked me into it, intent to consume my everything. Instead, the world is white and pure, empty save someone I know and yet do not.

  ?You aren’t—? I try to say, but I know my words aren’t coming out.

  “You won’t be able to speak that way here,” she says, shaking a lock of short silver hair back from her forehead. “I doubt you’ll be able to speak like me here either.”

  She smiles, holds out a hand. “Do you trust me?” she asks, and how could I not?