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“Ekko,” Jinx cried out, shoving her way through the crowd.
He was surrounded by other firelights, lying prone and covered in blood. She grabbed his wrist, relieved to find some pulse.
“Scar,” she said, begging the Vastayn to give her some good news.
But the look in his eyes was enough to send her spiraling into a panic. She couldn’t live without Ekko. He had been the only real constant in her life. The only good thing she really had left. And it was (your fault) her fault, and she should have been stronger (everyone you love dies), and she would be so utterly alone—
“He needs shimmer,” Scar said.
The voices went silent.
“We have shimmer, right? We have to have some?”
Scar shook his head.
“Okay,” Jinx said. “Then you’ll just have to use me.”
I can fix this.
“What?” Scar asked.
“I have shimmer. It’s in my blood. My body is a little shimmer factory.“
She laughed, but Scar just looked horrified.
“Jinx, I don’t even know if that will work. It must be diluted, and it might take a lot of blood.”
“Do a transfusion. He’s suffering from blood loss anyway. We’re a compatible type, right?”
“Fine,” Scar said. “Get him to the infirmary. Jinx, I know you don’t take to needles well. Are you going to freak out?”
“Yup. You should tie me down.”
“Great,” Scar said.
They went to the infirmary, and Jinx sat down in a chair. The idea of a needle seemed more terrifying than any battle. Memories began to creep in. Things she wished she could forget.
Three years earlier, Powder had been the one half dead.
“Powder,” Ekko sobbed, holding her. “Please don’t do this to me.”
He had seen that look in her eyes before she shoved him off their board and pulled the pin. Silco’s forces were decimated, and this was technically a victory. But Powder wasn’t moving. She was still alive, technically, but not for long. Her body was burned and broken.
Maybe this was for the best. She had always been in so much pain. Here, she almost looked at peace. He wondered if she was happier this way. He lay down next to her, resting his head on her shoulder, like they were lying down in bed together. He wanted to close his eyes here with her. Forever. He couldn’t imagine going home with her body. How was he going to face Vi?
A bird landed on Powder. Not a crow or another carrion bird. A bluebird.
He could feel the wind on his face. There were stories of a goddess of the wind. A goddess of hope. She took the form of a bluebird. He didn’t know if he believed those stories or not. But he did know one thing.
Powder wasn’t dying here today.
He picked her up. It was dangerous, going into the heart of Silco’s territory. But at this point, he was past fearing death. In the days that followed, he could never quite remember how he reached the lab of the doctor they called Singed. But he would never forget the way the man looked at him, with a cool curiosity.
“Can you fix her?” Ekko asked.
“I can keep her alive,” he said. “But you know, being alive is not always preferable.”
Ekko would never really be able to forgive himself for what he did next, the choice he made.
“It’s preferable to me.”
Scar used leather straps to keep her from moving. She looked at Ekko, and tried to think of him. It didn’t work. When Scar put the needle in her for the transfusion, she was back on the metal slab in the madman’s lab. She had fooled herself into thinking that she had forgotten everything that happened, but all those ugly memories crawled out like maggots the second the needle hit her vein.
The pain had been very bad. Probably the worst she’d ever been in, and that was saying something. It was like being injected with broken glass. The Shimmer engorged her veins and arteries, causing them to crack and tear only to heal again. Every nerve in her body was being shredded and burned. Her eyes felt so hot she thought they would just burst. But she could still see him standing over her.
“Does it hurt?” Ekko asked. “I hope it does. I hope it really burns.”
“Ekko,” she begged, almost choking on blood and shimmer. “Please.”
“This is what you deserve,” he said, running his hand over her head in a mockery of tenderness. “You killed Mylo and Claggor. You killed Vander. You’re the reason I grew up hungry and alone.”
Another dose must have been injected into her veins. She hadn’t known it was possible to feel this kind of pain and still live.
“Ekko,” she begged. “Please. Please just let me die.”
Because she couldn’t blame him for hating her. He was right. That was fair. He was right. Even in her delirious state, she knew that much. His life would have been better if he never met her. But this was cruel. Even he couldn’t hate her this much.
He was on top of her now, his hands around her throat. She thought he might be offering her some kind of mercy. She was wrong.
“No, Pow-Pow,” he said. “This is what you deserve.”
