by Lu, Marie
“And if he doesn’t?”
“I think you’d prefer that he does,” Min says. “This isn’t a request, Daniel. This is an order.”
I lean over the side of the walkway and stare down at the dizzying height. “I don’t do well with personal threats, Director,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Good, because neither do I.” Min starts to walk away. “So let’s make sure it doesn’t come down to that.”
I watch her go, feeling a sense of helplessness that I haven’t felt since the Republic was at war.
The rest of the guests seem like they’re starting to stream inside the hall, but I stay where I am, in the solitude and the rain. At least I’d had Tess on my side when I used to live on the streets of Lake. Here, I feel alone.
“You’re not heading in?”
June’s voice comes from one side of the walkway. I jump, straightening, and look over to see her approaching.
My words jumble in my throat and fail to come out. Tonight, she’s in a floor-length gown of scarlet and black, the skirt billowing with floating fabric in a fanlike pattern. Whenever she walks, she looks like she’s gliding on air. Crystal drops sparkle on her ears.
I realize that she’s still looking at me, and force myself to stop gaping and turn back toward the main Hall of Philosophy. “I thought I’d get some fresh air before I had to head in,” I say. “What are you doing out here? Isn’t the Elector expecting you inside?”
She comes to stand beside me and gives me a brief smile. “He’s deep in conversation with Faline,” she replies, nodding toward the hall. “I think he’ll be fine on his own for a while.”
June, who always seems like she’s put together and has everything under control. I give her a tight smile, wishing I could feel the same way, instead of this awkward sense of uncertainty around her.
“Something’s bothering you,” she says after a while.
“Is it that obvious?” I reply.
She glances sidelong at me. “Well, I like to pride myself on how well I can read the details of everything around me.”
I laugh a little at that. “Yeah, I seem to remember you having a knack for it.”
She smiles, then turns serious. “Care to share any of it with me? You look like you could use someone to hear you out.”
And again, there she goes, predicting me. I hesitate, wondering whether I should embroil any more people I care about into my business. “Work’s been rough lately,” I finally decide to say.
“Rough like how?”
I sigh. “I think I’m starting to understand why you acted the way you did when I was first getting to know you. When you worked as an agent in the Republic. Working for a country you didn’t agree with, staying loyal even if the cause was imperfect. It was almost easier to be from the streets. At least all the right choices were obvious there.”
June’s silent for a moment. Rain pours down the sides of the archway above us, forming a makeshift waterfall. “It’s not easy being in a gray zone,” she finally replies. I notice with gratitude that she doesn’t ask me the sensitive details of what I’m involved in. “Maybe you should think about a line of work in something less dangerous. Finance, perhaps.”
“Why?” I straighten the lapels of my suit and puff out my chest. “Is finance a hot look on me?”
She raises an eyebrow. “I thought we were talking about making the right decisions.”
We smile a little, then lapse again into silence.
“Not here,” I whisper after a moment. “It’s too sensitive to talk about in public.”
June’s expression never changes. She smiles like I’d just murmured something intimate to her. But when she replies softly, she says, “My place, then, after most of the festivities are done.”
* * *
It’s almost midnight by the time we finally leave the gala.
June’s staying in a penthouse across from the Elector’s suites on the top floor of their hotel. As we enter the space, the security system greets us both by our names. I watch the light shift against June’s back as she removes her heels and walks on quiet feet toward her bedroom.
I lean against the kitchen counter and let myself admire the main chamber, trying not to think about June changing out of her dress in the other room. Our President definitely spares no expense in making sure foreign leaders here have a full sense of how well Antarctica’s doing.
I walk over to the long glass windows overlooking the black ocean. I’m still staring at the view when June emerges from her room.
Her hair is down now in soft waves against her face, and she has changed into a comfortable wrap that drapes silken against her figure. Her eyes are liquid dark in the night, as mesmerizing as I remember.
Hell. She’s still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.
Was I ever able to relax in a room with her? Or was I always like this—my heart beating rapidly in her presence, every sense of mine attentive to her and ignorant of everything else?
She seems to notice my sudden discomfort, and for a moment, we just stand stiffly apart, not knowing what to say.
“You look nice,” I end up blurting out. Immediately, I regret it. Could I have thought of something dumber to say? Probably not.
She clears her throat, unsure what to say back. I curse inwardly at myself. Way to make her uncomfortable.
To my relief, she flashes me a small smile. “Thanks,” she replies. “Always the flatterer, even when things are going wrong.”
Another shard of a memory comes back to me in that moment. We’re sitting side by side, passing a bottle of cheap sea-grape wine between us and squinting at its sour, salty aftertaste. I don’t know who she is, and I don’t know what I say to her. But she’s so beautiful and strange. Our lips touch.
The memory fades, and I find myself back in June’s hotel room, blinking at my recollection. Beside me, June tilts her head curiously.
“What did you just think about?” she asks.
I hesitate, then look down. “I remembered something,” I reply. “About us, before.”
At that, she brightens. “A memory?” she asks. “What was it?”
I glance at her with a bashful smile. “The first time we kissed.”
