The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) Read Free Page B

with a
neutral expression. It’s not a frown, though, or a grimace, which
replaces the tight feeling in my chest with something lighter, air
instead of gutter water.
    I approach the edge of
the water, following the Guardians’ cue, but instead of drinking it
like they do I splash my face, washing off dried tears of self-pity
as well as grime and sweat.
    I glance up as a
shadow falls across the water and watch my sister drop to the soggy
dirt floor, her clothes instantly caked with mud. She doesn’t seem
to mind, though. Tia rests her chin on her knees and closes her
eyes. The dark circles around her eyelids aren’t any better, but
she’s started eating again, swallowing every tiny mouthful with
grim determination, and she stopped crying long ago. I think
sometimes I don’t have to hold her together, though I still do.
She’s got enough steel in her will and stubbornness in her heart to
keep her from succumbing. She won’t let anything beat her, not this
new Tia.
    What will happen when
Horatia realises she doesn’t need me at all?
    I
draw an arm around her and think I can’t
keep being so selfish . I have to stop
thinking about how every single thing that happens will affect
me.
    Yeah, things are bad
for me right now. Everything has changed. I’ve lost my home—I
should be glad to have lost my home. I don’t want to go back to the
rations and rules but I miss the … stability, the predictability of
it. I’ve lost people I love, lost my family. Thalia. Wes. John,
wherever he is. It feels like the weight of the whole universe is
pressing me into the mud face first, holding me down until I
choke.
    Suffocation, that’s what it feels like, to be always
surrounded by grieving people but not to allow yourself to grieve
with them, to be wracked with guilt but to never let a single crack
form in the shell you’re wearing because it might make your family
even worse. It feels like all the oxygen in the air has burned away
and I’m gasping and gaping wide open, like some kind of fish washed
up from the Thames. But only on the inside. Never, never , on the
outside.
    People have died and I feel responsible, am responsible. But none of that is
even half as bad as loving a person the way Horatia loved Marrin
and having to live when they are dead. If Tia can keep going, I can
keep going, and I can suffer silently.
    I splash a handful of
water over my face, fill a bottle I found along the trek, and help
my sister stand. She tips forward but finds balance with her palms
against my chest. She must be able to feel my heart beating under
her fingertips, beating for her and her alone. I’m not like Tia—I
can’t keep on living no matter what. I’m not strong. I don’t
endure. If it weren’t for my sister I’d have lost my life in the
Fall. She’s the only reason I fought, the only reason I’m still
trudging on now when all I really want is to stop.
    “I
love you,” I tell her. “I’m here if you need me.” I tip her face up
with fingers that could be gentler and wait for her eyes find mine.
She stares, glassy, right through me. “You have to tell me what to
do, Tia. I’ll do whatever you need to stop this … this pain , but you have to
tell me,” I plead. “You have to speak.”
    She shakes her head,
stringy hair spilling around her.
    “Okay,” I sigh. Maybe
what Tia needs right now is for me to leave her alone.
    Over my sister’s
shoulder I see Branwell, his calves buried in the water. He’s
staring at the still pool like it hides the answer to life itself.
I also see Hele watching me and my sister with a sad smile. I wish
people would stop feeling sorry for me—it’s not a feeling I like,
being pitiful, pathetic—but I can’t really expect them to stop
pitying me until I stop pitying myself.
    I try to conjure the
feeling of when Tia was chosen on Victory Day, when I knew she had
left me willingly and thought she was working for Officials, when
everything was dark and hopeless but I was fighting anyway.