Chapter 1
Sorin
The world is dying.
We are dying.
Hunger gnaws at my stomach, as it has for some time now. I think of it as a beast with dull, thick teeth that stopped growling long ago. Now, it’s just a silent, incessant thing.
And it has a companion in my throat—only the beast living there has claws, and the scratches burn. Every swallow hurts. Every cough is parched, scraping me like dry brush.
But I don’t give up easily. Scarcity is common now—food, water, supplies. Pain is just a symptom of being alive—akin to breathing, walking, and sleeping. Pain just is.
It doesn’t stop Cassius from complaining, though.
He knows pain better than any of us, of the physical type, anyway, and likes to run his mouth just to hear his own voice.
“Everywhere’s running dry.” My oldest friend growls as he kicks a dented metal bucket. It clatters down the cracked concrete. Our worn boots rustle the invasive foliage thriving in the abandoned city. “Food’s gone. Food’s all damn gone.”
I glance over at him as we walk down the street. “What else is new, Cassius?” I ask dryly.
Cassius doesn’t answer. He just grumbles. He used to be a talker. The charismatic bastard could get us through any of the many sticky situations this world hurled at its dwindling occupants.
But as food, water, and everything else became increasingly scarce, everyone’s soul has begun to change. Now, people aren’t who they used to be, in many more ways than one.
His gold-brown eyes aren’t as sharp. They used to gleam with mischief and “roguish charm,” as Selene once pointed out. Now they are as dull as a useless coin.
“Save your energy, idiot.” Selene’s quiet, not entirely unkind rasp startles me. I don’t outwardly show it, but she has a way of just knowing things. Her pale eyes flick to mine, and a weary smile ghosts across her mouth. “Spooked you that easily, Sorin?”
I snort with equally weary laughter, but it hides my dread. She is taking the drought the worst. Her pale skin is gaunt and stretches thin, almost veiny, with purple hollows defining her eye sockets. She’s still ethereal, more than she’s ever had the right to be, but she moves more slowly, sluggish, saving what little energy she has without much sustenance.
“Not spooked,” I tell her with feigned lightness. “Just glad you still have bite.”
Her mouth twitches again, but it’s brief, just like everything else, though a spark flashes in her eyes, an echo of the vibrant spirit she used to be—and always would be. It’s just dimmer now. “Oh, I’ve plenty of bite.”
I wink and guide her away from a chunk of upheaved concrete. She stumbles a little, and it breaks my heart to see the lack of grace I know she was born with.
“I don’t doubt it,” I say. “Let’s take a break here.”
Selene doesn’t protest as I lead her to the nearest building. The door is long gone, of course, the inside a looted husk, with not a single living thing to be seen or heard but for the snuffle of small skitter creatures. Those aren’t edible. Well, they are. We’re just not that desperate.
Well, I think grimly, almost to correct myself.
Then I mentally shake my head. No. We’re not scavengers.
Selene drifts away from my guiding hand to slump against a wall and slide to the ground. She tucks her knees in and rests her cheek on one. Her pale eyes glow in the dark, damp space.
I don’t care to discern what this building used to be. It doesn’t matter. It’s shelter from the sun reaching its peak. The heat makes the thirst and hunger worse. It isn’t kind to our skin, either.
Cassius, still grumbling, follows as I crouch beside Selene. There isn’t much—nothing, really—that I can do to alleviate her pain and exhaustion. If I can’t ease my own suffering, how can I help hers?
“We need to hunt better,” Cassius growls, stalking the length of the space rather than following Selene’s advice. “Track deeper into little crevices. Food’s hiding somewhere here.” He turns to me sharply, flashing his teeth. “We didn’t walk all the way to this hellhole of a city to wander aimlessly and hope food crosses our path.”
His voice scrapes like stone against stone, another result of nothing to drink for days.
I stand, ignoring how much effort it took just to do so. I face my friend, but his glare doesn’t soften. I don’t blame him. “Downfall, ironically,” I say tiredly, “is our hope. We haven’t been here in a while, and remember, we all agreed it was worth another visit. Word traveled that—”
Cassius scoffs and waves me off. “Words are lies. Rumors are just that. There’s nothing but corpses here.”
“We’ve only just gotten here,” Selene points out. Her voice, too, is husky and threadbare as if she has only so many words to say before her voice cracks into silence. “Patience.”
“I ain’t got that shit anymore,” Cassius snaps, whirling on her, his eyes haunted but blazing. “I’m hungry. You think stomachs and throats know patience?”
Anger, rare these days in the maw of exhaustion, flares in my chest. “Don’t get belligerent. We are not turning on each other. You hear me, Cassius Ellasar?”
Cassius holds my glare, scowling, until a smile spreads across his stubbled face like a blood spill. The expression is chilling even to me—and that is really saying something.
Maybe we are turning into scavengers. Because scavenger is synonymous with desperate. And the desperate do not survive well these days.
