Light in Dark Places

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Benedict lies awake at night and he can't sleep. It's too cold, for one thing. Downing keeps the A/C on at night, which in this city is a luxury that is also a necessity, but Benedict had never been able to afford air conditioning and he'd grown accustomed to sleeping with the stifling heat of Sahuaro.

For another thing, sleeping has been uncomfortable since his...transformation. His wing folds back, so if he sleeps on his stomach it doesn't get in the way. Or he can stretch it out and drape it over the side of the bed, if he wanted to sleep on his back. The problem is, he always slept on his left side, and now that's not possible anymore.

And the final thing that keeps him awake is the fact that the night is heavy with echoes. Nothing specific, it just feels weighted in a way that is becoming familiar.

I think I am going mad, Benedict says to the voice in his head. I'm not sure how much longer I can live like this.

You endure so much. You're so much stronger than you know.

Benedict closes his eyes because it is a nice change to have that thought inside him; he's never been so compassionate to himself.

Tonight he keeps thinking about Joan. There's some kind of urgency and also a memory triggering in the corners of his mind; like those moments after you first wake up in the morning and you know that you dreamt but you can't quite recall the dream so it just sits at the top of your mind, just out of reach.

And he still doesn't know what it is, but he's certain it has something to do with Joan.

It's all he can think about. He tries to sleep but he can't. It's the kind of madness that's like when you're not sure if you've locked the door at night. He knows there's nothing he can do to contain this. There's no possibility of sleep while he is obsessing over this.

Finally, he swings his legs over the bed.

You are going to Joan Kaas now?

She's doing something. Something dangerous. I think she needs help.

How are you going to find her?

The same way I always do. I'm going to follow the echoes.

*

One person can make a difference for one person. Joan keeps thinking about what Benedict said. She thinks about Jude and Schwartz and Seung-ri and all of them saying there's nothing we can do and she hates it. Carl Mathiessen and the red god had been so assured of their own strength, so smug with their untouchable nature, and she hates it.

Seung-ri, too. And Jisu and Hernandez. The Three Kings of Sahuaro are probably the most powerful humans in the world. And they clearly used their power for good, but why couldn't they do more? They kept the city safe—their city—but it was like all three of them decided that if it wasn't for Sahuaro there was nothing they could do.

You're being a child, she reminds herself. A nine-year-old baby who doesn't know how the world works. She knows that's what everyone is thinking and they're right, of course they're right.

But she hates the very concept of impossibility. Surely Seung-ri must have been told it was impossible for Joan to ever wake up—but she did, didn't she? She resists the idea that there was nothing that could be done with every fiber of her being.

Which is why she sneaks out in the middle of the night and wanders the military base.

*

She hasn't even done anything illegal—yet—but her heart is beating furiously. She is disobeying her sister—just the sheer act of sneaking out at night is disobedience, without doing anything else. And disobeying her sister feels illegal. And maybe it is, Seung-ri is a King after all. And Joan snuck past all Three Kings, technically, and any sneaking around the Kings is probably illegal too.