The painted room looked empty, sparser than usual without its furniture configuration (moved to the outer corridor, someone else’s problem) or the plants. It reminded him of the initiation ritual, the person he’d been a year ago, thinking there was no such thing as a loss he couldn’t swallow or a problem he couldn’t fix. Had it been a lesson he hadn’t learned quickly enough? Something that should have warded off his recklessness sooner, to remake his personality somehow into something more subdued, a little wiser? The distance traveled between then and now covered a mix of melancholia and contentment, a push and pull of loss and love. He felt more aware of his limits now, even as he prepared to stretch them farther than they’d gone before. It felt different, bravery that was tinged with wonder, like explorers diving into the wild deep. Facing off against the lure of the horizon, chasing the perennial unknown.
He was customarily optimistic that his exuberance on the matter had appropriately affected Libby’s state of mind, which seemed outwardly unchanged but also, importantly, did not prove the last-minute obstacle Nico suspected it might have been. She seemed … subdued, a mettle slightly more iron than complacent, but even if she’d been hesitant, it wouldn’t be the first time Nico had dragged her into something that had proven worthwhile in the end. If he had any real significance in her life, it was to be the constant drive, the momentum to force her forward. She was the same thing for him, whether she recognized it or not. If to others they seemed inseverable, like a single object to the naked eye, there was no point feeling resentful about it now.
Nico chose not to feel resentful, actually, about anything. Not when Parisa chose to exempt herself from their lives (disappointing but unsurprising, the way she apparently had nothing more to say to him) or when Dalton usurped captainship of the experiment. Not when Reina ended her replies with an impressively geriatric “bye.” Nico had woken that morning to Gideon playfully criticizing the stars in his eyes and now he was completing a journey he’d begun two years ago, maybe more. Yes, definitely longer ago than that. Somewhere in the back of his head Nico had been building this ship ever since the moment he saw what Libby Rhodes could do—since the moment he’d recognized the presence of a worthy adversary, who would become an invaluable ally—and now, finally, it was time to set sail.
“Ready?” Dalton seemed more alive than usual. He was tremulous with anticipation, or maybe that was just Nico’s energy infecting everyone else. “If I’m going to be able to do this”—this being the animation of the void at the proper rate of not-so-spontaneous cosmic inflation—“I’m going to need you to hold a fair amount of heat.”
Roughly ten billion degrees, so yeah, a fair amount. “We’ve just got to casually handle a supernova, we know. No worries, Dalton, we’ve got it covered.” Nico waltzed to the center of the room and stood across from Libby, holding out both hands. “Just another Tuesday, right, Rhodes?”
“It’s Wednesday.” But she sighed and placed her hands in his, warily. No more warily than normal, of course, but still, Nico surmised that she could have been a little more upbeat given that it was her who’d brought up the obvious. At long last, they were doing the unfathomable, succumbing to their magnetic pull, which had always been ineffable. It had always been so bright, so glaring, the impossibility of the horizon. The potential they’d always known they had.
What had they been born for if not for this?
What had they been orbiting for so long, if not the inevitability of what they could be?
“Have a little perspective, would you? I know we’re not mentioning time travel by name, but that’s an accomplishment you can hold over me, at least.” To that, Nico thought he caught the presence of a tiny smirk. “What’s a little stellar energy between lifelong nemeses, eh, Rhodes?”
“Varona—” She hesitated for a second, like she was about to say something, and his heart flipped in his chest at the possibility of being overrun.
“Rhodes. Come on. I spent a year training Tristan for this,” he said, which Tristan (standing beside Dalton near the apse, looking broody in contemplation as opposed to his usual resting broody face) either didn’t hear or chose not to. Which was gratifying, as Nico had a feeling he was pleading a little, trading dignity for ardency. But he hadn’t woken up that morning prepared to make worlds only to settle for making dinner. Or small talk. Or sarcastic comments, though they were hard to avoid. “Come on, what have I always told you? Either you’re enough or—”
“Stop, there’s only so many Varona aphorisms I can take.” Her palms felt small and weightless in his.
“Rhodes.” He lowered his voice, leaning in. “If you’re worried about whether we can do this, believe me, we can. You get that, right?” He searched her slate eyes for understanding, or acknowledgment, or merely the indication that she was listening. “We didn’t get here by accident.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he understood that this was happening. From where Nico and Libby faced each other, Dalton stood coiled and ready on Nico’s left, like a hurdler next in line for the baton. From Nico’s right, Tristan stood at the opposing point of their conjuring diamond, looking characteristically grim. But Nico had never seen Tristan defeated, and he already knew this would not end in defeat.
“We,” Nico said again, his gaze flicking to where Gideon sat respectfully outside the perimeter of their experiment, head tilted absently amid the sun streaming in below the apse. “We are not an accident.”
This was happening, whether Libby had hesitation left to voice or not. If he dragged her, kicking and screaming, then so be it. He dragged her.
Enough talking.
Time to go.
Power was easy to find. In this house it was always just below the surface, always just within reach, his foot constantly hovering atop the gas pedal. Since Libby had left, since she’d returned, all Nico had done was coast. Her absence, that was paralysis, the ongoing sensation of a hoax. But she was back now—she was here, with her hands in his, and she was strong, stronger than she had ever been, and he was intent on proving that to her. It was a rev of the engine, the wave of a flag, the chatter of a light fixture, Edwardian lamps trembling atop Victorian tables.
His signal, waiting for her reply.
Her power caught onto his instantly, reflexively. Nico felt a half second’s drag and then whiplash, taking off like a gunshot. The blast of it was deafening at first, like a ringing in his ears, and for a moment he faltered. Tristan and Dalton disappeared from either side of his periphery; Gideon had been swallowed up by a brightness he couldn’t name. The impact of the blast was everywhere, inside his chest and out, inside his pulse, inside his veins, exploding behind his eyes like the bottom dropping out, the engine failing—powerlessness. A beat of it. A pulse.
For a moment Nico felt weightless and insubstantial, suspended in nothing. He felt the motion of his chest cease, the air in his lungs contracting, a loss of feeling in his arms and legs, his feet, his hands. All but the knowledge, the counterbalancing thought of Libby’s presence fell away. Power overwhelmed him like rapture, suffocation. Aneurysm, embolism, and seizure, all at once. A thud of his heart, and then nothing.
Nothing.
And then.
And then—