7.2 km from flash curtain
I DON’T HAVE to look very far to find my way out.
Mom’s plan sits in a heap in the middle of my cirium prison.
What I told Jameson was true: I can’t spend my days locked inside a cell. I didn’t escape the caves and cordons just to end up buried alive beneath them.
Ideally, I’d complete my mission, demolish the flash curtain, save everyone I care about, and then turn my attention to my personal escape options. But there’s one factor preventing this.
Dram sits across from me in the cell, breaking Protocol. He watches me absorb the news. He even stole it from the tech room in order to show me: a thirty-centimeter, reinforced-cirium, electrified circle of horror. My new Forger’s collar.
They’ve modified the sensors. This one will attach and adhere with biotech, like our Radbands. If I try to remove it, it will literally be the last thing I do.
“When?” I ask.
“As soon as you return in the Luna.”
Tears splash my hands, where I clutch the glenting thing.
He pulls the tech from my grasp and sets it behind him, then he clasps my hands, right over the tears. “You have to go. Before night-dim, before flashtide.”
“If I go now, who will deliver the SAMM?”
“I will.”
I’m trying so hard not to cry, but a tear plops right on the back of his hand. “You might not come back. The eludial seam—”
“Rye.”
I nod. Breathe. My voice shakes, but I say it anyway: “I was supposed to free everyone.”
“So do it from the other side of the shield,” he says. “I’ll do it from here.”
I conjure a leaf and swipe it beneath my running nose. Dram laughs.
“There’s nothing funny about this.”
“You just conjured a flower to wipe your snot. That is weirdly funny.” His smile slowly fades. “You have magic, Orion.” He knows these were my mom’s words to me. That day she first set my hand to a tunnel wall. He clasps the sides of my face. “You have magic. Don’t you dare let them contain it.”
My past and all the possible outcomes of my future collide into this single moment that is just now. “I’ll go.”
He nods, and I can tell that now he’s the one trying not to cry. “Good,” he says. “That’s good.” He presses the heel of his hand against his eye.
“Let me know if you need me to conjure you a flower,” I murmur.
He laughs and slings an arm around me. “Fire, I’m going to miss you.”
“I’m not gone yet.” I grasp his head and bring it down to mine. He resists me, so I swing my leg up around him and use it to bring him closer. He sighs against my mouth, and then all at once he’s melting into me, and we are two halves of one body.
Tears wet my cheeks, and I’m not sure if they’re mine or his. It doesn’t matter. What matters is his skin against mine and our hearts pressed together this last time. We let our bodies say the words that we can’t.
You are mine.
I am yours.
Always. No—not always. Not anymore.
There is only now. He says my name on a breath, and I respond, kissing him, memorizing him with my touch. His hair winds through my fingers—his short Brunt hair that’s growing longer now. I won’t see it long again—the way he wore it in Outpost Five, or longer, when he adopted the free Conjies as his family.
I will only know this Dram. Not the Dram who is finally free. If I succeed, it will be because I’m enmeshed with Congress, utterly removed from all that I once was—everyone I knew before. To save Dram, I have to give him up. I’ve known this since that day in the Sky, when I stood beside those broken axe handles and pieced together my mother’s plan.
My life for theirs. It’s how Subpars have always served. Sacrifice is in my blood.
But so is Dram.
He cradles my face, and the amber glow of his Radband reflects off the wall. This is why I’m doing this, I tell myself. This light that signals the end for Dram. If I hold on to him now, it won’t be for much longer. I lose him either way.
I draw him deeper into my arms, knowing this is it—the last time I will lose myself and find myself at the same time—in this boy who shows me the stars, even when there is only darkness. His eyes open, and I can’t look away. We kiss this way, once, twice. He tips his head, and our foreheads press together. His eyes are a storm of emotion—passion, anguish. Love.
Before Congress sent me to Cordon Four, Dad told me to look after Dram—that he was part of what made me strong.
Now I must let him go and be strong enough for us both.
I love you, Dram.
You know I love you, Orion.
I read the truth in his eyes, the blue depths that first reminded me of safe water and, later, the sky. Then I give myself over to the places we take each other that have no names, where strength and stars are born and the Congress can never reach.