Ignite Me Read online

  DEDICATION

  For my readers. For your love and support. This one’s for you.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ads

  About the Author

  Books by Tahereh Mafi

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  I am an hourglass.

  My seventeen years have collapsed and buried me from the inside out. My legs feel full of sand and stapled together, my mind overflowing with grains of indecision, choices unmade and impatient as time runs out of my body. The small hand of a clock taps me at one and two, three and four, whispering hello, get up, stand up, it’s time to

  wake up

  wake up

  “Wake up,” he whispers.

  A sharp intake of breath and I’m awake but not up, surprised but not scared, somehow staring into the very desperately green eyes that seem to know too much, too well. Aaron Warner Anderson is bent over me, his worried eyes inspecting me, his hand caught in the air like he might’ve been about to touch me.

  He jerks back.

  He stares, unblinking, chest rising and falling.

  “Good morning,” I assume. I’m unsure of my voice, of the hour and this day, of these words leaving my lips and this body that contains me.

  I notice he’s wearing a white button-down, half untucked into his curiously unrumpled black slacks. His shirtsleeves are folded, pushed up past his elbows.

  His smile looks like it hurts.

  I pull myself into a seated position and Warner shifts to accommodate me. I have to close my eyes to steady the sudden dizziness, but I force myself to remain still until the feeling passes.

  I’m tired and weak from hunger, but other than a few general aches, I seem to be fine. I’m alive. I’m breathing and blinking and feeling human and I know exactly why.

  I meet his eyes. “You saved my life.”

  I was shot in the chest.

  Warner’s father put a bullet in my body and I can still feel the echoes of it. If I focus, I can relive the exact moment it happened; the pain: so intense, so excruciating; I’ll never be able to forget it.

  I suck in a startled breath.

  I’m finally aware of the familiar foreignness of this room and I’m quickly seized by a panic that screams I did not wake up where I fell asleep. My heart is racing and I’m inching away from him, hitting my back against the headboard, clutching at these sheets, trying not to stare at the chandelier I remember all too well—

  “It’s okay—” Warner is saying. “It’s all right—”

  “What am I doing here?” Panic, panic; terror clouds my consciousness. “Why did you bring me here again—?”

  “Juliette, please, I’m not going to hurt you—”

  “Then why did you bring me here?” My voice is starting to break and I’m struggling to keep it steady. “Why bring me back to this hellhole—”

  “I had to hide you.” He exhales, looks up at the wall.

  “What? Why?”

  “No one knows you’re alive.” He turns to look at me. “I had to get back to base. I needed to pretend everything was back to normal and I was running out of time.”

  I force myself to lock away the fear.

  I study his face and analyze his patient, earnest tone. I remember him last night—it must’ve been last night—I remember his face, remember him lying next to me in the dark. He was tender and kind and gentle and he saved me, saved my life. Probably carried me into bed. Tucked me in beside him. It must’ve been him.

  But when I glance down at my body I realize I’m wearing clean clothes, no blood or holes or anything anywhere and I wonder who washed me, wonder who changed me, and worry that might’ve been Warner, too.

  “Did you . . .” I hesitate, touching the hem of the shirt I’m wearing. “Did—I mean—my clothes—”

  He smiles. He stares until I’m blushing and I decide I hate him a little and then he shakes his head. Looks into his palms. “No,” he says. “The girls took care of that. I just carried you to bed.”

  “The girls,” I whisper, dazed.

  The girls.

  Sonya and Sara. They were there too, the healer twins, they helped Warner. They helped him save me because he’s the only one who can touch me now, the only person in the world who’d have been able to transfer their healing power safely into my body.

  My thoughts are on fire.

  Where are the girls what happened to the girls and where is Anderson and the war and oh God what’s happened to Adam and Kenji and Castle and I have to get up I have to get up I have to get up and get out of bed and get going

  but

  I try to move and Warner catches me. I’m off-balance, unsteady; I still feel as though my legs are anchored to this bed and I’m suddenly unable to breathe, seeing spots and feeling faint. Need up. Need out.

  Can’t.

  “Warner.” My eyes are frantic on his face. “What happened? What’s happening with the battle—?”

  “Please,” he says, gripping my shoulders. “You need to start slowly; you should eat something—”

  “Tell me—”

  “Don�
�t you want to eat first? Or shower?”

