THREE DAYS LATER
I sat on the porch swing, staring out at the orange sky that painted a perfect backdrop to the walnut tree where Jude, Daniel, and I had spent so much of our childhood playing up in its branches. I took in deep gulps of early evening air. It was cold and icy in my lungs, but the sharp pain with each breath felt somewhat invigorating.
Like I was actually waking up for the first time in three days.
What had happened in the many hours that followed the end of the ceremony had pretty much been a blur. I’d been exhausted, mentally fighting off the fatigue that tried to overtake my body after having poured so much of my power into Jude in order cure him. But there’d been no time for rest. So many things needed to be done, so many decisions needed to be made, and so many people now looked toward Daniel and me as the ones to make them.
The Elders had wanted to give Jude a warrior’s send-off—burn his body like they did with the five Etlu guardians we’d lost to the Shadow Kings during the ceremony. But I refused, knowing Mom would want Jude to have a proper human funeral. Which had left us to deal with the legal ramifications of his death—to explain what had happened to him in a way the sheriff and the rest of the town could accept. It was Daniel who’d come up with the solution. Jude’s body had still held a terrible gash in his side, where he’d taken a blow from Caleb’s claws.
“Jude died in a wolf attack,” Daniel had said. “We went wolf hunting, looking to win the ten-thousand-dollar bounty. But the wolf attacked us, and Jude, in the process of saving my life, grappled with the wolf, killing it, but was fatally injured by his own weapon. We’ll bring Jude’s body, along with one of the smallest of the wolf carcasses, to the sheriff as proof. Everyone will know that he died to save my life. Everyone should know that.”
The sheriff had bought the story. The mayor declared Jude a town hero for saving us all from the terrible wolf and awarded our family the prize money. Dad donated it to the homeless shelter in Jude’s name. And because of Jude’s sacrifice, the whole town had turned out for tonight’s memorial. I’d been obliged to retell the lie of how Jude had died over and over again in front of the crowd of mingling neighbors, parishioners, and the occasional superhuman werewolf, all here to pay their respects to Jude.
Today we should have been hosting Jude’s nineteenth birthday party; instead, we were hosting his wake.
I’d come outside to escape for a few minutes. I’d retold the lie so many times I had almost started to believe that false story myself. But I didn’t want to forget the truth. I wanted the pain of it, mixed with the icy stabbing of the night’s air, to keep me feeling alive and awake.
Two things I knew Jude wasn’t anymore.
Part of me had hoped that he’d rise again, like Daniel had when I’d cured him last year. But really, deep down, I’d known he wouldn’t. Killing Jude hadn’t been an ultimate sacrifice the way it had been for Daniel, because I’d known when I plunged that spear into Jude’s heart that I wasn’t sacrificing my soul to save him. What I’d done for Jude had freed his soul, but it wasn’t enough to restore his life.
And I wondered if it was better this way.
Or at least if it was what Jude had wanted.
The words he’d mouthed to me just before I tried to heal him—the words he’d been too weak actually to say out loud, still echoed in my head, even though they’d made no sound. “Let me go,” he’d tried to say, with desperate pleading in his eyes. “Let me go. It’s easier.…”
Jude hadn’t been able to imagine a future for himself.
And perhaps dying a martyr—sacrificing himself for Daniel and me—had been the easiest way out he could see.…