The entire mind-numbing journey, Atlas felt consumed with guilt. It was all his fault. His fault that they were caught in the elevator, his fault that their parents had tried to make him disappear, his fault that he hadn’t figured out a better way to get Avery a message. He thought of the cupcakes he’d sent her, in those frantic few seconds, and felt sick. Had Avery not realized what he meant by them—that he would find a way to come for her, somehow, no matter what it took?
Atlas remembered the way her eyes had burned on him in the darkness of the elevator, when she turned to him and whispered, Don’t make promises you can’t guarantee you’ll keep.
He hadn’t been able to keep his promises, after all. He had failed her.
What a colossal idiot he’d been. Mr. Good Intentions, screwing things up yet again. He felt like someone from a Shakespearean tragedy, the ill-fated lovers torn apart, ruining his life through his own misguided mistakes.
Atlas had never guessed that Avery would do something like this, that she would leave a gaping, Avery-shaped hole in the universe. But then, she was the one who’d been left in New York, dealing with the vicious hate-soaked fallout of that night.
The priest sprinkled the casket with holy water. It was a massive, carved wooden casket, custom-built; and though Atlas hadn’t carried it, he knew it would be curiously empty, because it contained no Avery. They never found what remained of her body. All that survived were a few long strands of her fine-spun golden hair, buried in the ashes.
It might be better this way. At least now Atlas wouldn’t have to see her charred and mangled. He was free to remember Avery the way he wanted to, vibrant and laughing and acutely alive.
Father Harold began the concluding rites, and Atlas couldn’t breathe. He hated this service, and yet he didn’t want it to end, because when it ended Avery would truly be gone.
Finally the organ broke into up a recessional, the voices of the boys’ choir lifted in the Requiem Aeternam. The bereaved family made their way down the center aisle: Pierson and Elizabeth Fuller, Grandmother Fuller, a few scattered aunts and uncles. Atlas stepped farther into the shadows.
When Leda walked past, wearing a long-sleeved black knit dress and tights, Atlas couldn’t help noticing that she didn’t seem . . . afflicted enough. Her steps were brisk, her eyes as dark and darting as ever; and before Atlas could retreat any farther, those eyes had turned in his direction and were boring directly into his.
He should have known that of all people, Leda would spot him instantly.
He froze in terror, certain that Leda would make a scene. Instead she pursed her lips and jerked her head toward one of the blocked-off side chapels, as if to say, That way, then walked on through the main doors. Atlas felt he had no choice but to obey her summons.
He headed toward the chapel, where a pair of carved stone angels gazed down on him with inscrutable calm. Their wings were leathery instead of feathered—like a bat’s wings, rather than a bird’s. Maybe they weren’t angels at all. It felt oddly fitting.
Leda didn’t return until the church had long since emptied.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered, glancing nervously over her shoulder. “I thought you were far away.”
“I was, but then I came back,” Atlas said haltingly, stating the obvious. But his brain wasn’t working properly. He couldn’t think through his grief.
Leda shifted impatiently, one ballet flat tapping against the cold marble floor. She seemed surprisingly irritated with him. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“If you thought I would miss the chance to say good-bye—” he began, but Leda interrupted him.
“There’s something you need to know, about what really happened to Avery.”
EPILOGUE
A GIRL STOOD in the Budapest airport, wearing jeans and a shapeless sweatshirt, a tattered red bag slung over one shoulder. She was trying to decide where to go next—luxuriating in the pleasant anticipation of it, wherever it would be.
Like all public spaces, the airport was a world of abbreviated anonymous encounters, of strangers thrust together in temporary forced intimacy. The girl kept her head down, avoiding eye contact, trying to escape notice; and to her continued surprise, it worked. No one paid any attention to her.
Her stomach surprised her with a growl of hunger. Okay, a snack first, she thought, and then a destination.
Every choice had become a sort of game with her. She would tilt her head a little to the side, her brows drawn together, to internally debate whether she wanted limeade or beet juice. One might have safely assumed that the girl didn’t know her own preferences, and perhaps she didn’t. Maybe she wasn’t sure whether her preferences were actually hers, or whether they had been handed to her, like everything else in her life thus far.
She paused near one of the flexiglass windows, to look out at the planes landing and taking off. She loved watching the various steps of its choreography: the sloshing water tanks that fueled the jets, the individual transport pods that moved like strings of beads, picking up each individual person and driving them toward the drop-off point.
She reached absentmindedly up to her jet-black hair, recently and crudely cropped in a boyish cut. Her head felt curiously light without the heavy tresses that normally spilled over her shoulders. It was a wonderful sensation.
The girl tilted her head against the glass and let her eyes flutter shut. They still burned from the lightning-fast retina-replacement surgery she’d had in an unmarked but surprisingly clean “doctor’s office” down in the Sprawl. What a strange, reckless few days it had been.