Seven years earlier...
Zoe remembered the world not in dates or historical events, but in feelings.
To her, the orphanage wasn’t a building of stone and wood; it was a tapestry of small, shivering needs. She knew the exact creak of the floorboard that frightened little Tommy. She knew that when Evelyn laughed too loudly, it meant she was actually sad, and when Adam acted certain, he was actually afraid.
And she knew that when Noah went quiet, it meant his mind was traveling to places the rest of them couldn’t follow.
It was a rainy Tuesday in late autumn. The kind of rain that drummed against the orphanage roof, sealing them all inside.
Zoe sat in the corner of the common room, her small hands busy with a needle and thread. In her lap lay "Mister Buttons", a ragdoll that belonged to a three-year-old named Sarah. One of his button eyes was hanging by a thread.
She tried to thread the needle, but the eye of the metal seemed to be moving. She blinked, trying to clear the sudden fog in her vision, but her hand gave a small, involuntary jerk. The needle pricked her thumb.
"You're doing it wrong," a voice said softly.
Zoe looked up, hiding her shaking hand in the folds of the doll’s fabric. Noah stood there, clutching a thick book against his chest like a shield.
"Am I?" Zoe smiled, though the effort made her temples throb. "How should I do it?"
Noah didn't answer immediately. He stared at her fingers, specifically at the way she was gripping the doll too tightly, her knuckles white.
He knelt beside her, setting his book down. "Your hand is shaking. That shouldn’t be the case for someone who does this as often as you do," he murmured, his fingers brushing hers as he took the needle.
His hand was cool. Hers was burning.
Noah paused. He didn't look at her face, but his gaze lingered on her wrist for a fraction of a second too long. "If you loop it this way," he continued, "the torque on the button won't snap the fiber when Sarah swings him around. Which she does. Approximately forty times a day."
Zoe watched him work. The room felt strangely tilted, like the floor was a ship at sea. Noah’s movements were sharp.
"You notice everything, don't you?" Zoe whispered, leaning back against the wall to steady herself.
Noah froze, the needle halfway through the buttonhole. "I am here all day. Noticing everything is normal, isn’t it?"
"You noticed Sarah swings him forty times a day."
"Thirty-eight point five, on average."
"You clearly made that number up, didn't you?"
"I did."
He finished the knot with a surgeon's precision, bit the thread to cut it, and handed the doll back. But he didn't pull his hand away immediately. He looked at the sweat beading on her hairline, his brow furrowing in a deep, worried line.
"BEHOLD!" Evelyn shouted, striking a pose in the doorway. She was wearing a tablecloth as a cape and wielding a ladle like a scepter. "I, Queen Evelyn of the Kitchen Isles, have successfully raided the pantry!"
The shout hit Zoe. She winced, squeezing her eyes shut as a spike of pain drove through her skull. It lasted only a second.
Behind Evelyn, Adam strolled in, grinning, his pockets obviously stuffed with stolen apples. He moved with that easy, fluid grace that always made Zoe feel a little heavy, a little earthbound. Adam was air and fire; Evelyn was lightning.
"We brought supplies for the starving masses!" Adam announced, tossing a red apple to Noah.
Noah caught it fumbling, nearly dropping his book.
"You're going to get us all detention. Again," Noah said, but the distraction in his voice was palpable.
"Detention is just a state of mind, hahahaha!" Adam laughed, trying to fully play his bandit character scene with Evelyn, dropping onto the rug beside them. He looked at the doll in Zoe's hands, then at Noah's flushed face.
Adam smirked. "Nice sewing, Noah. I knew you had a thing for girl’s stuff."
"I didn't, I was just assisting!" Noah protested, standing up abruptly.
Evelyn flopped down next to Zoe, resting her head on Zoe's shoulder without asking. "Zoe, my hair is a disaster. Braid it? Please? I want the fancy kind, like yours."
Zoe swallowed the nausea rising in her throat. Evelyn felt unbearably heavy against her shoulder, hot and suffocating. "Of course," she managed to say.
"Me next," Adam said, biting into an apple. "I want to look pretty too."
As she wove the strands, she looked around the small circle.
This was her puzzle.
Later that night, the fever took her.
It wasn't a gradual warmth; it was an inferno. Zoe lay in her cot in the girls' dormitory, shivering violently. The blanket felt like lead, pinning her down while the room spun in sickening circles.
The storm outside had turned violent. Thunder shook the walls, but to Zoe, it sounded like it was coming from inside her own head.
She needed water. She needed to tell Mrs. Holloway. But her body wouldn't move.
I'm going to melt, she thought deliriously. I'm going to melt right into the mattress.
A cold hand touched her forehead.
Zoe gasped, her eyes flying open. A silhouette stood over her, backlit by a flash of lightning.
