Book One – Chapter 19

The question caught and tore it all out in an instant — the storm of thought, the trembling light behind his eyes. It came like a hook through the chest. It seized the heart of hope, every last filament, and dragged it out, dragged it still. Without the hope to bind them, the thoughts collapsed. The noise fell away. The lightning went dark. What remained in that darkness was the single voice of burning terror, the one that swam too deep to grasp.

He is with them. His loyalty is with them, not us. Whatever we reveal to him, he will pass on to them. They will kill us. Think about it. He cannot have joined them, he cannot have travelled with them for weeks without knowing what they do. This means he is hiding something. This means he is like them. What if he is like the Queen? How can you be sure _{she i}s not _also a _mon— NONE! None of them is like her! No one! No one is safe. She is all we need. All we are is for her. There are no safe people here. She has all the answers. She is the answer to everything —

Yu’s legs gave in. He collapsed into a crouch, low and cramping, with his legs bent, his back bent forward and his head buried between his knees. He wrapped his wings tight around his body, and pressing the feathered stumps into his face, pressing harder still against his beaks until the air thinned, and then he screamed into them while trying, in the same motion, to suffocate the sound.

Th_is. Was ^not. Hi_m!
_This. Co^uld ^not. B_e. _Him!

He had to believe the wanting part would not stay. He had to believe it could be taken out of him, torn out, driven out, scraped away. He needed to know that it was not his, that it was not a part of him in the first place, not something of him, but something in him, something foreign, invasive, destructive — a splinter, a parasite, a poison.

_Like          
a   pois_on                                

              _need_le

    
               He could not let it sink in deeper,
          he had to keep pushing and pulling at it.

Yu pushed himself off the floor.

We need to keep going.

Keep going, as if it did not exist. Keep moving, as if it did not sting and bite and burn beneath every breath. As if nothing had happened in that half hour that had not even been half an hour. Yu needed to believe this, so that he could wear the mask. So that he could become the mask, the still-whole self he had been before.

Until then, remember who you were. Remember who you must be. Pretend.

Fasten the mask. So tight that there would be no room left for the wanting part — and none for the other, the hysterical, trembling, terrified self. Tighten it until the mask became the face again.

Now, work.