June’s lips quirk, and a little laugh escapes her. She looks away too, out the windows at the black ocean and the lights of the city. “Do they come back to you in pieces like that? Your memories?”
“Yes. Specific things will trigger new memories. Most of the time, they’re just fragments. I remember kissing you, for example, and the bottle of wine we were passing between us. But I don’t remember exactly where we were, or who else might have been nearby then. I don’t know what I said to you, or you to me. I just remember … the feeling of being near you. As if it were from a different lifetime.”
June closes her eyes for a brief moment, as if soaking in the memory herself, before she looks at me again. “We were on the streets of Lake, and you didn’t know who I was yet. I didn’t know you were Day. It was right before everything unraveled.”
Before everything unraveled between us. Now I remember. It was before my mother died, before the Republic arrested me. It was the beginning of being forever linked with her.
I turn back to her. “But nothing’s unraveling for you now, yeah? You seem really happy these days,” I say.
She smiles a little. “I am,” she replies. “Tess is still doing well. You know she’s been promoted to head doctor of her hospital? I see her often. Pascao and I hang out constantly. Life has settled into a nice routine, and it made me realize how much I missed having that.” She nods out at the city. “Some sense of balance. Of normalcy after the war. Isn’t that strange?”
Normalcy. Routine. I find myself smiling at her, content to know that she was content. Then I wonder if my presence in her life—and all the chaos it currently has—would disrupt all of that for her.
Maybe I’ve always been the reason for the unraveling of her life.
She looks at me. “And yours?” she asks. “What has your life been like?”
I shrug and look away, reluctant to break this peaceful moment with my problems. “Good,” I reply. “Great, actually. Sometimes I still can’t believe I live here, in luxury. I’ll never have to spend another day fighting to survive in the streets.”
June hears the hesitation in my answer. “But you’re fighting something,” she says.
For a moment, everything in me resists telling her. But June steps closer to me and forces me to face her head-on, then crosses her arms. “Tell me,” she says, her eyes dark and warm.
Her presence is overwhelming in every sense. I have to tear my gaze away from hers in order to think straight.
Finally, with a deep breath, I start to tell her. I mention the missions I’ve been running lately in Ross City, the man I’ve been hunting down. I tell her about the hierarchies of this place’s skyscraper tiers, how the Leveling divides the classes, how even though it’s all more fluid than anything in the Republic, it’s still as imperfect as anything else in this world. I tell her about the murders of anyone who has been unable to pay their debts to Dominic Hann, and the seedy underground of the Undercity.
Then I tell her of Eden’s involvement, how he has entangled himself in something so much more dangerous than he knows.
June frowns. “You weren’t afraid of Dominic Hann before Eden met him,” she says, studying me.
“He was a job before then,” I reply, “until I saw the same culprit from our crime photos walking up to my brother. And now the AIS wants Eden to join the investigation, to lure the man out of hiding.”
June doesn’t answer right away, but her eyes are steady. They steady me. Somehow, in the midst of everything going wrong between Eden and me, her presence is a comfort in the dark. I don’t feel alone confessing all this to her.
“You still know Eden better than anyone else,” June says after a while. “He’s your brother. You’ve protected him all your life, and I know he understands that.”
“It’s my protection of him that seems to have pushed him away.” I run a frustrated hand through my hair, ruffling it. “I used to think that nothing in the world could ever divide us. But then Eden grew older. He’s changed, maybe for the better. But there are things he doesn’t tell me now, and I don’t know how to guess what he’s thinking.”
June smiles. “You’ll never be able to guess what he’s thinking,” she replies. “Metias always tried with me, you know. He never really succeeded, but we’d still been linked. You and Eden have a bond that’s unbreakable. No matter what he isn’t telling you, he still loves you more than anyone else in the world. I know it. I’ve seen it.”
Metias. The brother that June had lost, the death that had, fatefully, brought us together. I search her gaze and find grief there, but also a sense of peace. “He practically raised you,” I say gently. “I wish I could measure up to that. I’ve tried being a good father figure for Eden, but … sometimes I wonder if he’s worse off for it.”
“You’re afraid for him,” June says. “That he wants to help in this investigation of a dangerous criminal.”
“I’m always afraid for him,” I reply.
There’s a deep understanding in June’s eyes. “You’ve helped Eden come into his own as a person. Everything about him is modeled after you, in the best way. Don’t you see that? But, Daniel, he’s not a helpless child. He’ll resist every attempt you make to insulate him from the world. Let him in a little. Let someone else offer their shoulder to you. Maybe he’s pushing away because he loves you, because he worries for you just like you worry for him.”
“I know he’s not helpless,” I mutter, shoving my hands into my pockets. “But the AIS isn’t keen on his safety. No one is. I’m the steward of that.”
“I wasn’t talking completely about Eden’s safety. I was also talking about yours.” A slight furrow creases in June’s brow. “Something you never seem to be as concerned about as you should. Others worry for you too, you know. You would do well to acknowledge that.”
