When he wakes—so early the birds have only just begun to sing—his mind is set, and he needs to be anywhere but here.
Tell me you understand.
Naevia’s voice rings in his ears.
Yes. I understand completely.
The bed that’s his but isn’t his screams at him to get out. The curtains and the Anatolian rug and the big bay window look all wrong, distorted in the early morning light, an accusation, how dare he presume, and every shirt he throws on is itchy or oversized or makes him want to throw up. There’s no faintly growing buzz hovering behind his ears, no sense of impending doom, and isn’t that curious? Arran is as clear-headed as ever, and he needs to leave.
So he throws on his clothes from last night without thinking anymore about it.
He walks.
Through the dim manor house slowly coming to life, ignoring the morning greetings Una and Kalinde call out to him. Outside, where the dark fog presses in around Breakwater House, hanging so low and thick it transforms the peninsula into an otherworldly island all its own. Down the long gravel road, the cold salt air crisp in his lungs, and with every step away from the house his lungs breathe a little easier.
He walks.
It takes over an hour to walk there from the Arborem, and the sky is growing light. The sentries at the Senate don’t recognize him, and why would they? But they recognize the seal on his patent of identity, the eight-pointed sun of the Kleios familia. Naevia isn’t in yet, but her secretary is—and it should be harder, conjuring a smile to ease him in, when every step away from Breakwater has loosened the vise grip on Arran’s heart, making room for something bigger. Rage. But it’s easy, pretending it’s not there. It’s always easy. He has too much practice for it to be anything but. So the secretary sees a man who is all dimpled smiles and empty of anger, and he blushes, and is only too happy to give Arran the address he needs.
A half hour later finds him outside a modest apartment building in the Fourth Ward, one of the scrappy little neighborhoods squeezed between Seven Dials and the Financial Quarter that he somehow never thinks to remember. It looks like the kind of place that should be quiet on a normal weekday morning such as this. Families, bakeries, children on their way to school. Awake, but content.
It’s not.
Shouts and disgruntled mutterings waft over from a small crowd where an amateur orator in his orange robes is riling up the Fourth Ward’s residents. He passes a small throng of angry middle-aged women talking animatedly about rent hikes and overeager Publica officers and should have at least given her a few days. Tension crackles in the air, and it does nothing to quell the riot already roiling inside him.
No one answers the blue-painted door when he knocks, and it occurs to him that she may have already left for work. But as he’s standing there, feeling the ocean inside his chest swell to a point he doesn’t think he can contain for much longer and wondering where else he could go now and when did his hands get so awkward and heavy and useless—
Theo turns the corner up ahead, half a dappham sticking out of her mouth.
“Sorry,” he says, suddenly realizing how weird this is. “I’m not a stalker, I promise.”
“Let me guess, you were just in the neighborhood?”
She lets him in anyway.
Theo’s apartment is a small studio on the third floor. He knows enough to keep quiet despite the prickling of his skin—at least until she’s poured two cups from the steaming kettle and handed him one. Her tazine is nutty, almost herbal. This, at least, feels right.
“Sorry,” he says again, after taking a sip. “You probably have work.”
She shakes her head. “Day off.”
“Oh. Right.” He takes another sip, and wants to open his mouth, to tell her everything, to rid himself of this bone-deep itch that has him coming out of his skin. But the words won’t come. They’re too new. Too big—and what if he’s wrong about her? Altogether more frightening, what if he’s right?
Instead, he nods to the window, to the shouts of the street. “What’s all that about?”
“Pina Bema.”
“’Scuse me?”
“Pina Bema. She owns the corner store. Well, she did. Publica arrested her for being a day late on rent.”
“Feels like I’m hearing stories like that a lot these days,” Arran says, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Theo frowns. “You all right over there?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Arran,” she says, and when he looks up she’s staring straight at him. As if she already knows. “Why are you here?”
He hesitates, just for a moment, then says, “I’m gonna self-immolate.”
“Sounds excessive.”
“Yeah, probably.”