  “No,” I hear myself say. “I have to know now.”

  One moment. Two and three.

  Warner takes a deep breath. A million more. Right hand over left, spinning the jade ring on his pinkie finger over and over and over and over “It’s over,” he says.

  “What?”

  I say the word but my lips make no sound. I’m numb, somehow. Blinking and seeing nothing.

  “It’s over,” he says again.

  “No.”

  I exhale the word, exhale the impossibility.

  He nods. He’s disagreeing with me.

  “No.”

  “Juliette.”

  “No,” I say. “No. No. Don’t be stupid,” I say to him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I say to him. “Don’t lie to me goddamn you,” but now my voice is high and broken and shaking and “No,” I gasp, “no, no, no—”

  I actually stand up this time. My eyes are filling fast with tears and I blink and blink but the world is a mess and I want to laugh because all I can think is how horrible and beautiful it is, that our eyes blur the truth when we can’t bear to see it.

  The ground is hard.

  I know this to be an actual fact because it’s suddenly pressed against my face and Warner is trying to touch me but I think I scream and slap his hands away because I already know the answer. I must already know the answer because I can feel the revulsion bubbling up and unsettling my insides but I ask anyway. I’m horizontal and somehow still tipping over and the holes in my head are tearing open and I’m staring at a spot on the carpet not ten feet away and I’m not sure I’m even alive but I have to hear him say it.

  “Why?” I ask.

  It’s just a word, stupid and simple.

  “Why is the battle over?” I ask. I’m not breathing anymore, not really speaking at all; just expelling letters through my lips.

  Warner is not looking at me.

  He’s looking at the wall and at the floor and at the bedsheets and at the way his knuckles look when he clenches his fists but no not at me he won’t look at me and his next words are so, so soft.

  “Because they’re dead, love. They’re all dead.”

  TWO

  My body locks.

  My bones, my blood, my brain freeze in place, seizing in some kind of sudden, uncontrollable paralysis that spreads through me so quickly I can’t seem to breathe. I’m wheezing in deep, strained inhalations, and the walls won’t stop swaying in front of me.

  Warner pulls me into his arms.

  “Let go of me,” I scream, but, oh, only in my imagination because my lips are finished working and my heart has just expired and my mind has gone to hell for the day and my eyes my eyes I think they’re bleeding. Warner is whispering words of comfort I can’t hear and his arms are wrapped entirely around me, trying to keep me together through sheer physical force but it’s no use.

  I feel nothing.

  Warner is shushing me, rocking me back and forth, and it’s only then that I realize I’m making the most excruciating, earsplitting sound, agony ripping through me. I want to speak, to protest, to accuse Warner, to blame him, to call him a liar, but I can say nothing, can form nothing but sounds so pitiful I’m almost ashamed of myself. I break free of his arms, gasping and doubling over, clutching my stomach.

  “Adam.” I choke on his name.

  “Juliette, please—”

  “Kenji.” I’m hyperventilating into the carpet now.

  “Please, love, let me help you—”

  “What about James?” I hear myself say. “He was left at Omega Point—he wasn’t a-allowed to c-come—”

  “It’s all been destroyed,” Warner says slowly, quietly. “Everything. They tortured some of your members into giving away the exact location of Omega Point. Then they bombed the entire thing.”

  “Oh, God.” I cover my mouth with one hand and stare, unblinking, at the ceiling.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says. “You have no idea how sorry I am.”

  “Liar,” I whisper, venom in my voice. I’m angry and mean and I can’t be bothered to care. “You’re not sorry at all.”

  I glance at Warner just long enough to see the hurt flash in and out of his eyes. He clears his throat.

  “I am sorry,” he says again, quiet but firm. He picks up his jacket from where it was hanging on a nearby rack; shrugs it on without a word.

  “Where are you going?” I ask, guilty in an instant.

  “You need time to process this and you clearly have no use for my company. I will attend to a few tasks until you’re ready to talk.”

  “Please tell me you’re wrong.” My voice breaks. My breath catches. “Tell me there’s a chance you could be wrong—”

  Warner stares at me for what feels like a long time. “If there were even the slightest chance I could spare you this pain,” he finally says, “I would’ve taken it. You must know I wouldn’t have said it if it weren’t absolutely true.”

  And it’s this—his sincerity—that finally snaps me in half.

  Because the truth is so unbearable I wish he’d spare me a lie.

