Suzao stumbled back, blood streaming from his nostrils. He hadn’t realized that Akos was left-handed. Or that I had been making him do push-ups for as long as I had known him.
Akos pursued him, bending his arm and thrusting up with his elbow, hitting Suzao again in the nose. Suzao’s yell echoed in the space. He lashed out blindly, grabbing the front of Akos’s armor and hurling him sideways. Akos’s balance faltered, and Suzao pressed him to the ground with a knee and punched him hard in the jaw.
I winced. Akos, looking dazed, pulled his knee up to his face like he was going to try to throw Suzao off. Instead, he drew a knife from the side of his boot, and drove the blade into Suzao’s side, right between two of his ribs.
Suzao, stunned, fell over, staring at the handle protruding from his side. Akos swiped with his other knife. There was a flash of red on Suzao’s throat when he collapsed.
I hadn’t even realized how tense I was until the fight was done and my muscles relaxed.
All around me was noise. Akos bent over Suzao’s body and yanked his second knife free. He wiped the blade on his pants, and sheathed it again in his boot. I could hear his shaking breaths amplified by the enhancers.
Don’t panic, I thought toward him, like he could hear.
He wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, and lifted his eyes to the people sitting around the arena. He turned in a slow circle, as if he was staring every one of them down. Then he sheathed his knife, and stepped over Suzao’s body to walk down the aisle toward the exit.
I waited a few seconds, then walked off the platform and into the crowd. My heavy clothes billowed away from my body as I went. I held up my skirts with both hands and tried to catch up to Akos, but he had too much of a lead; I didn’t see him as I marched through the corridors toward our quarters.
Once I reached the door, I paused with my hand near the sensor, listening.
At first, all I heard were heavy breaths that turned into sobs. Then Akos screamed, and there was a loud crash, followed by another one. He screamed again, and I pressed my ear to the door to listen, my lower lip trapped between my teeth. I bit down so hard I tasted blood when Akos’s screams turned to sobs.
I touched the sensor, opening the door.
He was sitting on the floor in the bathroom. There were pieces of shattered mirror all around him. He had ripped the shower curtain from the ceiling and the towel rack from the wall. He didn’t look up at me when I came in, or even when I walked carefully across the fragments of glass to reach him.
I knelt among the shards, and reached over his shoulder to turn the shower on. I waited until the water warmed up, then tugged him by his arm toward the spray.
I stood in the shower with him, fully clothed. His breaths came in sharp bursts against my cheek. I put my hand on the back of his neck and pulled his face toward the water. He closed his eyes and let it hit his cheeks. His trembling fingers sought mine, and he clutched my hand against his chest, against his armor.
We stood together for a long time, until his tears subsided. Then I turned the water off, and led him into the kitchen, scattering mirror pieces with my toes as I walked.
He was staring into middle distance. I wasn’t sure that he knew where he was, or what was happening to him. I undid the straps of his armor and guided it over his head; I pinched the hem of his shirt and peeled the wet fabric away from his body; I unbuttoned his pants and let them drop to the floor in a soaking-wet heap.
I had daydreamed about seeing him this way, and even about one day undressing him, taking away some of the layers that separated us, but this was not a daydream. He was in pain. I wanted to help him.
I wasn’t aware of my own pain, but as I helped him dry off, I saw the currentshadows moving, faster than they had in a long time. It was like someone had injected them into my veins, so they traveled alongside my blood. Dr. Fadlan had said that my currentgift was stronger when I was emotional. Well, he was right. I didn’t care about Suzao—in fact, I was planning to spit on his funeral pyre just to hear it sizzle—but I cared about Akos, more than anyone.
By then he had returned to his body, and he was responsive enough to help me bandage his arm and to walk into his bedroom on his own. I made sure he was under the covers, then put a pot on one of the burners at the apothecary counter. He had made a potion to keep me from having dreams, once. Now it was my turn.
CHAPTER 23: AKOS
EVERYTHING WAS SLIDING AWAY from Akos, silk on silk, oil beading on water. Losing time, sometimes, a few ticks passing in an hour in the shower—he got out with pruny fingers and bright skin—or a night of sleep lasting all the way until the next afternoon. Losing space, other times, and he was standing in the challenge arena, streaked with another man’s blood, or he was in the feathergrass, stumbling over the skeletons of those who had gotten lost there.
Losing hushflower petals to the inside of his cheek, so he could stay calm. Or the steadiness of his hands when they wouldn’t stop shaking. Or words on the way to his mouth.
Cyra let him go on that way for a few days. But the day before they were supposed to land in Voa again, when he had skipped a few meals in a row, she came into his room and said, “Get up. Now.”
He just looked at her, confused, like she was speaking a language he didn’t know.
She rolled her eyes, grabbed his arm, and pulled. Her touch stung. He winced.
“Shit,” she said, letting go. “See what’s happening? You’re starting to feel my currentgift, because you’re so weak your currentgift is faltering. That’s why you need to get up and eat something.”