Chapter 15: The Boy on the Ridge

The fever did not come as plates this time.

It came as a ridge in the dark, and Ambrose was twenty-six again, flat on his back in cold ash.

Smoke stood in the air above him.

Somewhere a man was screaming orders that nobody could obey.

A boy knelt over him.

He was seventeen, in a plain grey tunic burnt through at both sleeves, and his forearms were lit gold to the elbow.

His face was Linus's face.

It was thinner, and much younger, and had no idea what to do with itself.

"Don't," Ambrose tried to say. "Leave it. Run."

The boy shook his head.

He pressed both hands flat against Ambrose's chest, and the gold poured out of him into Ambrose's skin.

"Live," the boy said.

It was the only word he said.

Then the light went out of his arms, and his eyes went with it, and he slid sideways into the ash.

Ambrose woke with a shout stuck in his throat.

The bedroom was grey with early light.

Linus's hand was already on his chest, warm and bare, and Linus himself was propped on one elbow, awake.

"You were calling for somebody," he said.

"The boy."

"I know."

Linus's thumb moved over his breastbone.

"You said Live. You said it twice in your sleep."

Ambrose lay still.

Eleven days had passed since the Hearing, and he had counted every one.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Drone Who Claimed the Marshal from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.