24. Eva

I'm frozen for a few moments, staring into Iago's monstrously green eyes, thinking there must be something else I should say. Then, I turn on my heel. In my rush, I push my way under the heavy curtains instead of finding the gap between them, losing some dignity in the process. It makes me angry. I am afraid and angry, so frustrated I could cry, but I won't.

"I'll show you the way out," Barbie tells me. I follow her without a word. I resent that she has to show me the way out. I would not find the exit on my own.

Barbie doesn't speak until we are at the door, and I am lacing up my boots.

"You don't need to leave," her voice is a whine.

"I don't have a choice."

"No, you're a human. You have free will. You always have a choice," Barbie mutters.

"What about you then?" I say.

"I'm sorry," she says.

I don't know what to say to her. Maybe I should hate her, but I don't. I don't hate her at all. I don't even dislike her. But she didn't tell me about Iago. She didn't trust me. Who knows how much she even likes me. I thought we were each other's friends. I thought she was the first person in my life who could fully understand, accept, and even love me. Patty was basically paid to love me. Theo loves parts of me but hates other parts. The Magus never came close. I feel so incredibly lonely. Empty. I'm a pot with a hole in it. I want to cry, but I won't. I don't blame Barbie because it is my fault. I am the one who is unlovable.

"It's fine," I say.

I consider telling her that I was going to invite her to leave with Theo and me before I realized she was Iago's puppet—but the inclination is a bitter one. I don't hate her, yet I want to hurt her, as she hurt me. But if I try to hurt her and she is indifferent to it, I will only be hurting myself even more.

We stare at each other a moment longer. She is still so pretty. Her blooming eyelashes make her look perpetually surprised, even in a moment like this, which she must have known from the moment she befriended me was inevitable.

"Goodbye," I say.

"Good luck."

I want to go straight to Theo's work and drag him away by the hair, but I realize I have no clue how to find where he works. Home—no, not home, the dorm—is the only place I can think to go. It is fall, and the days have been getting colder and shorter, but it is a beautiful cloudless day today, with sunlight splashing me in the face as I wade through shadows of beautiful buildings and orange-leaved trees. The people around all seem especially cheerful because of the warm weather. They are so oblivious. I wish I could be one of them. The stage lights were hot and bright, but the inside of the windowless theater had seemed like the darkest night.

I pack my room and Theo's room in no time at all. All we have is all we brought, and we had lost the horses and most of our belongings with them. I still have my sword though, and Theo still has his bow and arrows.

I surprise myself with my own calmness. I think I should cry. Isn't that what a normal girl would do? I should at least be afraid, facing the unknown yet again. But I am all ice inside. If anything, I am eager to leave. I'm glad to have an excuse to go. Esseff is someone's idea of a paradise, but not mine. It is beautiful here and I hate, hate, hate it.

I take a nap on Theo's bed while I wait for him to return.

I dream.

I am a young woman with no memories and no past. He might have nine-hundred, nine-thousand years of memories, I don't know. I have scraped my knee, and a thin trickle of blood is running into my shoe, but there is no pain. There is only pleasure that he is looking at me, he is focused on me. He is wearing gloves when he uses his handkerchief to wipe away the blood, when he wraps the bandage around my knee. I don't need a bandage. I'd be fine without one. But he puts the bandage on me anyway.

"Be careful," his voice is like thunder. It makes me want to dance in the rain.

I am newly created, but I feel so old. I know what the most important thing is, and it is within my grasp. But I forget what was so important the moment he turns away again. And again. And again.

"Eva, Eva, wake up," Theo is shaking my shoulder gently.

I blink up at him.

"What are you doing in my bed? In my room?"

"I thought you wanted to marry me, Theo," I say. I smile at him. I try to look sensual and languid.

Theo's ruddy face turns redder. We haven"t discussed marriage or romance since we came to Esseff. There has been a callus thickening between us.

"I do want to marry you, Eva," Theo hisses. "But you've been acting weird and avoiding me ever since we left our hometown. I didn't think you wanted to marry me. I don't want to be with someone who doesn't want me. I don't want to force the issue."

"I do want to be with you," I pat the bed beside me. "Come, sit." I'm all smiles.

He sits. He stares at me with distrusting green eyes beneath his red eyebrows.

I take his hand. It is rough and calloused and ruddy. I stroke his thumb. Poor Theo. I've spent how many hundreds of hours with him? At the Magus's manor, playing cards, riding horses, talking. On the run. Even here in Esseff, we've had dinner together countless nights. Yet do we really know each other at all? It is all surface level.

"Come with me," I say. I try to make my voice sultry. "Let's leave this place and be alone together."

I don't even know myself, so how could he know me?

"Leave?" Theo says, a dumb look on his face. "But it's great here."

