“Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like before, all lit up at night,” he adds. Surprised at his sentiment, I glance at him from the corner of my eye. I’d always wondered the same thing, wondered how people could get anything done in life back then when they were surrounded by so much color and light.

I realize that he’s looking not at the Dark City but at me now, and I narrow my gaze at him. Let him know I’m someone who survives having half her body split open. Let him think he doesn’t scare me.

“It seems so gray now,” he says, not taking his attention off me. “Don’t you think? Duller. In need of something more. Someone who can see the beauty of it, at least what it used to be.”

I pull my elbows in tight against my body and stare at the skyline. The rise and fall of the rows of buildings. I think about the canyons between them filling with Unconsecrated. I think about the way we all live, every day a struggle to make it to the next.

How useless it feels sometimes.

“What are you doing with my brother, Elias?” I finally ask Ox. “What do you want from us?”

His mouth twitches as he rolls onto the balls of his feet. “You’re not really his sister, are you?”

I know he’s waiting for a reaction and I refuse to give him one, but still I can’t stop wincing slightly. It’s unsettling having so many strangers know the truth about Elias and me. We’ve played at being brother and sister so long.

He stretches his hands behind his back, the image of a commander. “Thing is, I know a lot about you, Annah. And I know a lot about Elias too.”

“There’s no reason to know anything about me,” I tell him as I shift away.

But he stops me, grabbing my arm. I jerk back but he won’t let me go. It’s not until I stop struggling that he loosens his grip. “I know my men chased Elias and Gabry and the Immune through the Forest. I know that Elias sacrificed himself so that your sister and the Immune could get away.”

I wrench my arm free. “His name’s Catcher,” I snap.

Ox throws his head back and laughs. I scowl. “That’s all you have to say about it?” He wipes at his eyes, damp with mirth-filled tears. “You know how I know Elias isn’t your brother? Because that would make Gabry his sister too, which would be pretty sick since he’s in love with her.”

My throat closes.

Of course I knew he cared for her. That was evident when he punched the wall when he found out the Recruiters had her. But I wasn’t willing to admit to myself it was love. I refused to even let it occur to me that it could be love.

It shouldn’t matter that he loves her. He left me three years ago. That alone should have made me realize that he didn’t love me and never would.