I lay my other hand on his face, tilting it back until the light of the night splays across his cheekbones, his eyes. “Killing them would make us monsters. What’s the point of working so hard to get off this island if we’re going to turn into monsters anyway?”

Catcher pulls me to him and together we stand there staring up at the sky, the heat of him keeping me warm against the winter chill.

“We have a little time to figure something else out,” I tell him. “I’ve already made progress quilting together material for the balloon. You just need to make sure the people left in the Dark City will have what they need and be ready on time as well.” I turn and face him.

“We can make this work. I know we can.” I wonder whether if I say it often enough, with enough force, I can make it true.

He pulls my head to his chest and I listen to the beat of his heart. “Do I still scare you?” he asks and I can sense the fear and uncertainty in his voice.

“Always,” I tell him. He catches his breath and I lean away until I can see his eyes. “I’m scared of losing my heart to you. But I think it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

I’m kneeling on the floor, sifting through the scraps of quilts my sister’s already sewn together, when she shuffles into the room. Her hair’s greasy, hanging around her face limply, but her eyes are no longer dull, her cheeks no longer fever-flushed.

“What’s going on?” she asks, a little out of breath from walking down the hallway. She’s weak from the illness and slides down to perch on the edge of a nearby chair, her muscles trembling slightly.

“I had no idea you’d quilted this much,” I say, organizing the fabric into different piles: what looks strong enough to bear our weight and what doesn’t.

She shrugs, picking up one of the strips of intricately pieced cloth. “It gave me something to do. I like putting things together—making something out of nothing.”

Another detail I didn’t know about my sister. There’s still so much for us to learn about each other. “We’re trying to sew a big fabric bag—sort of like a balloon—in less than two days,” I tell her.

She looks at me, eyebrows raised. “You figured out how to fly?”

I blush a little, wondering if Catcher’s getting the same reaction from the survivors in the Dark City—he went to tell them about our plan this morning. “Maybe. It might not work but …” I shrug. “Catcher’s found a ship not too far away. We just have to make it off the island and down the mainland a bit.”