“I’m going to keep you safe now.” I push the words out past the thickness in my throat. “Do you believe me?”
She nods again. I pull her to me, squeezing. She feels so thin, so fragile. But I know that she is strong. She always has been. She will be ready for whatever comes next.
“Take my hand,” I tell her. I’m not certain where to go, and my mind flashes to Raven. Then I remember that she is gone—murdered at the wall—and the sickness threatens to overwhelm me again. But I have to stay calm for Grace’s sake.
I need to find a safe place to go with Grace until the fighting is done. My mother will help me; she’ll know what to do.
Grace’s grip is surprisingly strong. We pick our way along the shoreline, threading between the people—Invalids and regulators alike—injured, dying, and dead. At the top of the slope, Colin, limping, leans heavily on another boy and makes his way to an empty spot on the grass. The other boy looks up and my heart stops.
Alex.
He sees me almost immediately after I’ve spotted him. I want to call out to him, but my voice is caught in my throat. For a second, he hesitates. Then he eases Colin down into the grass and bends to say something to him. Colin nods, gripping his knee, wincing.
Then Alex is jogging toward me.
“Alex.” It’s as though saying his name makes him real. He stops a few inches away from me, and his eyes go to Grace, and then back to me. “This is Grace,” I say, tugging her hand. She hangs back, angling her body behind mine.
“I remember,” he says. There is no more hardness in his eyes, no more hatred. He clears his throat. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“Here I am.” The sun feels overly bright, and all of a sudden I can think of nothing to say, no words to describe everything I’ve thought and wished and wondered. “I—I got your note.”
He nods. His mouth tightens just a little. “Is Julian . . . ?”
“I don’t know where Julian is,” I say, and then instantly feel guilty. I think of his blue eyes, and his warmth curling around me when I slept. I hope he has not been hurt. I bend down so I can look Grace in the eyes. “Sit here for a minute, okay, Gracie?”
She folds herself to the ground obediently. I can’t bring myself to step more than two paces away from her. Alex follows.
I lower my voice so Grace won’t hear us. “Is it true?” I ask him.
“Is what true?” His eyes are the color of honey. These are the eyes I remember from my dreams.
“That you still love me,” I say, breathless. “I need to know.”
Alex nods. He reaches out and touches my face—barely skimming my cheekbone and brushing away a bit of my hair. “It’s true.”
“But . . . I’ve changed,” I say. “And you’ve changed.”
“That’s true too,” he says quietly. I look at the scar on his face, stretching from his left eye to his jawline, and something hitches in my chest.
“So what now?” I ask him. The light is too bright; the day feels as though it’s merging into dream.
“Do you love me?” Alex asks. And I could cry; I could press my face into his chest and breathe in, and pretend that nothing has changed, that everything will be perfect and whole and healed again.
But I can’t. I know I can’t.
“I never stopped.” I look away from him. I look at Grace, and the high grass littered with the wounded and the dead. I think of Julian, and his clear blue eyes, his patience and goodness. I think of all the fighting we’ve done, and all the fighting we have yet to do. I take a deep breath. “But it’s more complicated than that.”
Alex reaches out and places his hands on my shoulders. “I’m not going to run away again,” he says.
“I don’t want you to,” I tell him.
His fingers find my cheek, and I rest for a second against his palm, letting the pain of the past few months flow out of me, letting him turn my head toward his. Then he bends down and kisses me: light and perfect, his lips just barely meeting mine, a kiss that promises renewal.
“Lena!”
I step away from Alex when Grace shouts. She has climbed to her feet and is pointing toward the border wall, bouncing excitedly on her toes, full of energy. I turn to look. For a second, tears break apart my vision, turn the world to a kaleidoscope of colors—color crawling up the wall, making a mosaic of the concrete.
No. Not color: people. People are surging toward the wall.
More than that: They are tearing it down.
Yelling, wild and triumphant, brandishing hammers and bits of the ruined scaffolding, or picking with their bare hands, they are dismantling the wall piece by piece, breaking the boundaries of the world as we know it. Joy surges inside me. Grace begins to run; she, too, is pulled toward the wall.
“Grace, wait!” I start to follow her, and Alex grabs my hand.
“I’ll find you,” he says, watching me with the eyes I remember. “I won’t let you go again.”
I don’t trust myself to speak. Instead I nod, hoping that he understands me. He squeezes my hand.