"We need to leave, Theo," I say.

"What? Why? What are you talking about." He tries to take his hand back away from me, but I hold it steady, gently. He lets me have it.

I press his palm against my cheek. I say, "I can't stay in this city that is ruled by Iago. He destroyed your home. I don't trust it here. I don't like it here."

"Eva, don't you see?" Theo speaks earnestly. "He saved us. Iago brought us together. He helped the Magus burn my home, but he must not have had a choice. He also told me to meet you in the cryometery. He brought us to each other. He gave us sanctuary in Esseff. He's a good person. He's trying to build a society without suffering where everyone is happy."

"I'm not happy," I say, dropping Theo's hand. "I can never be happy here. This place is fake. How can you be happy here when you know that outside the walls are people suffering? Patty would have survived if Esseff didn't hoard all its resources, if every village had magtech. But the Magi hoard the magtech for themselves."

"I still don't see why that means we got to leave. You're making a bigger deal out of this than you have to."

"I'm not staying here."

"Where do you expect to go? You want to throw away a safe home for nothing. Literally nothing—we have nothing. We don't even have horses to get to another town. How do you expect to survive?"

Rationally, I know what Theo's saying makes sense. But I'm not being rational. I'm willing to risk being eaten by dragons or starving to death to leave. "Well, I'm leaving whether you come with me or not," is all I say.

"Listen Eva, just give it until morning, sleep on it, then we can talk about it again."

I laugh, "You just woke me up from a nap; I already slept on it! No, Theo. I am leaving. Now. I want you to come with me, but I understand if you would prefer to stay here."

Theo grasps my hand and pulls me up into a bear hug. I allow myself to close my eyes for the moment with my face against his warm chest. I allow myself to feel safe, if only for the moment, even if it is just an illusion.

"Don't think I'll let you get away from me that easily," he murmurs into my hair. "I love you. And if you really want to leave, then of course I will go with you."

I push away from Theo's chest enough to look into his green eyes. His pupils are rimmed with amber. They are a lunar eclipse reflected in the sea. They are beautiful and just for me. The Magus has eyes like a shining black crow flying away on a clear blue day.

I press myself against Theo's chest, stretch up, and kiss him on his freckled lips. He is my love, I think. He loves me. He will run away with me as many times as I ask him, even if it means leaving a place he loves behind—for the second time. He returns the kiss hesitantly, gently, it is as if our lips are properly introducing themselves for the first time, though they have exchanged many words and have met before. I'm warm. I want to fall asleep again in Theo's arms, against his strong, male body. Iago is right about some things. Theo deserves better. But I am selfish.

When I pull away, I see he is looking at me the way an excited dog eyes a bone.

"You're beautiful," he pants.

"I already packed our stuff. Let's go," I say.

It is now dark outside, and due to Esseff's strange rule against light at night, the only light comes from the half-moon and the stars. The citizens must have all retreated to their dorms for the night.

I know Iago said I was free to leave, but I feel as if we are sneaking away. I try to make my footfalls as silent as I can, walking heel-to-toe, and I want to tell Theo to do the same irrationally. I'm an irrational woman. We don't talk. Our dorm room isn't far from the entrance to Esseff, but I have rarely passed by it in all the time I have been here. I didn't have a reason to go near it or the morbid, glowing blue wall of corpses waiting for God to reawaken them.

I think the magus guard standing at attention by the wall is a different one than the one who was there when we first came to Esseff, taller, I think. But it is hard to tell in the night and with those white masks that the guards wear. Right now, his eerie white mask glows in the dark like a full moon.

"Excuse me," says Theo, "We need to get through the gate. We're leaving."

Without a word, the guard unlatches the gate and pushes it open for us. The dark forest beyond the clearing on the other side has me suddenly frightened. I don't know if I would have been brave enough to leave without Theo by my side, but he is by my side, so we walk out the gate together. The gate slowly shuts behind us, and I feel just as trapped on this side of the gate as I had on the other.

This is as far as I've thought: the other side of the wall.

"Let's walk along the wall until we reach the ocean, then let's head south. We are bound to find civilization, and in the meantime, we're sure to pass streams, so we won't have to worry too much about freshwater. Plus, we won't get lost."

"I'd be lost without you," I tell Theo. He laughs softly, and I smile.

We follow the glowing blue wall for hours. It is the only light other than the moon and the stars in the sky. I catch movement after movement in the corner of my eye, causing me to whip my head toward the wall, but it is repeatedly my imagination.

"Let's stop here for the night," says Theo, "We can keep going in the morning."

"No. Let's get to the ocean first. I can't sleep by this wall."

