I smile. Inside I feel ill. Sick at the memory of them together and sick at my own selfishness. I shouldn’t have asked her about him. It was like sticking my fist into a wasps’ nest: I knew what the result would be.

“And you grew up with Catcher?” I ask. I think about him standing in the middle of the Unconsecrated as if he were one of them. I think about the heat of him burning against my chest and thighs as he carried me through the dark tunnel.

I want to know more about him. I want to understand him.

She nods. “He was …” Her eyes lose focus for a moment and then she blinks fast. “He was my best friend’s older brother.” She walks closer to the Unconsecrated man. She’s staring at him as if trying to figure something out, trying to see the person he’d once been.

“He changed after he was bitten.” She laughs a little self-consciously. “I mean, of course he changed—he was infected and thought he’d die, but …”

I remember the moment I thought I’d been bitten when we were running from the horde in the Neverlands. The dread that all those years of fighting and struggling were suddenly worthless.

“How?” My voice comes out raw and I swallow before I continue. “How did he change? What was he like before?” It’s cold in the darkness and I cross my arms tightly over my chest, trying to keep in the heat.

My sister reaches out a finger, pressing it to the metal wheel containing the Unconsecrated, letting its dull rim turn under her flesh. “He was happy before.” She says it with such finality, as if his happiness existed in a past that is lost forever.

I frown. Hearing this makes me sad—more than sad, angry. Suddenly I realize how important his happiness is to me, which throws me off balance. “You don’t think he can be happy again?”

She presses her hand harder against the metal wheel, causing it to jerk and stop, the lights around us dimming. I want to grab her arm and pull her away but she seems so focused that I don’t move.

“I’m not sure anyone can,” she finally says. “Not anymore.”

I let out a strained laugh. “I saw you and Elias just now. You can’t tell me that’s not happiness.”

The Unconsecrated man moans and reaches for my sister, the chains holding him in the wheel rattling. I can almost smell the metal burning away the flesh of her palm, and I’m just starting to reach for her when she steps away and the wheel jerks forward, the Unconsecrated stumbling and falling.