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The empire is dead, but its cloying sweetness, the burn of its carbonation—that stays with you, eats at the calcium of your bones and the enamel of your teeth, until the illness is a part of you, forever.

But still, there is a need for catharsis—a scream, a fuck, a thunderclap to release the storm that builds within me.

Like something she owns, I think, barely able to hold the words back; the adrenaline from the shooting has left me taut, less able to control my emotions.

And are you?"
"Not yet." Her hand slides across the distance between us and closes around my thigh, as if she too means to lay claim

You don't own people," she says, her voice thick.
"Don't I? Take the rest from me."

“And yet my traitor fingers rest for a moment along her throat, my thumb finding the steady, unhurried beat of her heart. By the time my hand drops free, it feels as if the woman has seen me flinch a second time.”

“The momentum of my impact into Hua, how I wrap around her as I carry us both to the floor, Torres’ shocked expression as a rose of scarlet blooms from her brow—these moments I will remember until I die, a daguerreotype that joins my album of all the other near-misses, all the other moments that were almost the last.”

“All that is asked from me is access to my body: my limbs to shove and grab and hold, my chest to envelope, everything that I am and will be reduced to a coefficient of friction, my heart become the viscera that slows a deadly shot.”

“So I am dressed up like a conspicuous ornament and cast in the role of the kept woman, seen but not heard by my lady’s side. The metaphor holds up in other ways, too. Concubines exercise a specific power in a specific context, exchanging access to their bodies for a type of authority.“

“Yves snorts, low in her throat. She complies, pulling the silk together, pushing the button back in place. Her thumb brushes my throat and rests there a few seconds longer than necessary. Then her hand falls away. "See you tomorrow, Ms. Hua."

“We talk shop: I have just delivered a shipment to the border between America and Canada, where they kill each other for freshwater. She has just come from Britain, a land torn by famine and political schism—children starving in flooded streets, squatters in mud-streaked brick ruins, produce rotting in farms; that country has never been able to recover after its loss of colonial riches.”

“The servers wear bulletproof vests under their livery.”

“Occasionally we meet up in person to discuss which of us does more harm to the world.”

“She looks me over a final time, and I can see her coming to a preliminary judgement about how, precisely, she can use me. She smiles, and I realize it is the coldest, hardest surface in her office.”

“And yet my traitor fingers rest for a moment along her throat, my thumb finding the steady, unhurried beat of her heart. By the time my hand drops free, it feels as if the woman has seen me flinch a second time.”

“But what I feel are our two heartbeats, perfectly synced: still and slow despite the bloodshed around us.
And then I wrench myself back to reality, stand as I pull my gun. It’s already over, but I had to do something to break the spell.”

“There is a universe where Nora and I are happy. I know this to be true. There is a life where she didn’t vanish. I don’t know what comes next for me, but I know that. And I keep that in a sweet little jar in the back of my mind, right next to the feeling of her lips on my own, and I take it out when I need it most.”

à la even though I knew the end

“There’s no me without you,” I echoed back, because it felt truer than the version she had said.

“I think Nora felt trapped more than anything else. I think she maybe made a bad choice or two because she felt like she had to, and then all of a sudden she was a bad person, and bad people get bad consequences, whether they actually deserve them or not.”

The silence of the crowd, the wash of the flames. Nora’s eyes on me—not pleading, not sad. Satisfied. Like she had long been ready for this sort of thing and had just been waiting for someone to finally light the flame.

I wondered how far one person had to go to be considered past the reach of God’s grace. And I wondered who, exactly, had the authority to determine such a thing.

I spent a solid hour just staring at the curve of her hair on my pillow, wishing that this could be my eternity.

If you’d asked her, she would have told you that she hardly ever cried, but I know she was crying that night. Even if I couldn’t see it, even if she wouldn’t admit it, I could feel the gentle shaking of her body.

“I think this is it.” The words felt heavy, like an admission. “I don’t think I’m making it out of this one.”

Seeing Nora was an exercise in instinct more than rationality, and she was slipping through my window before I remembered that she was a murderer, that the devil was in her, that there were a thousand other reasons not to hold her close or think about kissing her again. I had to hold myself back from hugging her, but even then it was not because it might’ve been dangerous for me to do so.”

“What had she and Charity both known about Bethel, and what made not just the deliverance, but God Himself a thing to cower from?

The trouble was, I didn’t have her back, did I? If I had, we wouldn’t be in this situation, and I wouldn’t be telling you all this.”