Tap-tap-tap.
Right on time. Like the turn of the hourglass. Reliable as the Sun.
The past few weeks may have changed us, the world around us might have caught on fire, crumbled into the Great Sea. War, blood, explosions, and brushes with Death himself might have tipped our realities on edge.
But there’s been one constant.
One thing always bigger than all of the chaos coming down around us.
That, while we’re strong on our own, we’re much stronger together.
Tap-tap-tap.
Also, despite everything, he still prefers to tap on my window to get inside my house. Which is practically his house too since he spends more time here than he does at his own.
I push aside the curtains and throw open the window.
Nico stands there, raking his fingers through that dark, wavy hair of his. Dimple spectacularly deep, punctuating my favorite smile.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
And we just stare at each other. I crouch down onto my knees before the window, rest my arms on the sill.
Behind him, under a lamp in the street, a couple joint Night-Imperi guards stand watch. They’re stationed all over the island, but only to keep the peace, never to create conflict.
Nico takes a step forward, leans down so we’re face to face.
This is the strange little routine we’ve adopted.
“I have a door, you know,” I say.
“I know,” he says back, placing his hand on mine, his touch warm, setting my skin to tingle and alighting those lovely butterflies deep in my stomach. They’re always awake these days. So much I’m actually getting used to them.
I shiver. “All right … In or out, Denali?”
He laughs. Climbs in through my window.
And I close it, lock it tightly behind him.
I pull the curtains closed, shutting away the outside world. That place where fires still smolder and people still battle because of who they are and where they came from.
But it’s also the place where I did something good. Where I like to think I made a difference, even a small one.
Where I came together against all odds with my best friend and united a divided people.
Sometimes I lay awake at night, Nico’s arms wrapped around me like a safe cocoon, and think about my father. Did he know his plan would work? And did he sacrifice himself for the greater good?
Near the end, it didn’t seem he was capable of much rational thought, but who’s to say it wasn’t his plan all along?
He sure as hell could have gotten there much easier, that’s for sure.
It doesn’t justify his actions, but I think, in his own way, he made peace with everything and somehow felt he was leaving us the gift of unification, however messy it ended up being.
Other nights I wake up in a cold sweat out of a terror of a dream.
Sometimes it’s Poppy’s Offering.
Other times it’s my own near-execution or the Sindaco on that final day lighting the fuse to the mines.
And every once in a while, it’s what might have been: Dorian dies, Nico dies, or I’m two years old and instead of being bit by that pantera I’m pulled under, washed downstream and out to sea.
And while the nightmares vary, the way I awaken is always the same …
“Ad astra,” Nico will say, arcing his thumb across the top of my hand. “Ad astra…”