Lotus and Thorn Read Online Free Page B

her with clear eyes. “Yes. They’re all waiting for you.”
    Three days ago, after we found the ancient remains of the shuttle, Suji had been the first to show signs of Red Death. It’d happened so fast. If Red Death found you, it usually made itself known in a matter of days. But her symptoms had appeared in minutes.
    The sudden fever. The speckled rash. And the undeniable bloodshot eyes. One by one, the women of the crew had followed, as they had always followed her—their organs liquefying inside of them. But Suji had outlasted them all, making sure they’d been taken care of before she would let go.
    And she’d never flinched. Not when she’d held the body of her dying lover, not when the pain was so fierce she’d passed out. Suji had clawed and spat and fought the plague every second. There was a reason she was our crewboss even though she was young.Only twenty-two to my seventeen. Then again, no one lasted long in exile.
    Now the fight was almost over. Red Death had stolen even her bitter smile and mutated Suji’s brown skin into an unrecognizable purple bruise. Her lips were cracked and red pus oozed from them. Her body had broken down until it could no longer hold its own blood—it leaked from her eyes and nose and ears. Streaking her skin.
    “Then . . .” Suji’s bloodshot eyes struggled to focus on mine again. “You’re the only one. You have to go back for it . . . Just don’t let me rot out here.”
    I knew what she was asking of me, but I had no words to give her. If I tried to speak now, I would fall apart. There’s only so much ripping a soul can take before it shreds to pieces. Before it disintegrates. My body ached with hunger and thirst and exhaustion, but it was this soul death I truly feared. Because in my deepest of secret places, I knew that all I wanted was to lie down there next to Suji. To fold in on myself. To let this desert take me.
    But she deserved better than that from me. Because if Suji had the choice, she would live. She would fight.
    And I would too.
    So I used the first trick Suji’d taught me when I got to Tierra Muerta.
The world wants you to believe it’s all noise and bigness,
she’d say.
That’s how it thinks to beat you. But survival is in the details . . . If you look close enough, there’s
always
a way.
    I sat in that treacherous valley—watching, listening for it.
    The wind gusted, slap-slapping against the tent. Trying to pull it from its anchors.
    Night shadows crawled their way across the ravine. Snaking between the dunes standing guard at its mouth.
    Bright red blood trickled from Suji’s eye. One drop among thousands that’d already been lost in this place.
    And I saw it. Saw how I would make it out of there alive. Or at least, how I would try to.
    But first, there was Suji. I wiped the blood from her face with the sleeve of my tattered shirt—one more stain wouldn’t hurt. I’d been coughed on, bled on, puked on, and a lot of other things I didn’t want to remember, and I hadn’t so much as spiked a fever. Red Death always passed over a few. What would the Abuelos say if they knew someone so Corrupted as myself had survived out here? Their God certainly had a twisted sense of humor.
    “Promise you won’t leave me here.” Suji forced me to face her, laying a burning hand on mine—her five fingers against my six. She’d never been one to shrink away from my Corruption. Not like the others . . . even here in Tierra Muerta.
    I opened my mouth, but the words stuck in my scorched throat.
    “I’m your crewboss.” Her eyes flashed with the last of the light inside her. “Now promise me!”
    I still had her knife in my hand. I gripped the handle hard, letting the metal edge bite into my skin—the pain driving out my grief. Fortifying me. I touched Suji’s chest, her heart beating weakly, the heat of her fever searing through her soaked shirt.
    “I promise.”
    The knife glinted in the hot afternoon sun. And—with a single