Bright Star. Grayson Reyes-Cole

      Jacob Rush listened to the rasping, uneven breath of the skinny, wet and almost dead girl stretched out before him. He watched the girl continue to wheeze in a high-pitched plea. Her chest continued to convulse.

      She should have been dead. She was dead. And then she wasn’t.

      Jacob rocked back on his knees, coming to rest on his calves. Steam rolled off his heated body. He couldn’t focus his eyes. When he tried, the sweat dripped down into them, stinging and blinding him. Feeling around the cold cement in light cautious pats, his fingertips found the over-shirt he had stripped off after he’d dragged her from the fountain. Slowly, he raised it to his face. The shirt was cold relief.

      He inhaled deeply and then exhaled, watching his breath crystallize and dissipate as it floated away from him in the night. He had done this many times, and knew he would do it many more. Each time it happened, it seemed to squeeze his organs tighter, to crack and reshape his bones more and to make his muscles fold over themselves and redouble. It caused that trigger, that light deep within his brain to throb and grow.

      Jacob would have liked to believe it was his imagination, not his body, mind and Talent that were changing. He lied, telling himself that he had not really saved this girl. Something inside this girl had sped recovery after he’d pulled her out of the water, breathed down her throat, and pushed hard on her chest. Just performing CPR was something he could live with. But Jacob Rush knew the truth: he had done more than some rudimentary first aid technique.

      He waited, knowing that soon he would experience the cold. It hit him and stung, lashing out against him. For a long moment, he let the freezing fingers of nature claw at him, willing them to dig out his anxiety and fear. How many more times would he do this? How, in the end, would it change him? When would she come and demand this thing he gave freely?

      He put on the shirt. It was slightly warmer then, still heated from his face. Folding his arms and closing his eyes, Jacob Rush started to breathe slower, deeper. He started to leave this place. But before he could completely tuck himself away, a dry and low voice pulled at him. It sounded brittle, parched.

      “I’m still alive?” The girl rose up on her elbows and looked around. Her damp, lank brown hair clung to her forehead and neck, to her sallow and pointed shoulders.

      He’d seen her there—God knows how—still, eyes and mouth closed, at rest. Peace marked her. Completely under water, lying on the bottom of the fountain her body was pale, tinted a frigid blue and surrounded by yellow, red, and white mosaic. He’d pulled off his shirt and jumped over the lip of the pool in one motion. Then, he’d reached down and grabbed her dead weight. Her clothes, her hair, her skin all clung to the bottom so that he had to grapple with her flesh as he’d tried to peel her from the tiled bed. Her skin had become slippery like a peeled plum, and he’d lost his grip as her body attempted to adhere itself to the bottom again. But those eyes, submerged, brilliant and blue, had opened to pin him with a gaze of recognition.

      Ah.

      Sadly, finally, Jacob had recognized her. He’d been able to haul her out then, and save her.

      When he should have let her die.

      Jacob spotted her jacket in the fountain. It must have slid off when he dragged her out of the water. He pointed to the red, white, and gold striped material. Only a sleeve peeped from beneath a stone head and shoulder the size of a headstone.

      She noticed how intently he watched her. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

      “You almost died.”

      “What?” She sprang up and swung her head from side to side, sloshing water into the air. She blinked rapidly as she took in her surroundings. Her hands smoothed over her soaked torso. Then—Jacob could read that awkward expression anytime—she averted her gaze and rounded her shoulders in intense shame. Whatever recognition in her eyes earlier had been snuffed out.

      She sighed and slowly rolled to her feet. A distance opened between them when she moved away, cutting a slice into the ready intimacy of a life saved. She seemed agitated and would not meet his gaze. Jacob stood as well, but could not stop watching her.

      “Why were you in the fountain?” he asked. His voice was well modulated. His words didn’t sound like a demand. He hoped they didn’t sound as if the answer mattered to him.

      She started to answer. Her jaw worked. In the end, she managed to explain, “I was throwing coins in. I threw one in that belonged to my mother.” She chewed at chapped skin on her upper lip. Those eyes, she kept tilted downward.

      Jacob knew she did not want him to study her eyes or how startling and nearly illuminated they were. She also probably didn’t want him to know that she was lying, but Jacob knew. She continued, “I got in to look for it. Part of the statue must have fallen and hit me. I think I just panicked and slipped. I can’t swim anyway.”

      She had been lying on her back. Her arms had been folded carefully over her abdomen. Her legs had been straight as well. She had not looked like a girl who had slipped, yet Jacob said nothing.

      “I guess I’m thanking you for saving my life,” she finished, but it did not sound like appreciation. Her voice was small, tinny and false.

      Jacob Rush reached a hand out to touch the base of her skull. Her wet hair lay just over his knuckles. The wound was large and bloody and hot. It felt like an infection. She felt like an infection. Her blood gurgled over his fingers, seeped into his palm, and rode the veins in his arm, spreading through his circulatory system, getting into tissue, into cells. And then, the blood was gone. “How do you feel now?”

      Elizabeth placed a hand over the one cradling her head. She didn’t feel any pain. Outside or in. Jacob could tell. Her voluntary touch had let him inside of her. Just like that. She had become a part of him. The intimacy was back. Her thoughts mingled with his like threads in a tassel. Elizabeth was thinking then that for the first time in her life, she didn’t feel any pain. She wondered briefly if her heart would stop. For the first time in her life, she didn’t want to die.

      He let her go. “Aren’t you cold?” He asked in a voice too calm for reality. His eyes held hers, though they were clear and intense and offered nothing. He knew better than to show her too much compassion.

      She hesitated. No, she wasn’t cold. “Yes, I am.”

      “You need to change clothes.” But what did compassion matter? The poison was inside him now. His hands, his skin, his heart and brain, his blood, his breath, his Energy was the curse. There was nothing left for it. “Those are wet.”

      She looked down at the dingy white t-shirt and worn jeans that were pulling her downward, weighted by water. Her thoughts were murky and congealed, but Jacob Rush could pick them out with ease—He thinks I’m too skinny; He thinks I’m too dark. He thinks. I am dirty-obsessed-stained-removed crazy. He thinks my eyes and body and Energy curse him.

      Jacob knew she was hiding something. She rubbed at fine white scars on one