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“Angry.” Oh, there was a whole lot of that. “You can be upset—scared—and you can rage that it wasn’t fair, because it wasn’t. A lot of this stuff hasn’t been fair for you, but especially this. Nothing about it was right, and you’ve got to let yourself experience those emotions.” “I am.” Kind of. Strange thing was that I felt all of those things, but it wasn’t enough. Like a cap on a bottle unscrewed just enough to let a little bit of air in. A sad look crossed his face as he shook his head. “You’re not. And you’ve got to let it out, Alex, or it will rot you from the inside.” My chest rose sharply. I was already rotten on the inside. “I’m trying.” “I know.” Aiden leaned forward, his eyes never leaving mine. “I’m sorry I doubted you this morning.” “Aiden—” He raised a hand. “Hear me out, okay? The last thing you needed when you woke up after something like that was to have me react that way. I know that didn’t help.” It wasn’t the choir-singing, romantic reunion I imagined, but I also understood. “My eyes…” “That’s not a good enough reason for how I acted.” “It’s not that big of a deal, Aiden, but I forgive you.” Aiden stared at me a moment longer and then sat back. His gaze drifted over my face and then to the sheared locks. I wanted to hide. “Come here,” he said gently. The coldness seeped into my chest, and I stayed in place, but the words burst out of me as if my mouth had been hijacked by inner Alex. “I look like Frankenstein.” “You’re beautiful.” “I look like Frankenstein with a beauty-school-dropout haircut.” Our eyes locked again. “You’ve never been more beautiful to me than you are right now.” “You need your eyes checked.” He smiled a little. “And you need your head examined.” I bit down on my lip. “Come here,” he said again, raising his hand. This time, I didn’t think about the numbness and the coldness in my chest. I pushed past them and forced my legs forward. In three uneven steps, my fingers curled around his. Aiden tugged me into his lap, fitting me against his chest so I could hear his heart thunder in his chest. His arms swept around me, holding me in place. A breath shuddered through him, and gods, I loved it when he held me like this. His lips brushed my forehead. “Agapi mou.”I smiled against his chest, and in the dark, I could almost pretend that everything was normal. And in that moment, I needed that. I really did. *** Just as the sun began to crest the horizon, thousands of students, hundreds of staff members, and those who had sought refuge converged on the cemetery that rested beyond the dorms, nestled against the fortress-like wall surrounding the back of the Covenant. The cemetery was a lot like the one on Deity Island. Statues of the gods oversaw the massive mausoleums and graves, and hyacinths bloomed year-round. To me, those flowers had always served as a twisted reminder of what could happen if you were favored by a god. I wondered if there’d be a flower named after me one day. Alexandrias had a nice ring to it. Hopefully they would be beautiful, like a dense spike of vibrant red flowers, and not look like something you’d find growing up from a crack in the pavement. In death, a half and a pure were treated as equals, and like my mom had once said, it was the only time the two races would rest side by side. But things were still segregated amongst the living, even when there was no greater time than now for halfs and pures to come together as one. Pures took center stage, situated in front of the funeral pyres. It didn’t seem to matter that only one of the linen-wrapped bodies had belonged to a pure, and the other three bodies belonged to halfs. Ritual and law decreed that pures got first-row seating, and so they did. Behind the pure-blooded Council members, students, pure Guards and Sentinels, and civilians, stood the half-bloods. I knew they could barely see the pyres