Hazel had heard them as she walked through the Old Town, but as soon as she entered the prison, the thick stone walls dampened and deadened all sounds from the outside. Only quiet moans of madness and sorrow echoed through the prison hallways, harmonizing with the chittering of rats. They were the whines of those who know there is no one left to listen to them.
Jack had not testified in his own defense at his trial. He offered no excuses or explanations. Better to be thought of as a murderer than a murderer and a madman. Hazel had expected tears upon seeing him again, but there were none. They had all left her over the past few days. She was drained of joy and sorrow alike, fully numb and fully hollow.
Jack looked thinner than Hazel had ever seen him, sitting against the wall with his back curved into a C, rolling a die that they had forgotten to take from him after his trial on the floor. His hair hung long and lank, and his eyes were rimmed red with exhaustion.
When he saw her, Jack stood and walked to the bars, and he reached through so he could hold her hands in his. “Hazel,” he said. “Hazel, my love.” He tucked a strand of her auburn hair behind her ears. He was so close that Hazel could make out the freckles across the bridge of his nose and feel the warmth of his breath.
There was something in Hazel’s fist, a small glass vial. Its strange luminescence was visible from between her fingers. Jack stared. He listened attentively while she described exactly what it contained, and the power it would give him. He asked a few quiet questions. Hazel answered.
She extended the vial through the bars, and Jack took it and rolled it around in his palm.
“So it’s real, then?” he said simply.
Hazel nodded.
He held the vial toward the dim light of the small window to examine it. A tiny galaxy swirled within the glass. “Would you take it?” he said softly. “If you were me?”
“Jack, you have to take it. Please. Take it and come back to me. Meet me at Hawthornden as soon as you can. This is so we can be together. So we can run away somewhere. To the Continent. To start over.”
Jack laughed then, a beautiful, brilliant sound filled with all the joy and hurt and love he’d felt for Hazel in his brief time knowing her. It was his laughter that finally made Hazel cry. “Why are you laughing?” she said, and then she started to laugh along with him.
Through the gaps of the rusting bars, Jack pressed his lips against hers, and they both tasted the salt of their tears. “No. No, no, no, no, no. Hazel, if I do—decide to take this, I will be a man on the run for my entire life. Or at least for a good long while. My first lifetime and part of my second. You”—he kissed her again—“you”—and again—“beautiful”—and again—“perfect, you”—and again—“deserve a real life. You’re going to become a brilliant physician. You’re going to help so many people and change so many lives. You’re going to light the world on fire, and you can’t do that from the shadows. You can’t create medicines and cures on the run. None of our greatest minds had to toil for their day’s meals before their studying. No, Hazel. No. I can’t do that to you.”
“That’s not your choice to make, Jack. I can choose where to live, and how. That’s not a good enough reason.”
Jack raised his eyebrows. “Arguing with me? I’m about to be hanged, and I can’t get my way?” He smiled. “I suppose you’re right. It isn’t a good enough reason. Made it seem like I was being a hero when really I’m the one being selfish.”
“How do you mean? How are you possibly being selfish?”
“Hazel, there’s no hell worse than a world in which I would see you grow old and lose you and then be forced to live another day.” The tears continued silently down Hazel’s cheeks. “You will always be seventeen to me, Hazel Sinnett. You will always be beautiful and headstrong and brilliant. You will be the last face I see when I close my eyes and the first one I imagine when I wake up.”
“Will you take it, then?” Hazel said quietly. “Will you take the tonic?”
“I don’t know yet,” Jack said. “I’m so scared.”
A door clanged somewhere behind Hazel, and the heavy footfalls of a booted guard followed. “That’s it, miss. Visit’s over.”
Hazel leaned forward to kiss Jack again. “I will spend my entire life loving you, Jack Currer,” she said. Hazel stuck her hand through the bars to rest her palm on his heart, feeling the stitches she had sewn at the center of his chest.