“Oh,” Cassius croons, tilting his head like a predator. “My friend utilizes my useless full name. I’m in trouble. Shame on me for getting on our leader’s nerves.”
My jaw clenches and my spine locks. Darkness coils in my achingly empty gut, and I consider ramming my fist into his. It’s far from the first time we’ve argued about our survival. It’s what friends do sometimes.
But this time, Cassius is provoking me—wanting to start a fight. The glint in his eyes borders on savage. As drained as he is, his spirit, his soul, still burns, and it has energy to expend.
“Those days are long over,” I tell him through gritted teeth. “Hierarchy crumbled. We’re equals.”
Cassius takes that in stride. He spreads his arms like a welcome. “Great. You’ll value my input, then. We hunt. Soon as the sun hides its bastard face, we go out. We chase shadows until we find attached bodies.”
Honestly, I can’t argue with that. It was why we came here, though put into more violent descriptions. I glance at Selene, my anger fading back into default despair as I watch her shrivel day by day into a living ghost.
I grate my jaw again, but this time it’s in resolve. I turn back to Cassius. “Fine. We take different directions. Meet here with whatever we find. Look for food, water, supplies, clothes—anything to help us survive our damned existence.”
Cassius’s grin widens into something feral. I can tell he wants to bolt now, but the sun rays slanting through the broken window make him sulk. He nods, glancing at Selene. His gaze lingers, losing its glint. Something about that lingering makes my nape prickle.
But Selene doesn’t look up, so he gives up with a huff and crosses the room to slouch in the corner. I let him sulk. He always comes around. He just needs time to decompress on his own terms.
I sit beside Selene, knocking the back of my head lightly on the wall as I look up at the waterlogged, holey ceiling. Selene doesn’t move or speak, but I sense her shuffle closer. The air’s not warm or cold, just neutral, and everywhere reeks of decay and hopelessness.
We are dying.
And we really aren’t keen on dying.
As we have already discovered, dozing conserves energy. We let our guards down more often than not these days just to keep that reserve.
Cassius awakens first—of course he does—to awaken me and Selene with rough nudges to our boots. Selene startles, but I’m there to ground her. She calms, blinking slowly, her body already tempted to fall into rest again.
“No, no,” I urge, hauling myself to my feet. “Up. Sun’s down, hunt’s on.”
Cassius’s eager growl rattles in his chest as he strikes up a new pacing route. “Slicked throats, filled bellies, Selene. Worth the achy knees.”
“Achy everything,” Selene grumbles snippily as she stands and struggles to keep her balance.
We follow Cassius outside. Downfall is tinged red at sundown.
“I go north,” he says, pointing. “Selene West. Sorin East.”
Selene and I nod. It’s pointless arguing when the plan makes sense.
And so we split up with the third and fourth beasts warring behind our ribcages: despair… and hope.
I walk until I’m damn nearly limping and the stars mock us above in their faraway peace. The cool breeze kisses my skin, both a balm and an itch as it irritates the dryness.
I find nothing to quench, nothing to satisfy, not a single warm body. The river that cuts through the far quadrant has dried up, who the hell knows when.
Still, I cross the bridge whose structure is less than desirable and skid down the bank to the trickling veins of an excuse for a stream. The three of us carry waterskins like another limb. I unhook mine from my frayed belt and pop the cork, setting the lip of it to the water.
Like a blessing from gods no one believes in, water fills the waterskin to the brim. Is it clean? No. Is it chilled enough to soothe burning throats? Hardly. Is it something?
Yes.
And that’s all I can manage.
I knock the pouch back, gulping unattractively, my throat working painfully, until I drain the last drop. The mineral-rank water both burns and eases the strain, and when it pools in my empty stomach, it pangs.
I glare at the excuse for a stream, betrayed. “Hypocrite,” I mutter as I fill the waterskin again—and drain it again.
I refill and drink again and again until I want to throw it all up. Then I fill it once more and begin the trek back to my companions.
I search hidey-holes as I go. I still find nothing but skittering creatures that are just as hungry. Maybe if I catch just one—
“Won’t work,” Cassius says, startling me out of my thoughts. “It’s not worth the effort.”
I join him at the end of the street, holding my waterskin out for him. “Drink half,” I order. “Other half is for Selene.”
Cassius, for once, obeys. His face twists in disgust, but he doesn’t complain otherwise, handing the pouch back with a swipe of his tongue across his lower lip. “Found nothing but critters,” he reports flatly.
“Much the same.”
We turn at Selene’s rasp. She’s limping, her arms wrapping around herself as if her body is freezing. Hell, she looks eternally frail. Cassius and I meet her halfway. I give her the waterskin and she drinks carefully, her eyes half-closed to bare blue-purple eyelids as thin as flower petals.
When she’s done, she looks at me with a plea. “More,” she whispers.
I nod immediately and turn eastward. “This way to the oasis.”
The world is dying.
And so are we.