"Noah?" she croaked. Her throat felt like it was full of glass.
"Your body temperature is high," Noah whispered. His voice was shaking, but his hands were steady. "Pulse rapid. Skin clammy. It’s the seasonal influenza."
He shouldn't be here. If Mrs. Holloway found a boy in the girls' dorm, he would be in so much trouble.
"Go back," Zoe whispered, trying to push his hand away, but she was too weak. "You'll get sick."
"I have a robust immune system," Noah dismissed, pulling a wet rag from his pocket and placing it on her head. "But you... you're burning up, Zoe. You need the fever reducer. The blue bottle."
"We're out," she mumbled. "Nurse said... shipment comes Thursday."
"Thursday is forty-eight hours away," Noah said, his voice hard.
He stood up. He was wearing his heavy coat over his pajamas. His boots were laced tight.
"Where are you going?" Zoe asked, panic cutting through the haze.
"Master Thorne’s Apothecary," Noah said, pointing toward the distant lights of the city. "It's in the market district. He keeps a surplus stock."
Zoe grabbed his wrist. Her grip was weak, burning hot against his cold skin.
The market district was miles away. To get there, he would have to leave the orphanage grounds, and navigate the city streets in a freezing gale.
"No," she wheezed. "Noah, no. That's miles away. And Master Thorne... he's expensive. We don't have money. It's stealing."
Noah froze. The lightning flashed again, illuminating his face. He looked pale, terrified, and so young. He stared at the window, where the rain lashed against the glass like a warning.
"Master Thorne charges a week's wages for a simple fever reducer," Noah said, his voice unusually cold. "He exploits the desperation of the poor to inflate his margins. Taking from him isn't theft, Zoe. It's correcting an error."
"If you get caught..."
"I won't."
He gently peeled her fingers off his arm. "I calculated the risk. The probability of getting caught was thirty percent. The probability of you suffering permanent damage without it was... thirty one."
She laughed, she always did when he spoke like this, because she knew he did it on purpose, he is too aware for it not to be.
He turned and climbed out the window into the raging storm.
Two hours later, the window slid open.
A sodden, dripping figure tumbled onto the floor. Noah was soaked to the bone. He was shivering violently, his lips were blue. There was a nasty scrape on his cheek, and his hands were raw and bleeding.
But in his hand, clutched like a diamond, was a small blue bottle with a seal.
He scrambled to her bedside, water pooling around his knees. He fumbled with the cork, his frozen fingers struggling, until he finally popped it open.
"Drink," he commanded, lifting her head.
Zoe drank. The medicine was bitter and thick, but it felt like cool rain on a parched field.
Noah lowered her head back to the pillow. He collapsed onto the floor beside her bed, hugging his knees, his teeth chattering uncontrollably.
"You... you stole it," Zoe whispered. "You crossed the city... in this storm... you shouldn't have."
"I don't care about being good, Zoe," Noah stammered through his shivers, wiping mud from his eyes.
"You're going to be in so much trouble," she murmured, her eyes drooping as sleep finally pulled at her.
"I don't care," Noah managed to chatter out, resting his wet head against her mattress.
The next morning, sunlight streamed through the dormitory windows, bright and mocking. The storm had vanished as if it had never existed, leaving only puddles and broken branches in the courtyard.
Zoe sat up in bed, stretching her arms. The fever was gone, leaving her feeling light, airy, and remarkably hungry.
"Noah?" she whispered, looking over the side of the bed.
A groan answered her from the floor.
Noah was curled into a tight ball on the rug, wrapped in three of Zoe's blankets. His face was a spectacular shade of pale green, and his nose was red.
"Achoo!"
The sneeze was so violent it nearly lifted his small body off the floor.
Zoe peered down at him, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "Good morning, hero."
Noah groaned again, now crooked and foggy. "My head feels like... like someone replaced my brain with cotton."
"I thought you had a robust immune system?" Zoe teased, hopping out of bed and kneeling beside him.
Zoe laughed, the sound bright and clear. She reached out and placed her hand on his forehead. It was warm, but not dangerous. Just a good, honest cold earned by a boy who didn't know how to protect himself, only others.
"Stay there," she said, tucking the blankets tighter around his shoulders. "I'm going to get you some soup. And maybe steal an extra pillow from Evelyn’s bed, she doesn’t sleep here everyday anyway, and I am sure she wouldn’t mind even if she did."
Noah sniffled pitifully, closing his eyes. "That's against regulations."
"I don't care about regulations," Zoe said softly, brushing a lock of hair from his forehead.
Noah cracked one eye open, peering at her through the fog of his cold. A small, goofy smile broke through his misery.
"Me too," he whispered, before letting out another massive sneeze.
The memory faded, dissolving into the white noise of rain that never stopped falling, leaving behind only the echo of a promise she would keep until her final breath.