3 YEARS EARLIER
Jordan reached a hand for me. “You almost had me at the second turn.”
“I know,” I groaned.
He chuckled and brushed my chin with his knuckle. “You’ll get there.”
We sat down on the bench to take a break, and I looked sideways at him. A strand of blond hair had escaped from his usual perfectly styled hair and clung to his forehead.
“Ever miss 3B?” he asked.
I pursed my mouth, surprised by the question. “In some ways, I think I do. At least there, I had the feeling I was doing something useful. Here…” I shrugged.
Jordan nodded. “I was there for such a long time that it started to feel like normal life. Being back here has proven quite the change—to not constantly have to worry or look for signs of danger.”
“The mission made me realize how insignificant I am,” I said, raising a hand as Jordan opened his mouth to contradict me. “I don’t mean it like that. It’s just… humanity is so fucking fragile. We think we’re so indestructible, but then the sun goes dark, and we go boom: half of the world wiped away. If there’s anything we should take from this, it is that we are vulnerable, more so than we even realize, and we should find a way to fix that, you know?”
Jordan stared at me and rubbed a hand over his face. “Something keeping you awake at night, Renée?” he deadpanned, but grinned at me.
My cheeks burned.
“I mean,” he continued, nudging my shoulder, “You make a good point. Increasing our chance for survival is valid.”
It was silent for a moment, and we both stared ahead.
“What was it like to be attacked?” I asked him softly. He’d never spoken to me about it apart from the moment we shared on the shadow plains.
He looked at me, brows furrowed.
I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry, that’s a very personal question—just ignore me.”
Jordan’s frown disappeared, and he chuckled, the deep sound reverberating through my bones. “Don’t be silly, Raven. You can ask me personal questions.” He bumped my shoulder. “I was just surprised that you asked.”
Our gazes locked. “Why?”
He raised his shoulders. “Just that you would want to hear about it.”
“What do you mean? Of course, I do.” I sipped from my drink.
“Well…” he started, and seemed to look for words. When he looked at me again, I raised my eyebrows patiently. “My parents are incredibly busy, so I never wanted to burden them. I know they would want to know—to help me—but I just… No. And then there are the people I can talk to here, but they go through the same sort of shit as me.” He inhaled. “It would have been nice to have someone, a partner, that could share the load with me sometime, you know? Someone who would want to hear about my day.”
“You never had a relationship with someone that did?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it.
“I had a serious relationship once. We had talked about marriage, kids—that sort of thing. But we slowly reached this point where if I came back from a mission and someone close to me had died in front of my eyes, I couldn’t tell her about it.”
“You’re serious?”
Jordan lay a hand on his neck and looked up at the ceiling. “I shared everything with her. I process my emotions and trauma by speaking about it. But after some time, she couldn’t take it anymore, and I usually had to comfort her instead of the other way around. She told me she couldn’t deal with all the hardship, and we agreed I would stop sharing.”
“What a selfish—”
Jordan cut me off with a warning flashing in those stormy blue eyes. “That was the last drop. We separated. But we were still young, and I loved her immensely. Everything we went through together didn’t suddenly disappear.”
I cleared my throat. “She was your first love?” I guessed.
He nodded. “Always thought she was the one—sometimes I still do.”
“Please, Jordan,” I snorted.
Jordan looked at me, confusion marring his handsome features.
I elaborated. “The one will take you as you are—every broken part of you. All of it. She should have given you the time and space to mourn for your friend and support you through it.”
He blinked. “She didn’t even know he had died.”
“My point exactly!” I exclaimed. “Because she didn’t care about you enough to see you weren’t doing well.”
Abruptly, he stood. “Why are you making this such a big deal?”
“Why are you still defending a girl that clearly didn’t give a shit about you?” I followed, heart racing.
Jordan stared at me for a long time, silence bridging the gap between us, and I knew I had said the wrong thing. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Raven,” he said calmly. “You don’t know her, and you don’t even really know me, for that matter.”
Before I could open my mouth again, he swallowed, grabbed his stuff from the floor, and left the training hall.
* * *
NOW
I tiptoed to look over the queue I joined to get a look at the food they served at the canteen that day when I heard a familiar voice behind me. “Raven.”
My mind immediately shifted to the blue-eyed man that stalked my mind no matter what I did, but as I turned, I spotted Kelian. Ever since the gala, my nerves had been going haywire. Seeing Jordan again, combined with my impending mission, was enough to make me crazy.
“Hey,” he said as he joined the queue behind me.
I smiled, though I wasn’t in a smiling mood. I couldn’t help myself—it was Kelian, after all. “Don’t you have work to do instead of pestering me?”
“Jeez,” he scoffed while the queue shuffled forward. “I wanted to speak to you about something, and I guessed you would be here.”
“Oh?” I said absentmindedly and tried to decide what I wanted to eat as the food shifted into view.
“Did you hear about Domasc? Rumor has it he went to Borzia this morning to negotiate a deal for the vaccine.”
I raised my brows at him. Of course, I heard. It was all over the news. When we finally had our food, we walked over to a table and sat down together. “That’s what you wanted to talk about?”