Her rephrasing instantly sends a stab of guilt through me. “I’m sorry,” I admit, turning my eyes down. “I’m just worried for him.” Outside, the southern lights have begun their evening dance, painting the sky in ribbons of turquoise and white. “Hann isn’t going to forget about him. He’s probably got his men investigating the power outage I triggered down in the Undercity. He’s not going to let Eden go that easily, not when he seemed fascinated enough to come out of hiding to see him race.”
June shakes her head. “Eden hasn’t changed at all, has he?” she says quietly.
At that, a smile sneaks onto the corner of my lips. “It’s the best and worst thing about him. He does things that shake entire structures of society. He finds himself at the center of everything, without ever trying to do anything other than help someone. Sometimes I wonder what John would think if he were still here, how proud he’d be of his kid brother.” I grimace a little. “I just wish it wasn’t always something that could get the damn kid killed. Sometimes it’s noble. Sometimes it’s just stupid. It’s a fine line.”
June smiles gently at me. “Noble. Sometimes stupidly so. At the center of everything because he’s always trying to help someone. It sounds to me like he takes after someone I know.”
I grin a little at that. “I did what I had to do.”
“You do what you believe is right. Always. And doing what’s right tends to be hard.”
I look at her. “You aren’t exactly a conformer yourself, Ms. Iparis,” I say, turning to face her directly now. “I think the Republic has a few things to say about that.”
She smiles again and looks away from me to the view beyond the window. I know she’s thinking about her brother now. “The Republic’s changing slower than I would like. Anden’s doing his best, but the politics of it all makes me impatient.” She runs an idle hand through her hair, and the gesture reminds me of another forgotten memory, of her fingers through her shining ponytail, the hair hanging long past her shoulders.
My thoughts return to her life, and how she has learned to steady it. I clear my throat awkwardly and stare down at my hands. “Hey,” I say quietly. “Can I ask … what made you and Anden decide to end things?”
June’s quiet, and for a moment I think I’ve overstepped. But then a faraway look crosses her face. “I don’t know how it gradually fell apart,” she finally replies. “But there was one early morning that changed everything. I remember it because the light coming in through the window was so beautiful, the purest light I’d ever seen, just painting a golden stripe against my arm.” She smiles a little at that. “I got up, walked to the window, and admired the most stunning dawn I’d seen in a while. And you know what? All I could think about was that I didn’t want to share that moment with him, because I didn’t think we would be admiring the same thing. And then I wondered whether that was strange, to not want the person I loved to be beside me.” She looks down. “I think both of us already knew, though. I moved out pretty soon after that.”
I don’t really know what to say. All I can think about is that I would’ve given anything to share a moment like that with her. But I don’t tell her that. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” I finally answer.
She gives me a wry smile. “Hopefully not too sorry, though.”
Her words send a ribbon of wild hope through my veins. I laugh in embarrassment, afraid to think about the possibilities between us. “Okay, fine—not that sorry. But I’m glad you’re both still friends. You’re the one who pushes him forward, anyway. He’ll always take your advice. You can see it in the way he’s always turned toward you, waiting for your opinion.”
“Yeah, well,” she replies, “my advice isn’t worth much if we can’t act on any of it. He’s doing his best.” We’re quiet for a few seconds. “Even after everything we’ve gone through,” she adds, “after all the war we’ve both seen, there are still so many things wrong. The work never really ends, doe
s it? It just shifts to something else.”
My gaze wanders to the glow of the city against her skin, to the soft waves in her hair, to her dark eyes. “Maybe,” I say softly. “But there are constants to anchor ourselves to.” I hesitate, almost too afraid to say it. “And you are mine.”
We’re very close now. June blushes, and my heartbeat quickens. I can’t remember whether I felt this exact way when we were young, whether moments like this felt like an electric current humming beside me. I can’t imagine reacting any other way to her.
“Daniel,” she whispers. “I…”
I hold my breath, wondering what she might say. Terrified to guess.
This is the moment when I’m going to close the distance between us again. When I’m going to kiss her, when she’s going to pull me with her to her room.
But then I sense a slight hesitation from June. She holds back, afraid, pulling the string between us so taut that I can feel it ready to snap.
And I freeze. I clear my throat. I step away.
The air between us seems to sigh in disappointment. All I can hear is the conversation we had that night when I saw her at the train station, about everything that had happened to us in the past.
Are we ready? Is she?
I don’t know if this can ever last. I don’t know if I am the catalyst for all that might unravel in her life, the one who might end the normalcy she’s earned for herself. I don’t know if we are meant to be.
Maybe she’s thinking the same.
June speaks first. “I have to check on the Elector,” she says. “He must be heading back from the gala soon.”
I nod, looking down. “Of course,” I reply. “I better get back too, to do the same with Eden.”
The electric tension still hovers in the air, but there is too much space between us now. So I give her a smile and a bow, then turn around and head out of her apartment.
EDEN
That night, as I head into the Komodo Club with Pressa, my thoughts still linger on the replay of my memories at the AIS headquarters. Pressa tugs on my hand, leading me deeper into the chaotic space. But even the flashing lights and pounding music can’t quite drown out my thoughts.