I sat across from Widow Anna, who was cooing over her granddaughter. The tiny swaddled babe had been born less than a month ago, but much like me, she had lost a parent.
"Your daddy would have been proud of you," she whispered to the sleeping infant as I nursed a mug of tea. "You're going to grow up in a better world than he did, thanks to those looking out for your future."
She had such faith in the new generation of Igniters despite the fact that there were only four of us remaining right now. As I gazed at the two of them, I recalled that Anna had told Luke that she expected babies from us.
That thought sent a well of sorrow that threatened to consume me. We would never fulfill that for her now, and I felt the emptiness more than ever.
"Anna," I said, wrapping my fingers so tight around my mug that they turned white, "do you still have that box that I gave you?"
The older woman's attention fixed on me, and she shamed me with one scathing look. "Young lady, when I say that I'll keep something safe, it remains safe. Why ever do you doubt that?"
"I was merely wondering because I would like a certain picture from its contents. Would you mind retrieving it?" I asked, managing to keep my tone light.
She stood up and extracted the mug from my grasp before laying the baby in my arms. "I'll go fetch it while you look over little Lucia."
While Anna puttered about in another room, the girl and I regarded each other in shock. She blinked up at me with sleepy eyes, seeming unable to decide what she thought of me.
Gently, I touched her soft cheek, starting to realize that this is why the Igniters had to succeed. This babe was part of a generation who would be able to taste freedom that had been snatched from the fingers of everyone who had lived before her in Cineres.
Such innocence still lingered within her eyes, an innocence that I had lost long ago.
"Which picture are you looking for?" Widow Anna said, placing the box on the table in front of me.
I unhooked an arm and gently trailed a finger across the grain of the box. "One of Luke and me. I'm going to go see Meara today, and I was hoping that it would help me talk to her."
She took back Lucia as I opened the lid, unprepared for the flood of tears that would spring to my eyes.
If this is how I reacted to a simple box full of papers, how would I respond once I actually went to Luke's grave and saw what they had branded him in death?
"Is that boy Matthew driving you to visit Meara?" She asked. "I fear, in some ways, he is much like his parents. Far too determined to get his way, no matter what the cost is, and if I remember his father right, he is a sneaky little thing.
"Percy always had more secrets than one person had any right to, and I'm sure that he took many more to his grave. Be careful what you let slip in front of anyone. Even the most ordinary of people can become the most dangerous to you."
I nodded slightly before gently cradling a photo of Luke and me, taken long before we had married but only shortly after we had shared that first kiss.
Had I once truly looked that innocent and carefree? Had it truly only been two years ago?
Unwillingly to look at myself, my younger happier self, any longer, I tucked the picture away and shut the lid on the box both on the table and in my mind.
"Thanks, Anna, for everything," I said, kissing the widow's cheek before bending and kissing little Lucia's forehead. "Goodbye, little one."
Luke's mother was the one to answer the door, and at the sight of me, her eyes filled with tears.
"We knew you would come eventually," she whispered, blinking desperately to prevent the tears from spilling down her cheeks. "I saw what you did the day Luke—Luke died. I knew that boy was keeping secrets from me."
How weak I felt in that moment when I had felt so strong. Seeing the woman who had birthed my husband and felt so acutely his death like me, yet realizing that I could never tell her the truth beyond what she believed.
"I..." I managed to choke out before she pulled me inside and embraced me tightly.
How I wanted to spill everything to this woman! How I had longed for a mother's embrace!
My shirtfront was starting to cling to my skin, and I realized that she was sobbing as she held me. A moment later, I tasted salt on my lips and understood that I wept with her.
"Luther told Henry and me everything," she said later after we had settled in chairs. "He thought we deserved to know the truth, though I suspected some of it already, because it won't be soon until the rest of us join Luke in the ground."
I only could blink at her before my lips managed to work again. "What ever do you mean? And how did Luther tell you?"
Luke's mother curled her fingers in her lap. "He stole the other copy of your marriage certificate from the Archives a day after he discovered the two of you. I didn't need the proof because I had seen how you looked at each other in those last brief moments. I told you the last part because, well, we knew it was happening. Rather than allowing Meara time to grieve her brother, they had her return to her apprenticeship immediately.
"They're weeding us out, Ilania, making sure that Meara is loyal to them before they kill the rest of us. We know too much, we're involved in too much, and Luther is just too dangerous."
I knew what she was saying. I had seen with my own eyes what Enforcement had done to Luke, and they had merely suspected him of revolutionary activities. I had watched them torture him and then punish him far beyond what his crimes called for.
They would turn to the rest of the family because of Luke, and that made my job of swaying Meara to the Igniters' side even more dangerous.
"I saw what they did to your son," I whispered. "They showed me videos while I was in interrogation. I would not wish that fate on anyone, regardless of how horrid they were."
She reached over and squeezed my hands gently. "There's nothing more you can do, Ilania, besides make sure that Meara is safe and knows the truth. Convince her however you can, protect her if she'll let you, but don't ever tell her how close you and Luke truly were."
"How has she not already discovered it with our marriage certificate in your possession?"
"We burned it immediately. We know what Enforcement teaches their recruits, and I know my daughter. The moment her brother didn't come home, she scoured the house, trying to find the reason he was taken in."
I sighed. "Will Meara even listen to me then? Will she be willing to be a traitor to everything that she's known for the past four years? Will she help us take down the system she's part of?"
"She loved Luke deeply," she said. "Despite the fact that she seemed unaffected by his death, I do believe that it shook her faith in Enforcement. You can get through to her, but you must be careful."
I flinched at the sound of the front door slamming and closed my eyes as the newcomer trudged our way, shoes echoing across the floor.
"Mother, why is she here? Why is my brother's killer sitting in our house?"
The questions were posed calmly, but when I managed to open my heavy eyes and look towards Meara, I saw her murderous gaze and the way her fists clenched tightly at her sides.
My sister-in-law wanted to kill me, slowly and painfully, and suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to stand up and run screaming out of the house.
Instead, I took a deep breath and pushed myself out of the chair onto legs that felt no stronger than carrot sticks that had been gnawed nearly apart.
"Meara, I came to talk to you. It's time that the two of us got the chance to talk some unspoken things between us out."
A flash of lightning lit her eyes, and I saw the Enforcer they had hardened her into as she locked her jaw and ground out, "I'm never ever speaking to someone whose hands are bathed in my brother's blood."
Just as quickly as she had swept into the house, Meara vanished, and this time her mother flinched as well.
I would have had an easier time convincing my oblivious father to join the Igniters than my own former classmate, but I could be stubborn too.
I stormed out of the house, pausing only briefly to snatch my coat off the hook in the entryway and to promise my mother-in-law that I'd come see her again, and set off towards the only place Meara could run to.
My husband.
Her brother.
The one place I had been avoiding like it contained all the sickness in the world before the Infernos.
Luke's grave.