It hits the glass with a plink.
“Oh!” I gasp. A tall figure stands in the window, but disappears before I get a good look.
It could be anyone.
Do I run? Do I wait?
There’s an unmistakable creak and click in the distance: the back door.
My heart thumps in my throat, beating so fast I’m out of breath. I slide down the fence and huddle into myself. Hidden. I hope.
Footsteps.
I start to fling my body down the hill, but …
Knife at my throat.
I pull mine from my belt and thrust it to their wrist. One move by either of us and we’ll both be spurting blood.
Breath wheezes in my ear. “What the hell are you—”
He drops the knife.
I drop mine.
“Veda?” It’s a pained, horrible whisper. “How the…? Where did you…?”
Exactly.
“I had to see you, warn you,” I say.
He nods. Scans the area. “It’s not safe here.”
He looks back at his window, nudging his head toward it.
“Inside?” I say.
“It’s the safest option. My parents sleep like the dead and in the opposite wing.”
He throws his arms around me. “I’m so sorry,” he says into my neck.
“I know.” My throat closes around the words. “Me too.”
He pulls back. “Come on.”
I follow him around the fence and to the other side. We enter through a gate he has to unlock.
In slow movements, Nico opens his back door, guides me in, then shuts it, locking several locks behind him. Something about it gives me the impression of being both secure and imprisoned.
The empty, nighttime version of Nico’s home is cold, lonely, such a stark contrast from the jubilation and splendor of the Ever-Sol Feast. How the place was packed at the seams and lit up like sunrise what seems like a lifetime ago.
But Nico’s bedroom is different.
There’s nothing lonely or cold or remotely sterile here. It’s home. Nico.
The room smells of the forest, a burning fire in the hearth against the outside wall, a small pile of clothes slung over a chair at his desk, a book left open on his unmade bed. I move toward his dresser. Several items line the top against the wall: a fishing hook, a rock, a button, a coil of metal, a scrap of fabric, an autumn leaf, a piece of tree bark, and several other trinkets, scraps of debris.
I glance over at him.
He stands at the door, watching me. “Just a few memories…” Memories? “The fishing hook is from the day we met when I caught you at our pond. The button fell off your sweater at some point. It was cracked”—I swear his face is the slightest bit flushed—“so I figured you wouldn’t want it back.” He peers at the dresser. “The metal is from your window—it was sitting on the outside ledge. I picked it up the last time I visited you there after Poppy…” He stops there and nods. “Just stuff like that. Memories. For some reason, I can’t bring myself to throw it all away.”
“And the fabric? Is that from my skirt?” I turn my head toward him. I know for a fact it is and exactly when it snagged and tore.
“Oh, that … Yeah. I think it caught the corner of the bench the night we kissed.” Nico inhales deeply, holding the breath in and shrugging his shoulders. “Feels like so long ago.”
“A lifetime ago.”
He nods, face pained, lines creasing his forehead. He exhales. “Veda—why are you here?”
“Two things, actually.” I look away, then back to him. “Well, maybe three.” Suddenly, I’m terrified about warning him of tomorrow’s attack, telling him about my father, who I am and who I thought I was. Because when I do, everything changes. Right now, if only for a moment, all I want is to be here with him. To simply be Veda and Nico instead of all the other things others expect us to be. “You’re not like them, Nico. You’re not an Imperi officer. Not like the ones we used to scoff at as kids. The ones I used to hide from for fear of punishment. Certainly not the next Raevald.”
He looks down at the floor. “I don’t know what I am anymore,” he says quietly, running his hands through his hair. Somehow, despite being on opposite sides of the earth, I know exactly what he means.
“You could have reported me, had me arrested or worse by now. But you didn’t. You should hate me after last time. Yet here I am.” I take a couple of steps toward him. “In your bedroom for the first time.”
He shakes his head. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to show you this room? My home? I’ve been to yours a hundred times at least.” He stares out the window as if looking toward my and Poppy’s cottage. “I asked my father once if you could visit.” He looks back at me. “I told him how wrong it was that you were my best friend and not allowed to stand inside our house.” Nico releases a breath. “I won’t tell you what he said, but it had something to do with keeping to my place, being reckless and stupid.” He moves closer, eyes intense. “Pretty sure I’m somewhere in between right about now.”
“But it’s more, isn’t it?”
“Maybe…” He stares into my eyes, his eyes somber, serious. “Why else are you here?”
“I’m here because…” I pause for breath, to attempt to calm the buzzing of my nerves. I came here to warn him, to explain everything, and suddenly, I can barely remember my own name.
I gaze across the lamp-lit room at him and he gazes back and I can’t help the words that leave my mouth in a desperate flurry. “I know you, Nico.” I close the distance between us. “I know you like I know myself. Like I know a fishing pole or Poppy’s old, wrinkled hands.” I step closer and briefly I think of Dorian—Dorian who’s been working with the Sindaco on high tales of attack dates and Lunalettes and prophecies—but swiftly push him out of my head. “I think of you often, especially these past days, maybe more than I ever have.” I place my hand on his chest. “Yes, a lot has changed, but deep down, we’re still just Nico and Veda.” I run my thumb over his chest in an arc. Ad astra. I meet his eyes. “Aren’t we?”
Nico’s eyes don’t veer from mine, but his breathing speeds and I’m so close now, I can feel his chest rise and fall. “Yesterday I’d have probably said no.” His words brush across my lips. “But right now, here with you, I feel more like myself than I have in a long time. More than ever.”
I want to trust my instincts. Our history. I want to share everything with him from the Sindaco to Lunalette to the atlatl strapped to my bag to how I knew he’d picked up my button when it fell off my sweater last year to the impending attack. That we’ll be fighting each other come sunrise. On opposite sides of a revolution. How could I ever fight Nico? Raise my weapon toward him?
My heart raps like a war drum against my chest, and my mind’s a mess of memories and confusion.
I can’t tell him any of that when only the thought sends my nerves on edge, makes my eyes burn.
I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
Where to end.
And everything in between would ruin all Nico and I have been through up to now.
Instead I wrap my arms around his shoulders, nestle into his body, place my lips at his neck.