I climb out of the den door, quiet as possible, silently thanking the Sun that Dorian trusted me with a set of keys.
I’m now on the upper side of the earth, large boulders and overgrown plants hide my location from view. I didn’t come up the den I’d intended, but I’m not too far off. I’m in the woods that sprawl like jungle behind our house. Nico’s home is only a short walk away.
It’s dark, that crescent moon winking down at me again. Snow heavily blankets the ground so everything’s lit up like midday—both helpful and not.
I walk along the canal, boots crunching over ice, and round the corner where the canal turns from smooth rock around the edges to snowy dirt.
But something’s new.
A fence has been added.
The same kind Dorian and I encountered last time, but on the other side of the Basso village. I pick up a small mound of snow and toss it at the wire. It hisses and I swear back at it.
Up ahead, I see the faint outline of houses along the ridge above me. The lights from the gate separating Dogio villages from Basso villages shine bright.
I can either jump into the canal and swim around the fence or risk being seen by taking the main road and sneaking through the gate.
I look to the water. Parts of it are frozen, but not solid. I’d get wet like when Dorian and I had to swim it, but it’s much colder now. I’d freeze.
Sneak through the gate it is.
I step light as air, keeping low and behind the trees. When I near the top, I have a perfect line of sight to the entrance. Two Imperi soldiers sit to each side of the stone wall, a metal gate between them. One naps while the other watches the road. His eyes are heavy and it’s as if he too is asleep, just with his eyes open.
I move closer.
Closer.
I duck behind the last tree before there’s a small field and then the road. No change in the watching guard. Still lazy and bored. Half-asleep. A spot near the gate catches my eyes: Where the electric fence stops is a small section of stone wall. It’s low enough I should be able to jump it at the place before it snakes up, joining the pillars flanking the gate.
I consider throwing a rock to create a diversion, but the soldiers are so close and half-dead anyway. Instead of causing a commotion, it’s safer to sneak.
I take three steps.
One of the soldiers coughs.
I freeze.
If he turns his head to the left, I’m done for.
Adjusting himself on his stool, he leans back against the wall, assuming his position, lowering his eyelids.
I don’t dare breathe.
Two more tentative steps.
The wind blows, shuffling frozen leaves, nature’s diversion. I walk faster.
Three steps.
Almost there. Two more strides.
Step.
Step.
The guard might as well be a statue because he doesn’t so much as twitch.
I climb the stone.
Then, over the other side.
I breathe.
Almost too easy.
“What’s that?” a guard says from behind me.
I drop to the ground.
“What?” the other says, now clearly awake.
“On the ground, just there, do you see it? Something shiny.”
Shiny?
I pat my back pocket and immediately know what it is. The tin-wrapped dried fish I’d shoved in before I left.
Now it’s on the ground.
Damn it.
I crawl back down the ridge toward the canal and into the forest. They stomp toward the object, but that’s it because I’m out of earshot in seconds.
My pulse and breath do double time as I sprint as quietly as possible until I hit it. Our spot. The small pond, now encircled in an umbrella of snow-covered trees. To my left sits Nico’s home, one light shining through a solitary window, a beacon among the many darkened windows that make up the rear of his home.
I’m doing this.
I hike up the ridge, stopping at the back fence.
Eyes straining through the dark and distance, I can barely make out a pennant hanging on the wall: the Dogio school crest embroidered in gold against the charcoal background.
It has to be his room.
Hands shaking, I pick up a small pebble, and breathe … one … two …
It hits the glass with a plink.
“Oh!” I gasp. A tall figure stands in the window, but disappears before I get a good look.
It could be anyone.
Do I run? Do I wait?
There’s an unmistakable creak and click in the distance: the back door.
My heart thumps in my throat, beating so fast I’m out of breath. I slide down the fence and huddle into myself. Hidden. I hope.
Footsteps.
I start to fling my body down the hill, but …
Knife at my throat.
I pull mine from my belt and thrust it to their wrist. One move by either of us and we’ll both be spurting blood.
Breath wheezes in my ear. “What the hell are you—”
He drops the knife.
I drop mine.
“Veda?” It’s a pained, horrible whisper. “How the…? Where did you…?”
Exactly.
“I had to see you, warn you,” I say.
He nods. Scans the area. “It’s not safe here.”
He looks back at his window, nudging his head toward it.
“Inside?” I say.
“It’s the safest option. My parents sleep like the dead and in the opposite wing.”
He throws his arms around me. “I’m so sorry,” he says into my neck.
“I know.” My throat closes around the words. “Me too.”
He pulls back. “Come on.”
I follow him around the fence and to the other side. We enter through a gate he has to unlock.
In slow movements, Nico opens his back door, guides me in, then shuts it, locking several locks behind him. Something about it gives me the impression of being both secure and imprisoned.
