A flurry of wings fills my head, so loud and frantic and chaotic that I can't think. They beat against my skull, my brain, but I've never felt more rooted to the ground.
Boots is dead.
Boots is dead.
I crumple to my knees, holding his little body, clutching him to me and saying his name over and over again as if that will somehow bring him back.
This can't be happening – he can't – we were so close –
Boots.
"Caia?" Taffy's voice sounds behind me as she comes into the room. "What's – no."
The last word rips out of her throat in a broken scream.
Grief rises in a great wave inside me, and then it is burned away by pure rage.
"Cole," I snarl. "She did this."
Taffy shuffles up next to me. Her face is tear-blotched, and when she reaches for Boots, her hands are shaking.
But I don't let her take him. He was my cat. I'm the one who found him that day in the rain, shivering by the fence. I'm the one who smuggled him into the CC and up to my room, when he was so tiny he could fit in the palm of my hand, and I didn't think he would survive the night. I'm the one he's slept with every night, the one he wakes up next to.
I was supposed to be responsible for him and I've let him down.
I let him die.
"Cole did this," I say again, and the words are sharp as knives in my mouth, sharp as the knife that gave me my scars.
Gently, I lay Boots down on my bed. He's so still, so limp, and suddenly it's hard to breathe.
There are ashes and pieces of glass in my throat.
How could she?
How could she kill my cat?
"How . . . how do you know?" Taffy sobs. She reaches out to Boots but she can't bring herself to touch his fur.
"She was the only one who knew about him!"
Suddenly I'm on my feet, and the world is spinning around me from the force of my rage. I've never felt anger like this before, like it is burning me up inside, utterly consuming me.
"What are you doing?" Taffy asks, staring up at me from the floor.
"I'm going to find Cole."
She jumps and stands in front of me. "You can't go after her. You can't let the Handlers know that we had a pet here."
Had a pet.
We don't have one any more.
Because of Cole.
"She murdered Boots," I say, and although my voice is calm, Taffy flinches. "While we were planning how to save him, she sneaked into our room and killed him."
I hope it was quick.
The thought of my little cat suffering – I can't bear it.
There's so much going on inside me, so much anger and grief and hurt that it feels like it's tearing me apart. I am a hurricane.
"Caia –" Taffy starts, but I'm past listening.
I push past her and storm out of the room. Priya is coming down the corridor towards me, and her mouth is moving so she must be saying something, but I can't hear it.
There are wings beating in my ears, furious thrashing movements that cut off all other noise.
Whatever Priya sees in my face makes her fall back a pace. I walk past her and I don't look back.
I find Cole in her room.
Her roommate isn't here. She's sitting on the edge of her bed, stiff-backed but otherwise calm, as if she's been waiting for me.
But her eyes are haunted and red, like she's cried recently.
I stop a foot or so away from her, and I have no idea what to do next.
I want to break her face.
I want to see her bleed.
I also want to collapse on the floor and cry out the aching pieces of my broken heart.
If I take another step, I will either break down or attack her, and I honestly don't know which it will be.
Then something catches my eyes, and I trip over a ragged breath.
My little wooden bird, carefully chosen for me by Roan, the first gift that anyone has ever given me and the one thing that was truly mine, is sitting on Cole's windowsill.
It's not enough that she murdered my cat. She had to steal my bird too.
I lunge forward, and I'm not sure if I'm lunging for the bird or for Cole, but either way, she ducks low, catches me around the waist and throws me to the floor.
"You bitch," I snarl, flinging her off. "You evil, evil bitch."
Launching myself to my feet, I grab the bird from the sill, but Cole is faster than I expected; she smacks it from my hand. I whip the back of my hand across her face in return, and I'm rewarded by a sharp gasp.
But that's not enough.
It's not beginning to be enough.
I tackle her to the floor and aim a punch at her face, but I'm shaking with rage and it makes me slow and uncoordinated. Cole easily blocks me, then twists her hips, knocking me over. She climbs on top of me, pinning my wrists over my head.
"Stop it," she cries.
"Murderer," I spit, thrashing beneath her.
I've never wanted to hurt someone like this, never wanted to drag my nails across someone's skin, feel it split, watch the blood well out.
I manage to get one hand free, but she turns her face away so I can't hit anything vital, so I tangle my fingers in her hair and pull as hard as I can. Cole yelps and rolls away from me.
I'm left with a satisfying amount of blondish-brown hair still twisted around my fingers.
"Will you just listen to me?" she cries, holding the side of her head.
"Listen to you? You killed my cat!"
I lunge again, but Cole dodges out of the way.
We both see the bird at the same time, lying half-under Cole's bed.
We both dive for it at the same time.
I have no idea why Cole is so determined to get her hands on it, but I will not let her take one more thing from me.
My fingers close around the wooden wings, but Cole's fingers are there too, and then we're both sprawling on the floor, wrestling for it. Cole punches me in the stomach, and I jab an elbow into her face. It makes a solid hit, but amazingly she still doesn't let go of the bird.
Somehow she manages to scramble half on top of me, driving her knee into the small of my back to hold me down. She tries to prise the bird out of my hands and when I don't let go, she sinks her teeth into my wrist.
I let go of the bird, and she triumphantly scoops it up and dances out of my way.
The rage burning inside me withers away, until there's only the awful, wrenching grief. The last thing I want to do is cry in front of Cole, but I can't help it.
Cole stares down at me as I sob on her floor, and something cracks in her eyes. For a moment I think she's going to start crying too.
But she doesn't.
She looks from me to the bird, and I hold out a hand.
"Please, give it back to me," I say, my voice shaking.
"I can't," she says, taking another step back, until she's backed up against her roommate's bed.
She looks at the bird again, her expression hardening, and I know what she's going to do before she does it.
"Cole, don't –"
She throws my bird to the floor and stamps on it.