And then it all comes pouring out. Because his mind is made up. He’s made his decision. But first he needs her to understand why.
It’s not just Naevia, but Selah, and Linet and her children and how it was his family’s fault because they did not care. He doesn’t mention Naevia’s threats. To shut up and play nice and swallow down every hurt and injustice for the sake of keeping the peace—to get on board or get out. He doesn’t tell her about that. He doesn’t have to. It infects every word that spills from his mouth.
Theo listens quietly as he rails, unfurling crescendos of all his long-held frustrations and the deep-seated guilt of knowing—knowing, and looking the other way. She says nothing as he paces the length of her apartment and back again, needing to get this out before he can stop and overthink the way he sounds like a petulant kid just beginning to have his image of the world ruptured by toxic reality. It’s not. This is not new. But between Dad dying and Naevia’s threats and actually experiencing a life outside the rancid bubble of the Arborem, and then Theo suddenly existing and showing him a way out, he can’t swallow this down anymore.
So he talks and he talks, and she stays silent all the while until he’s talked himself quiet. It’s only then that she uncrosses her plump arms from where she’s leaning against the closed window shutters. “So,” she says, “what do you want me to do about it?”
Her eyes are dark. Her face drawn, impassive. He’s making a mess of this, and suddenly it becomes abundantly clear that coaxing her into revealing herself is not going to work. So he takes a breath, and he takes the plunge.
“I know.”
“Know what?”
“Theo.” He holds her gaze, steady in his. “I know. I know what you are.”
A beat passes, then two, and for a moment he thinks he’s maybe miscalculated. Then she goes very, very still.
“I’m sorry.”
That, Arran hadn’t expected. It’s completely disconcerting. He’s right—he’s right, and now what is he supposed to do with that? But Theo doesn’t apologize to anyone. Not for anything.
“You—” he says, uncertain, but there’s something steady beating against his chest alongside his heart, fighting to get out. “You’re not gonna deny it?”
“What’s the point? You’ll tell the senator the second you get home anyway. Not sure why you haven’t already, to be honest.”
“Because—because I don’t want to. Because I want to be one, too.”
An incredulous crease grows between her brows. “That’s not the way it works. It’s not something you want. You either are or you aren’t. You know or you don’t. It’s not like playing dress up.”
“I want it, okay?” he snaps, and grabs her arm, because semantics be damned but she’s not listening to him. And she’s not panicking, and she’s not denying it, and she’s not asking why, or how he figured her out, but she also hasn’t gutted him with the kitchen knife he clocked on his way in, so it feels like there’s still a way in here. And if she wants him to prove that he wants this—that he needs to do this—then he will.
“I know this isn’t a game,” he says. “I have to do something. And I thought maybe that was going back into the legions because at least there I’d have some kind of trajectory or, or some way of knowing that I was actually living. But it’s more than that now. I need to do something that actually makes a difference, because this doesn’t work, and no one is listening, and I can’t sit on the sidelines anymore.”
Theo blinks at him, then down at his hand clasped around her forearm, over the rough ridges of keloid aqua swirls and abstract geometric lines he knows run their way across her back. And then, as if on the brink of laughter, as if she hadn’t been annoyed with him thirty seconds earlier, she asks slowly, “What are you talking about?”
The drum in his chest skips to an unsteady halt. “What . . . what are you talking about?”
This time, Theo actually does laugh, a small chuckle that radiates the length of her body, and she looks down at her long, steepled fingers for a drawn-out moment. Then she looks back up, fixes Arran with a clear gaze and says, “I’m not a girl. That’s what we’re talking about, yeah?”
“You’re not a . . . ? Obviously you’re not a girl. You’re a woman.”
Her dark eyes hold his, almost amused. “Nope. Try again.”
Oh. Oh.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh,” she—they, they—repeat, and Arran suddenly feels like a world-class idiot.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“I didn’t think you knew, it’s fine. Just don’t tell your stepmother, yeah? Turns out I like my job.”
“I won’t. And I won’t tell her you’re a Revenant, either.”