The empty, nighttime version of Nico’s home is cold, lonely, such a stark contrast from the jubilation and splendor of the Ever-Sol Feast. How the place was packed at the seams and lit up like sunrise what seems like a lifetime ago.
But Nico’s bedroom is different.
There’s nothing lonely or cold or remotely sterile here. It’s home. Nico.
The room smells of the forest, a burning fire in the hearth against the outside wall, a small pile of clothes slung over a chair at his desk, a book left open on his unmade bed. I move toward his dresser. Several items line the top against the wall: a fishing hook, a rock, a button, a coil of metal, a scrap of fabric, an autumn leaf, a piece of tree bark, and several other trinkets, scraps of debris.
I glance over at him.
He stands at the door, watching me. “Just a few memories…” Memories? “The fishing hook is from the day we met when I caught you at our pond. The button fell off your sweater at some point. It was cracked”—I swear his face is the slightest bit flushed—“so I figured you wouldn’t want it back.” He peers at the dresser. “The metal is from your window—it was sitting on the outside ledge. I picked it up the last time I visited you there after Poppy…” He stops there and nods. “Just stuff like that. Memories. For some reason, I can’t bring myself to throw it all away.”
“And the fabric? Is that from my skirt?” I turn my head toward him. I know for a fact it is and exactly when it snagged and tore.
“Oh, that … Yeah. I think it caught the corner of the bench the night we kissed.” Nico inhales deeply, holding the breath in and shrugging his shoulders. “Feels like so long ago.”
“A lifetime ago.”
He nods, face pained, lines creasing his forehead. He exhales. “Veda—why are you here?”
“Two things, actually.” I look away, then back to him. “Well, maybe three.” Suddenly, I’m terrified about warning him of tomorrow’s attack, telling him about my father, who I am and who I thought I was. Because when I do, everything changes. Right now, if only for a moment, all I want is to be here with him. To simply be Veda and Nico instead of all the other things others expect us to be. “You’re not like them, Nico. You’re not an Imperi officer. Not like the ones we used to scoff at as kids. The ones I used to hide from for fear of punishment. Certainly not the next Raevald.”
He looks down at the floor. “I don’t know what I am anymore,” he says quietly, running his hands through his hair. Somehow, despite being on opposite sides of the earth, I know exactly what he means.
“You could have reported me, had me arrested or worse by now. But you didn’t. You should hate me after last time. Yet here I am.” I take a couple of steps toward him. “In your bedroom for the first time.”
He shakes his head. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to show you this room? My home? I’ve been to yours a hundred times at least.” He stares out the window as if looking toward my and Poppy’s cottage. “I asked my father once if you could visit.” He looks back at me. “I told him how wrong it was that you were my best friend and not allowed to stand inside our house.” Nico releases a breath. “I won’t tell you what he said, but it had something to do with keeping to my place, being reckless and stupid.” He moves closer, eyes intense. “Pretty sure I’m somewhere in between right about now.”
“But it’s more, isn’t it?”
“Maybe…” He stares into my eyes, his eyes somber, serious. “Why else are you here?”
“I’m here because…” I pause for breath, to attempt to calm the buzzing of my nerves. I came here to warn him, to explain everything, and suddenly, I can barely remember my own name.
I gaze across the lamp-lit room at him and he gazes back and I can’t help the words that leave my mouth in a desperate flurry. “I know you, Nico.” I close the distance between us. “I know you like I know myself. Like I know a fishing pole or Poppy’s old, wrinkled hands.” I step closer and briefly I think of Dorian—Dorian who’s been working with the Sindaco on high tales of attack dates and Lunalettes and prophecies—but swiftly push him out of my head. “I think of you often, especially these past days, maybe more than I ever have.” I place my hand on his chest. “Yes, a lot has changed, but deep down, we’re still just Nico and Veda.” I run my thumb over his chest in an arc. Ad astra. I meet his eyes. “Aren’t we?”
Nico’s eyes don’t veer from mine, but his breathing speeds and I’m so close now, I can feel his chest rise and fall. “Yesterday I’d have probably said no.” His words brush across my lips. “But right now, here with you, I feel more like myself than I have in a long time. More than ever.”
I want to trust my instincts. Our history. I want to share everything with him from the Sindaco to Lunalette to the atlatl strapped to my bag to how I knew he’d picked up my button when it fell off my sweater last year to the impending attack. That we’ll be fighting each other come sunrise. On opposite sides of a revolution. How could I ever fight Nico? Raise my weapon toward him?
My heart raps like a war drum against my chest, and my mind’s a mess of memories and confusion.
I can’t tell him any of that when only the thought sends my nerves on edge, makes my eyes burn.
I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
Where to end.
And everything in between would ruin all Nico and I have been through up to now.
