Page 65 of Tethered Fates

“And it sucks worse when you gotta pretend you ain’t because you’ve got enemies at every side.”

It’s Elio’s turn to keep his mouth shut.

I shake up the spray can, that familiar rattle calling my name in the same seductive way Sen does. “I used to be scared of the colour pink.”

Elio scoffs. “How can you be scared of a fucking colour?”

My lips tilt up, and as the paint wheezes out of the nozzle in a perfect shower, it’s like a sigh of relief. “I know, right? It was stupid.”

Elio just watches as I paint a cartoon guy with a backwards hat, blowing a massive gum bubble. But soon, he’s joining in and painting stars—because that’s what everyone who can’t paint starts with. Or hearts.

Or dicks.

We don’t speak much. Elio occasionally mutters he’s terrible, and why am I so good?

“Art isn’t always about making stuff look good,” I reply, focused on giving my little pink dude some attitude.

“Says the talented artist…”

“Well, yeah. But. Who gives a fuck? It’s expression. It…just is. So your stars are shitty.”

“Thanks,” he grumbles.

“But you did ‘em, right? So they’re yours. They’re you.”

Elio pauses. “Is that a compliment or an insult?”

“Probably both.”

“You are…” Elio huffs. “You are a very weird person.” But I hear the smile in his voice. Tight and hesitant though it might be.

I shrug, because yeah, I am, so why bother denying it?

“It makes sense…” Elio says after going back to his wall of lopsided stars. “The pulse thing. It makes…too much sense.”

I don’t glance at Elio or reply. I don’t think he wanted me to say anything, anyway. And for a time, we’re silent while painting. It might not be the cut Summer gave me, but with my arms covered in pink, it’s proof that something happened, and in this, I was allowed a choice.

I also don’t comment on Elio’s shitty stars again; from the number of them, I’m guessing he’s got a lot on his mind, too.

Chapter Twenty-Two - Sen

Ipunch through the floorboards, grab the rotted arm and haul the undead out in a spray of splinters.

The corpse is a wretched, half-burnt thing, skin sloughing off mushy muscle. It snaps broken teeth at me. I put my fist through its face, its skull squelching and bursting like a squeezed tomato.

At my side, Luc fights another corpse. Its wheezed screech is silenced when he twists the head off, the body dropping like a puppet with cut strings. “Emma is getting away!”

I turn around to see Emma running through the corpses, who cleave their way out of their graves.

“She fucking isn’t!”

Just as I’m about to dart to her, three burnt and rotted corpses throw themselves at me. Split nails clawing, lipless mouths chomping.

“Fucking hell.” I grab one by the back of the neck and hurl it into the wardrobe. Kicking another in the stomach, my foot caving into the torso with a squish and breaking through ribs. “Urgh, gross,” I groan, the thing still trying to get at me until Luc rips its head off.

It gives me enough time to take the third corpse’s head off.

“We need to go after Emma!” I shout, about to move past Luc. But my brother grabs my forearm.