J. Mitchell - The Severed Tower

Mira was the one to look away now. The silence that hung between them was almost tangible. “Ravan told me I could go when we get to Polestar, that I could take Zoey with me.”

Holt considered her words, then nodded. “Good. You should. There’s nothing you can do for me, there’s too many of them. They’d kill you if you tried.”

Mira felt a knot forming in her throat. In spite of what may have transpired between them, the idea of leaving him like this, with these people…

“Zoey needs you,” he told her.

She wiped a tear away before it could fall, and looked back at Holt. Mira felt a sudden, intense desire to tell him everything, her fears of this place, her doubts about herself. But she could just make out the shape of the tattoo on his wrist. In her mind, she saw him standing over her on the plane again.

She shook her head sadly. “How did we get here?”

Holt stared back at her. “Nothing stays the same. It’s just how it is.”

The words were an acknowledgement of sorts. An admission that they were lost to each other, and it only made Mira feel more alone.

She headed back toward the campfires. “I… need to think.”

“Mira.” Holt’s voice stopped her, but she didn’t turn around. “I’m sorry about what happened.”

Mira could hear the sorrow in his tone. She nodded. “I know.”

And then she left him.

* * *

AS HOLT WATCHED MIRA disappear, he felt a mix of things—anger, sadness, frustration. It was his fault, this whole mess. He should have left when he had the chance. But how many times had he had that option, both before and after Midnight City? He always did the same damn thing. He always stayed. Now it had finally caught up with him.

“That girl can handle herself, I’ll give her that.” A figure stepped from the dark. “I see why you like her.”

She was tall, lean, and athletic, as always, with a presence that was at once intimidating and magnetic. The long hair that flowed down behind her was so black it absorbed the flickering light of the campfires. She was barely anything but a shadow before him, but even so, Holt could see her blue eyes peering into his.

Ravan smiled. Like everything about her, it was an action of duality, a subtle indication of a complex, fragmented personality. The smile was warm and inviting—and at the same time predatory. At one time Holt had been closer to her than to anyone since Emily, and even he could never tell which side of the mirror was really Ravan.

Holt said nothing, just stared back. She was holding what looked like a plate of food in one hand. In the other, there was something else, and she threw it to him. His glove landed on his chest.

At the sight of it, he realized the truth. She had taken it off him, so Mira would see.

“Mira’s not the kind to go and pry and find things out for herself, she wouldn’t have done it on her own,” Ravan told him. “So I helped her out. She wanted to know the truth, and you sure as hell weren’t gonna tell her.”

Holt felt anger building in him, but still he said nothing.

Ravan set the plate in front of him, maybe less than a foot away. It looked like rabbit, stewed and salted with carrots and potatoes, in some kind of thick sauce. The aroma alone almost made him pass out, it had been so long since he’d eaten a cooked meal instead of just foodstuff or MREs. But his hands and feet were still tied to the merry-go-round, and he couldn’t get to it. He tried not to let his hunger show.

“I’m sorry about your head,” Ravan said. “I didn’t mean for them to do that. They have explicit instructions not to hurt you anymore, you have my word.”

A lot of good that did him now, he thought. The pain in his head was sharp, it felt like a watermelon where the rifle butt had connected.

He watched Ravan sit on the ground in front of him and slowly pull her knees up under her chin, never taking her eyes off him. “You know you’re gonna have to talk to me eventually, Holt.”

Holt stared back. She was probably right. “From what I remember, you never were much for talking.”

Ravan shrugged around her knees. “I talk, I just don’t waste words. People never say what they really mean. It’s one thing I miss about you. Always said what you felt, and you said it with as little fuss as possible.”

Ravan pulled something from a pocket. “Your little friend—Zoey is her name? She had this on her.” Holt saw it was his father’s Swiss Army Knife. “I recognized it. I know how much it means to you. The others would have traded it away for comic books or something just as stupid.”

Ravan pried open one of the knife’s tools. Unlike Zoey, she found the right one immediately; its main blade, a long, gleaming knife, and Ravan gently ran her finger along its edge. “Goodness. You certainly keep it sharp, don’t you?” Holt froze as he watched the knife in her hands.

“You know, you’re going to have to do more than just ‘talk’ to me, Holt,” she said slowly, twisting the knife, watching it reflect the campfires. “There are things I need to hear from you, things I need to know. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you what these things are, and I’m sure you know you’ll tell them to someone eventually. It would be better—in a lot of ways, much better—if that someone were me.”

Ravan casually shifted her gaze from the knife back to him. Holt said nothing, just watched her warily. She moved toward him, holding the blade delicately. Holt watched it come toward him. There was a time when Holt was sure he was the one person Ravan would never hurt—but that was a long time ago.

She turned the knife so it pointed toward his neck, resting inches from his throat. Holt swallowed. He was helpless, unable to move, and they both knew it. Ravan stared at him a moment more—then raised the knife and cut the bonds that tied his hands to the plaster horse.

When it was done, she put the blade away and sat back down on the ground, hugging her knees again.

Holt rubbed his hands appreciatively, feeling the pins and needles of blood returning to his fingers. Then he looked at the food in front of him, steam still rising from it. He reached for it greedily, wolfing down huge portions with the spoon she’d brought.

“I see your table manners haven’t improved any,” Ravan said, watching with amusement. “Has it been that long since you’ve had real food? Must have been tough for you, out here all this time on your own. Must have been lonely.”

Holt looked up as he ate. “And you still try to hide the questions you don’t wanna ask.”

Ravan smiled. “You know me pretty good, don’t you?”

“If you were asking if I missed you, things are never as cut-and-dried as that.”

“Some things are. It’s not a hard question. Did you or didn’t you?”

Holt thought about it. In many ways they had been perfect for each other. He had his walls, she had hers. The sad, ironic thing was that the parts of him that were so comfortable with Ravan were the parts he didn’t particularly like about himself, but, in the end, the truth was the truth. “Yes.”

Ravan hugged her knees tighter. “Do you know what it cost me when you left?”

“Do you know what it would have cost me to stay?”

“We were talented and ambitious, we had the eye of the right people—and we were Heedless. Once Tiberius was gone, we were in a position to run everything. We had it all exactly the way we wanted it.”

“No, we had it exactly the way you wanted it. You just assumed we wanted the same things.”

She studied him with a mix of frustration and confusion. “Why didn’t you talk to me? Why did you just… leave? Leave and say nothing? ”