Instead I wrap my arms around his shoulders, nestle into his body, place my lips at his neck.
Nico’s breath catches. He pulls away for a moment, but then he’s leaning in too. I kiss the soft place just under his ear, breathing in all things Nico: the forest and spearmint and sandalwood, all that is home. He leans his head back, exposing his neck, and it’s there I enjoy more kisses, tasting the warmth and salt of his skin against my lips.
I steal a peek. His eyes are shut, closed too tightly, like they were during our first kiss. Bringing my hand to his face, I smooth his eyebrows with my thumb, softening the lines on his forehead.
Nico clasps his hands around my waist, urging me up toward his mouth. We kiss.
Everything rushes.
It’s like we’re out of time before we’ve begun. Like our lips can’t get enough of the other’s. Quick movements and fast breaths, and hands, hands, hands all over.
Until somehow we’re lying down. I don’t know how. One second I’m standing next to his dresser, the next I’m beneath him on his bed and his room is dark save for a single, dim lamp next to the door and the light flicker of firelight. His bed that’s so soft and white and clean and scented of lemon and juniper.
It’s nothing but lips and hands and skin and quickened breathing and everything … blurry.
Nico shakes his head back and forth so slightly; the softness of his nose grazes my ear like silk. “Veda…,” he breathes.
“I know,” I breathe right back. I know it’s not like that. Not now. This is closeness and lost time and hello and goodbye and why?why?why?
I’ll tell him everything. Just not yet.
WE’RE ON HIS BED. The room is still and dark. The world at rest. Nico’s shirt is unbuttoned and his chest, the same shade as sunbaked sand and everything warm, is pushed against my back. My tunic, having loosened and slightly fallen, reveals my bare shoulder.
Nico runs his fingers back and forth, sending a shiver of goose bumps over my arm, down my back, and then up my neck. His mouth is at my ear, and the way his breath hitches, it’s like he wants to say something but keeps stopping himself.
I beat him to it. “Nico?”
“Hmm?”
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
“Is it the second thing or the maybe-third thing?”
“I don’t even know anymore.”
“Does it have to do with why you’re here?” He kisses the back of my neck. “You never answered my question.”
His arm, wrapped around my waist, rises and falls as I take a deep, shaky breath.
There’s no way to spin it casually. No reason to drag it out.
I’m just going to say it, blurt the words out, and then we’ll deal with it whatever it means. Whatever it ruins between us.
“The Night is going to—”
An unending series of loud bangs and knocks steal my words.
The front door.
Both of us bolt straight up, eyes wide as we stare at each other.
“No,” Nico says, the word near silent.
Hurried, bare footsteps pad down the stairs.
I shake my head.
“It’ll be all right,” he whispers, his hands on my shoulders.
We jump up, still staring at each other, no idea what to do or where to go.
Knocks and bangs blast from the floor below.
The front door opens, slamming a wall. Something shatters.
“What in the—” Nico’s father shouts.
A chorus of murmured voices breaks out in confusion.
Several pairs of boots march up the stairs.
Nico and I scurry to find our things, to find a way out of whatever’s about to happen.
He’s lacing up his boots and I’m throwing on my jacket, reaching for my atlatl, when—
Loud knocks bang against his door like it’s the end of the world.
It very well may be.
Nico grabs my arm before I can reach my weapon and drags me to the closet, shutting me in.
The bedroom door swings open, hitting the wall behind it.
“Where’s the other one?” a guard yells.
“Who?” Nico answers.
“You know exactly who!” the guard shouts.
“I have no idea what you—”
There’s a punch … Knuckles hitting flesh … A pained grunt … Then someone I assume is Nico falls against what must be his dresser, because a dozen trinkets scatter like marbles raining down on the wooden floor.
Items are tossed, picked up, and moved. Furniture scratches against the floor and bumps the walls.
The closet door flies open.
A soldier with a broken front tooth stares right into my eyes.
His large hands clutch my wrists, and he yanks me from the closet. My feet trip over the mess on the floor, our memories wrecked and strewn about like spilled garbage. My eyes move from the fragments to Nico. His face is swollen, bruising before my eyes, and he struggles to get up off the floor, a broken chair taking the brunt of his fall.
I’m sorry, I mouth. This is my fault.
He shakes his head.
“I came here on my own. He had no idea. It’s my fault. He’s not to blame. He told me to leave, but I refused!” I shout.
“Veda, don’t—” Nico says.
“I’m telling the truth!”
“It’s not us who need convincing,” the soldier standing over Nico growls. “The soldiers at the gate tipped us off. We’re to take you straight to Raevald himself.”
“Both of you.” The broken-toothed guard holding on to me raises an eyebrow while tsking Nico, heir to Bellona.
Nico and I lock eyes.
We’re in this together now.