We keep walking. We hear the ocean before we see it, and then, over dunes of sand, there it is. It is just as magnificent at night as it is during the day, only now, instead of reflecting the blue daytime sky, it is reflecting the blackness of the night. Still, the water foams white as the waves maul the shore. It sounds like the blood rushing through my ears when I plug them.

"Wow," says Theo, "I've never seen the ocean at night before. It's awesome."

"Totally."

Theo doesn't suggest we stop now, so we keep going, both of us with our heads turned to the right, towards the sea.

"Do you think there are sea dragons?" Theo eventually asks.

"I don't know. Why would there be?"

"Well, there are sea birds, so why not sea dragons?"

"Hmm, could be. I wonder if they would have webbed toes then…"

Another pointless conversation. We're going through the motions, but it"s like trying to make conversation with a stranger. Someone I don't know, and who doesn't know me. We haven't talked about our past, of Patty, of the Magus at all.

"Look, Eva, lights."

I look. I see lights, a handful of them, each as faint as a distant star in the tree line.

"It must be people. Shall we go check it out?" Theo says.

"I don't like it. Why would there be a random light at the edge of the forest without a village or a town around?"

"Maybe it is someone with Magtech." Theo's tone is eager. His skin looks gray in the night light.

"Let"s keep going," I walk forward. "I don't want to meet anyone right now. They might be criminals."

"They're coming toward us," Theo says.

I look. Indeed, a small group of people is walking towards us. I want to run, but half of the people seem to be tall men, and I know I cannot outrun a man. The fact that some of them are women is somewhat comforting, though—surely women aren"t out to murder or rape us. Women aren"t as violent as men. But I draw my sword, ready. Theo also gets his bow and arrows ready.

The shortest male figure with an oddly accented, oddly flat voice, calls out, "We. Come. In. Peace."

Okay... What do you even say to that? If they genuinely came in peace, would they need to emphasize it? It"s like someone telling you, "I"m not going to murder you." I mean, I wasn"t even thinking you were going to murder me, but now that you"ve said it, it kind of sounds like you"re revealing your plan... I"m exhausted. Thoughts are all over the place. My hand clenches tightly around my sword hilt, almost painfully so.

"Stay back!" yells Theo, "Tell us who you are and what you are doing and what you want before you come any closer!"

"We. Just. Want. To. Talk," the man says.

"Well, we don't want to talk!" Theo yells.

"Yeah, we have nothing to talk about!" I find my voice. These people are strange. They move strangely and speak strangely. I don't like it. And then I see where the lights they are holding are coming from. "Theo, their hands!"

"What—they're monsters!"

Then his quiver is pulled, and it is emptied. He shoots an arrow right into the heart of their leader. The man gasps and pulls at the arrow with his hands with their glowing fingers. He doesn't fall until Theo has planted another arrow in his eye.

"Great leader!" one of the women yells, while the other woman sprints towards us, faster than I have ever seen a human move. I want to tell Theo what an idiot he is for fighting instead of flighting, but I don't have time. The woman is in front of Theo and her glowing fingers are gouging out his left eye, breaking through his skull. The light illuminates the redness of his blood and his hair in the dark. He is dead in an instant.

"Theo!" I wail, "Theo! Theo!" In gouging out Theo's eye, half his brain, the woman has gouged out my heart. I'm so entirely alone. There is no more Theo. There is no more Patty. There is no more Blacky or Horsey. I am a pack animal, a wolf, and my pack has been slaughtered. Without them, I will die.

"We should kill her too," says the living man, in the same accented voice as the dead one only with a bit more inflection. "She will not cooperate now that we have killed her friend."

"What a waste that would be," the woman whose hands aren't glowing red with blood says.

"I know but?—"

I can"t wait any longer for them to decide to kill me. I charge, swinging my sword, aiming to avenge Theo by cutting off the bloody woman's head. I know I"m going to die, but I"ll bring someone down with me because I am a bitter, bitter woman. I curse myself for never practicing sword fighting on sand. I am lopsided, I miss, and her hand, still wet with Theo's blood, wraps around my wrist, grinding my bones together. The pain is beyond white-hot; it is cold, dead. She crushes the life out of my wrist, leaving my hand hanging from the end of my arm, a limp fish on a line.

I scream.

But my wrist is fine. Why did I think it was crushed?

A sound like thunderclaps deafens me, and the woman, whose face I can now see is pretty—a young mother's face—is gaping with shock, trembling, then toppling. The Magus is behind her, tossing her aside as if she were a rag doll. The Magus is in front of me, shielding my body with his own, protecting me from the other monsters. Shining metal machinery, like pipes, are unfolded from his forearms; he aims them at another of the men and blood sprouts from the man's chest. The contraptions make noise like thunder. The Magus lets out a roar like a thunderclap. I'm going deaf in all the noise. I'm going to go numb from all the emotion.

The Magus is here. He came for me after all.