The game went on and on. Harper tried it and realized her hand-eye coordination from sword training had made her very good at it, while Violet remained singularly terrible. They passed the hammer around, talking and laughing, until the bonfire was down to the embers and the sky above them was black. Harper stuck to her single cup of liquor. Everyone else had indulged far more, and it showed.
Still, she was having far more fun than she’d anticipated. It was her first party and it wasn’t so bad, not when it meant she could forget for ten seconds that her dad had tried to kill her and there was an unstoppable corruption slowly infecting the entire town. Her foreboding from earlier had worn off—even Isaac seemed to be sobering up a little. Maybe this would be all right.
“How does it still taste so terrible?” Violet grumbled from beside her, shaking her cup accusatorially. They were sitting on the logs in front of the remnants of fire to combat the chilly fall air.
“I’m not sure,” May said thoughtfully from the log next to her. “I think my taste buds have gone numb.”
“Hey!” Isaac called out from the edge of the clearing. “Can somebody tell me which way the house is? I need water.”
“Oh my god,” May said, shaking her head. “How are you lost? It’s literally right there.”
“And I am literally wasted, thank you very much.”
“All right, all right, I’ll help you.” She got up, and Violet followed her out of the clearing, saying something to May about finding a bathroom.
Which left Harper and Justin alone, a situation Harper had deliberately been trying to avoid. Harper set her now-empty cup on the ground, her heartbeat accelerating, and when she looked back up again, Justin had gotten up from his seat across the clearing.
“Hey,” he said, gesturing at the log beside her. “Can I?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry nobody came to your party.”
“That’s not true.” Justin’s voice was quiet and earnest as he sat down. “You came.”
Harper snorted. “Out of obligation.”
But Justin was already shaking his head. “You never do anything you don’t want to do.” He set his drink down on the tree stump beside them and leaned forward. Harper had absolutely no idea what to do about the look on his face: solemn and serious, nothing at all like the drunk Justin she’d heard stories about. “Do you remember how we used to talk about this? How it would be after our rituals?”
Harper’s throat burned. She could feel the alcohol coursing through her system, the cool autumn air against her face. “You used to promise you’d read my cards.”
“And you would tell me that I wasn’t allowed to lie to you,” Justin said hoarsely. “That I had to tell you what was going to happen, even if it was terrible.”
“And you’d say…” Harper paused, remembering the rest of it. The ache in her chest was suddenly unbearable, a deep, wordless longing that cut her to the core.
“That it wouldn’t matter.” Justin’s voice trembled. “Because nothing that bad would ever happen to us.”
Harper knew it wasn’t funny, but the laugh spilled out of her anyway, a little bitter, a little sad. “You had to know even then that it was never going to be like that, Justin.”
“I was trying to be optimistic.”
“By telling yourself nice lies?”
“I get it, okay? I was naive and wrong and we’re all fucked up now.” Justin’s eyes met hers, and Harper realized she could no longer pretend this was any kind of normal conversation. Not when she had to think through every word before she said it. Not when their knees were brushing and the lanterns in the trees had given everything around them a soft, hazy glow. “Happy fucking birthday, I guess.”
She already knew this moment would become a memory that she would call upon more often than she was proud of, replaying each exquisite, agonizing word they had said until she knew them all by heart.
Harper reached her hand upward, cupping it around his cheek. Her fingers curled in the soft blond hair behind his ear as his eyes went wide.
“You could probably turn me to stone, huh?” he whispered. “If you really wanted to?”
“I probably could.” Harper swept the curve of her palm down to his neck. His heartbeat pulsed through her hand, so fast, so fragile. “But I wouldn’t.”
He leaned toward her, so handsome, so tentative. His eyes looked flat and unnatural in the darkness, and suddenly it all rushed through Harper—the Beast, the Gray, the corruption. She jerked back, nauseous, her hand returning to her lap.
“Sorry,” Justin mumbled, looking horrified. “I didn’t mean to overstep.”
“That’s not it.” Harper shuddered. “I—I just—You know how I went into the Gray?”
Justin nodded solemnly. “Of course.”
“Well, I didn’t just see the corruption in there,” she said heavily. “I also saw the Beast. And it’s been, um… It’s been haunting me.”
Justin stared at her for a long, unbroken moment, the only sound the soft rustle of the leaves in the trees behind them and the crackle of the firelight. “What did it look like?”
It was a child’s question—something they had asked each other dozens of times, when they were young and the Gray was a nightmare they could only dream about instead of one they had lived, when the monster inside it felt almost exciting. Because the idea of being necessary, the only people who could protect everyone, was intoxicating. It tugged at her even now, but the question it asked was different than the one she’d asked as a child. What would we do, it said, if there was no monster for us to fight?
Harper had pictured the monster in the Gray with a thousand eyes, with a spider’s wiry legs, with great pointed teeth and slavering jaws. Now she stared at Justin’s face and wondered why she’d even entertained the thought that the Beast could look like something else.
“You don’t want to know,” she whispered.
Justin frowned. “I can handle it.”
The words hung in her throat, suspended.
“Well,” she said at last. “I guess Violet saw Rosie for a reason. Because it shows you the person who’ll hurt you the most.”
She saw the moment he figured it out—the pain that cut through the flickering firelight, a raw, deep wound that she had needed no blade to inflict. And Harper understood in that moment that she should never have told him the truth. All it had done was make him look at her like he’d broken her and make her angry that he thought she needed to be fixed.
“Oh,” he said quietly. “I see. I—I have to go.”
He rose to his feet and stumbled off into the trees. Harper pulled her jacket around her shoulders and huddled closer to the fire, shivering. She’d thought not drinking much would help her handle this, but it wasn’t about the alcohol. The problem was her and Justin.
She wanted to run her fingers through his soft blond hair—then close her hand into a fist and push him down to his knees. She wanted her lips on his throat in the same place she would put a blade. She wanted him to look at her the way he had when they had fought at the festival, with awe and fear and want, a want that matched hers. Neither of them knew exactly what to do about this wanting—and yet neither could bear to let it fade away.