  I don’t remember when Warner left.

  I don’t remember how he left or what he said. All I know is that I’ve been lying here curled up on the floor long enough. Long enough for the tears to turn to salt, long enough for my throat to dry up and my lips to chap and my head to pound as hard as my heart.

  I sit up slowly, feel my brain twist somewhere in my skull. I manage to climb onto the bed and sit there, still numb but less so, and pull my knees to my chest.

  Life without Adam.

  Life without Kenji, without James and Castle and Sonya and Sara and Brendan and Winston and all of Omega Point. My friends, all destroyed with the flick of a switch.

  Life without Adam.

  I hold on tight, pray the pain will pass.

  It doesn’t.

  Adam is gone.

  My first love. My first friend. My only friend when I had none and now he’s gone and I don’t know how I feel. Strange, mostly. Delirious, too. I feel empty and broken and cheated and guilty and angry and desperately, desperately sad.

  We’d been growing apart since escaping to Omega Point, but that was my fault. He wanted more from me, but I wanted him to live a long life. I wanted to protect him from the pain I would cause him. I tried to forget him, to move on without him, to prepare myself for a future separate and apart from him.

  I thought staying away would keep him alive.

  Stupid girl.

  The tears are fresh and falling fast now, traveling quietly down my cheeks and into my open, gasping mouth. My shoulders won’t stop shaking and my fists keep clenching and my body is cramping and my knees are knocking and old habits are crawling out of my skin and I’m counting cracks and colors and sounds and shudders and rocking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and I have to let him go I have to let him go I have to I have to

  I close my eyes

  and breathe.

  Harsh, hard, rasping breaths.

  In.

  Out.

  Count them.

  I’ve been here before, I tell myself. I’ve been lonelier than this, more hopeless than this, more desperate than this. I’ve been here before and I survived. I can get through this.

  But never have I been so thoroughly robbed. Love and possibility, friendships and futures: gone. I have to start over now; face the world alone again. I have to make one final choice: give up or go on.

  So I get to my feet.

  My head is spinning, thoughts knocking into one another, but I swallow back the tears. I clench my fists and try not to scream and I tuck my friends in my heart and

  revenge

  I think

  has never looked so sweet.

  THREE

  Hang tight

  Hold on

  Look up

  Stay strong

  Hang on

  Hold tight

  Look strong
>
  Stay up

  One day I might break

  One day I might

  b r e a k

  free

  Warner can’t hide his surprise when he walks back into the room.

  I look up, close the notebook in my hands. “I’m taking this back,” I say to him.

  He blinks at me. “You’re feeling better.”

  I nod over my shoulder. “My notebook was just sitting here, on the bedside table.”

  “Yes,” he says slowly. Carefully.

  “I’m taking it back.”

  “I understand.” He’s still standing by the door, still frozen in place, still staring. “Are you”—he shakes his head—“I’m sorry, are you going somewhere?”

  It’s only then that I realize I’m already halfway to the door. “I need to get out of here.”

  Warner says nothing. He takes a few careful steps into the room, slips off his jacket, drapes it over a chair. He pulls three guns out of the holster strapped to his back and takes his time placing them on the table where my notebook used to be. When he finally looks up he has a slight smile on his face.

  Hands in his pockets. His smile a little bigger. “Where are you going, love?”

  “I have some things I need to take care of.”

  “Is that right?” He leans one shoulder against the wall, crosses his arms against his chest. He can’t stop smiling.

  “Yes.” I’m getting irritated now.

  Warner waits. Stares. Nods once, as if to say, Go on.

  “Your father—”

  “Is not here.”

  “Oh.”

  I try to hide my shock, but now I don’t know why I was so certain Anderson would still be here. This complicates things.

  “You really thought you could just walk out of this room,” Warner says to me, “knock on my father’s door, and do away with him?”

  Yes. “No.”

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Warner says softly.

  I glare at him.

  “My father is gone,” Warner says. “He’s gone back to the capital, and he’s taken Sonya and Sara with him.”

  I gasp, horrified. “No.”

  Warner isn’t smiling anymore.

  “Are they . . . alive?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.” A simple shrug. “I imagine they must be, as they’re of no use to my father in any other condition.”

  “They’re alive?” My heart picks up so quickly I might be having a heart attack. “I have to get them back—I have to find them, I—”