Kelian cleared his throat and looked at me directly. “What’s going on, Raven?”
I looked at my food. “What do you mean?”
“The way you act, it’s not like you. The other night, too—at the gala—your behavior was so strange.”
Alarm bells rang as I did my best to hide my surprise. “Stop speaking in riddles, Kelian. Just spit it out.” I put down my cutlery.
“Jordan Locke,” he said slowly, pronouncing every syllable of his name. “What did he do?”
I swallowed. “It had been a long time since I last saw him.” I tried to keep a stammer from my voice.
“Cut the bullshit, Raven.” Kelian exhaled irritably.
I tried to gauge his intent as I looked up at him—but found only my friend’s earnest expression.
“He was the reason you were hesitant to return, right? Why you suddenly signed up for that mission all those years ago, even though you were glad to be back home finally?”
I wanted to say I didn’t flee, but I kept silent. It wasn’t true, was it?
His hand curled into a fist as he looked at me. “What did he do, Raven?”
“Nothing,” I said, poking the food I suddenly wasn’t craving anymore.
“Tell me what he did,” he repeated in a dangerously low tone.
Under the table, I splayed my hands on my legs and forced myself to meet his eyes. “He didn’t do anything.”
Kelian’s expression softened, but his posture was still tense. “He’s clearly in love with you.”
Those words shattered my composure and threatened to break the pieces of my heart I had glued back together again. “No,” I whispered, denying those damning words. “He’s not.”
My friend’s laugh was humorless. “Trust me, Raven. He is.”
I looked at him with tears in my eyes. Gods, I hated those tears. They always came in the moment I least wanted them.
“I don’t know what he did or what made you leave—but he’s a fool for letting you go.”
It had been my choice.
“Do you have feelings for him?”
When I said nothing, he took hold of my elbow. “Raven? Look at me. Do you?”
I said nothing, but to Kelian, that was answer enough.
“Then do something about it.”
* * *
I wanted to drown my emotions. Squash them under my foot. Obliterate them.
The crowd’s chanting in the Sewers heightened my aggression, and I knew this would be the perfect outlet for my rage.
You’re going to the shadow plains—to Damruin.
Don’t disappear on me. Not again.
Then do something about it.
This was as close as I ever dared to do something about my feelings. Here, I shut them off—had them punched from my system.
I always hoped I forgot they even existed.
Fighting in the ring with Tania was one of my favorite things. Every fight surprised me—taught me something new. We didn’t hold back. And that meant something because Tania was one of the most skilled fighters I knew. She wasn’t in the infantry. She was a special ops soldier—a breed of soldiers that were so kickass you hardly heard anything about them.
Tania had been the only of her kind to join mission 3B. We still didn’t know why, but she said she had craved a change of scenery, and there had been a shortage of qualified soldiers to send. Like she’d woken up one day and decided, why not?
With every fight, I came closer to beating her. And this time, I finally did.
“Damn, Raven. You’ve become something else,” Tania gasped, taking my hand so I could yank her up. She approached her girlfriend, Alina, in the audience, a short girl with long blonde hair. Tania kissed her straight on the lips, the blood running down her nose now smeared across Alina’s face. Neither of them seemed to care.
“This round is on me,” I said, and made a beeline for the bar.
Another way for me to bury my feelings. I ran my tongue over my split lip as I leaned forward on the sticky counter. I let my gaze travel freely over the assortment of drinks they poured and held an inner debate over which one would soothe the pain, both internal and external, the fastest.
“Hey, little bitch.”
My head snapped to the side, finding a grinning Razor. The man was unhinged. I almost shattered his windpipe; now he looked at me like we’d been rolling through the grass together.
“Haven’t you had enough yet?” I spat, which only seemed to encourage him.
His fingers trailed over my arm as he stepped closer, his chiseled features still bruised from our fight. “Nah, darlin’. You free tonight?”
I shrugged his hand off my arm as I glared at him. The hell? “Almost killing you didn’t send a message? Find someone else to leer at.”
Razor scoffed. “What—”
The crowd went wild, their roaring cutting him off and luring me in. I watched fragments of the fight as it was happening. Movement at the edge of the room captured my attention. A whisk of ash blonde hair caught my eye, and my heart started beating a hundred miles an hour.
I pushed away from the bar—away from Razor—as I made my way through the crowd. But when I finally arrived at the place where I had spotted the blonde man, no one was there. Walking back, I ordered four shots. Tipping back two of them, I grabbed hold of the others and walked back to Tania and her girl—trying to shake the feeling that Jordan was there.
He couldn’t be.
Right?
I looked around again, inspecting the room.
Someone put a hand on my shoulder, and I jolted, turning around to find Tania behind me with a surprised smile. “Wow, Raven. Are you okay?”
I pushed the two shots in her hand and yelled over the crowd’s roaring, “I’m going home. Not feeling well.”
Tania nodded. “All right. See you tomorrow?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.” But I squeezed her arm and waved to Alina in the back.
On my way out, I tried to stop myself from looking around like a stray cub looking for its mom. I was doing fine. I was so fucking fine.
Shit.