Singed had offered to sedate him, and Ekko had refused. If Powder was going to die on that slab, he was going to be with her. He wouldn’t let her go through this alone. Most of the words she had been screaming out were indecipherable. Whatever Singed was doing to her had rendered her looking and sounding barely human. But there was a moment when she almost seemed lucid. Her eyes, despite being now tinted pink, look more like Powder than ever. The old Powder, before the warehouse and the madness.
“Ekko,” she said, her voice thick with pain. “Please. Please just let me die.”
It was then that Ekko realized he’d made the wrong choice. He should have let her rest. She would have died peacefully and painlessly. She had chosen to die for the cause, for him. And he had taken that choice from her. He had let her be tortured like this.
“You have to stop,” he said to Singed.
“It’s too late now,” he said. “Far too late.”
And he was right. It was too late for the both of them. The door to the lab opened, and Silco stepped out, surrounded by his men.
It was at that moment that Powder stopped screaming. Ekko grabbed her bruised wrist only to find nothing.
She was gone.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
He managed to kiss her forehead one last time before Silco’s men grabbed him and pulled him away. They forced him to his knees. He knew this was how he died. That was okay. Almost a relief. He thought of what the doctor had said.
Sometimes death was preferable.
“What exactly were you trying to accomplish?” Silco asked him.
He didn’t have the energy to answer.
“Very well,” Silco said. “This isn’t going to be fast, I’m afraid. You’re going to have to be an example. So much for the boy savior.”
He took out his knife, its edge glimmering in the dull green light. Ekko just waited, with something more akin to hope than fear.
And then Silco stopped. There was a dull squelching noise as his body went rigid and blood poured from his mouth. As his body fell, Ekko saw her.
She was holding Silco’s heart in her hand.
Jinx wasn’t sure where she was or why she was hurting so much. But she knew Silco’s voice.
“So much for the boy savior.”
Ekko.
Ekko was in trouble.
The next thing she knew, she was holding Silco’s heart.
The others came at her. They had weapons, and she didn’t. But she was so much stronger. She fought with her nails and teeth like an animal. They could shoot or stab her, but her body wasn’t capable of registering pain.
“Powder.”
She lashed out, striking the man across the chest before she realized who he was.
“Ekko?”
He managed to get up with a grunt of pain.
“Powder, it’s me.”
“Where am I?” Powder asked, suddenly growing scared. “What’s going on?“
She looked around at all the carnage in the room, realizing she was covered in blood.
“You’re okay,” he said, putting his arms around her.
“I want to go home,” she said, sobbing.
“Then let’s go home.”
Ekko awoke with a groan to see Powder sitting next to him on the hospital bed, looking paler than ever.
“Hey,” she said. “You’re alive, huh?”
“I’m kinda impressed with Scar,” Ekko said, getting into a sitting position, not without some difficulty. “I really thought I was a goner there.”
“It was my idea to give you some of my blood,” Jinx said cheerfully. “You probably wouldn’t have survived without my freakishness.”
“You gave me a transfusion?”
He knew how much Powder had hated needles, ever since the experiment.
“Don’t worry, you aren’t a weird shimmer monster now,” she said. “It should all be out of your system in a few days.”
“That’s not what I was worried about. I was worried about you.”
“Of course you were,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You almost died and I’m still all you care about. By now you should know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. I’d give you my heart if I had too. I mean, I already technically gave you someone else’s heart.”
Ekko chuckled at that, but his face grew more grim as he remembered that night.
“I never apologized for that,” he said quietly.
“For what?”
“I took you to Singed. I had him do all those terrible things to you, just because I couldn’t bear the thought of living without you.”
“What are you saying? That you should have just let me die?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that wasn’t my choice to make.”
She put her head on his shoulder.
“I would have always chosen to be with you. Whatever it took. I can promise you that.”
“Do you remember it?” Ekko asked.
“Yes,” she said softly. “It was probably the second worst thing that ever happened to me. But it was also one of the best, because it meant I got to save you.”
“Fuck, Jinx,” he said. “I don’t deserve you, you know that?”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “We promised we’d stay alive for each other no matter what, right? I know you’d do the same. We protect each other, right?”
“We protect each other,” Ekko agreed.
He knew there were seldom few mainstays in their turbulent lives. But one was certain: she would be beside him, fighting one way or another. And he would be with her. That was a promise they would keep.