The War of Elevens| Book 1 of the Space Thief Chronicles

Chapter 25| A Hundred Thousand Fires

Teskanash, Northern Bria Hungary

A hundred thousand fires burned into Melissa as she regained consciousness.

Her mind didn't quite catch up with her eyes; she lay there for several seconds, her brain feeling as if it was pumped full of lead. She pushed herself up on the bed, gulped in air, and shook her head. A quick glance to her left told her she was connected to an IV, and a look to her left told her that she was in an empty hospital room and it was late afternoon—lazy deep-yellow light fell through pastel blue curtains. 

Nathan.

Melissa yanked the IV out of her arm and it hurt, it hurt to kick back the sheets and climb out of the bed. Her bare feet hit the cold floor with a hard slap; the hospital gown was ice on her sweating skin. She limped to the door—a hundred thousand fires—Nathan—and eased it open.

Jake Ecscent looked up at her from an ugly orange armchair across the hall.

He was crying. When he saw her and his brain registered who she was, his chest rose and fell, rose and fell, the increments rapid and violent and terrible. He rose from the chair and what was he doing here and crossed the hall. He said, "Melissa." 

"Where's your father?" she asked, leaning on the doorframe for support. "How are you—what are you doing here?" 

Was she even in the Shifter World? 

"A Bloom Official brought me here, said he was a friend of my dad's." Jake's voice was breathy. Bloom Official. He knew about Shifters. Someone had told him about the Shifter World in the span of time she and Nathan had left for Lydia's and now. 

Nathan. 

Jake looked small; Melissa felt smaller. She looked down at him, ghost-boy, a watercolor-smudge in a world of oil-painted shapes. The tears were falling silently down his cheeks, which were bright red. 

Jake wrapped his arms around himself and said, "The government guy said that you'd know what to do with me." 

Melissa would not believe it until she heard the words come out of someone's mouth. "Where's your father?" 

Jake shook his head and bowed it so that his chin was touching his chest. Sobs exploded out of him: "He didn't—make—it—and I need you—because I don't have anyone else—"

A hundred

thousand

fires

burned.

Melissa collapsed against the doorframe. When she realized it couldn't hold her and she didn't want to be seen crying in the doorframe in front of Jake, she whispered, "I just need a second, please." She retreated back into her room and didn't even make it to her bed; she gripped one of the boards at the foot of it and leaned all her weight on it, doubled over, and knelt down.

The sobs exploded out of her, too. 

Nathan Ecscent. Dead. He'd pushed her out of the way and got shot and sent a fire blazing to burn monsters, and Melissa felt the whole horror of it ripping her organs apart. Heart and ribs and stomach and soul, tattered by He didn't make it. 

She smacked the floor with her hand because a bolt of pain just shot up through her leg. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so—"

If she hadn't gone to Lydia in the first place—no, if she hadn't blown Finn's head off then Lydia wouldn't have held a gun to her head ten years later and Nathan wouldn't be here, and she knew shooting Finn was the right choice at the time but now Nathan was dead and she didn't want him to be dead. She wanted to tell him how much she loved him, how good of a friend he was, how beautiful of a person he was even when he was a terrible person, how she wanted to be friends with him and how she forgave him and hypocritical she'd been of him all these years—