Circle of Ashes (Wish Quartet Book 2)

by Elise Kova

  Chapter 29

  We Wait

  NICO WAS STILL in shock when they stumbled back into the briefing room, but by the slight tremor in his fingertips, it wouldn’t be long before that shock wore off. Jo didn’t want to know what would happen to the poor man then, almost as much as she didn’t want to see the reactions on the team’s faces when they found out. And they would, any second now.

  Because, as expected, the briefing room was already full, brimming with tension so thick, Jo had been able to feel it even before stepping fully through the Door. Arm still looped around Nico’s, helping him a wobbling step at a time towards his seat, Jo looked from face to face around the table.

  Pan and Snow were missing. The hell were they doing? an angry little voice in her wanted to scream.

  Everyone had gotten to their feet upon Jo and Nico’s arrival, and after helping Nico sit down, Jo took Wayne’s usual chair so as not to remove her steady presence from the Italian’s side. She could feel the trembling of his fingers stretch up into an outright shaking along his arms. Any second now, he would fracture, crumble into pieces, and Jo didn’t think she’d be able to put him back together. But she would damn well try. It was better than focusing on her own rising guilt, her growing panic, her pain and misery at the loss, so much loss, and they’d tried everything, so why had at all still turned out so, so—

  “So?” Takako’s voice caught Jo off-guard, wrenching her back to the briefing room. The woman was smart; she should’ve been able to see the creeping mental devastation all over their faces. Maybe she had. Because even though Takako had bothered to ask the question on everyone’s mind anyway, it was already obvious she knew the answer. “How’d it go?”

  That was all it took for Nico to lose it.

  A broken sob tore its way up his throat, a sound that held as much emotional anguish as physical. Nico had worked for hours, poured everything he and his magic had into the painting that now leaned, forgotten, by the Door. There was no doubt in Jo’s mind he’d been exhausted and broken down even before watching that final blossom of hope wither and die in the prime minister’s eyes.

  Now, he was beyond broken, inconsolable. If they could manage to ease his suffering at all after this, it would be a miracle. And after today, after every one of her own failures, believing in miracles seemed incredibly naive. They were the ones who were supposed to be the miracle workers, and they’d failed.

  The group probably didn’t need her to explain, but Jo couldn’t handle the idea of Nico’s sobs being the only sound in the room.

  “He wouldn’t change his mind. Couldn’t apparently. Not even with Nico’s influence.” She hated the way Nico’s back seized beneath her hand, whole body tense and shaking in what was more than likely guilt. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, that he’d done all he could (which was true, of course it was true), but she knew he wouldn’t hear it; Jo felt guilty too, had ever since that first botched evacuation hack. So instead, she just kept talking, raising her voice a little to drown out some of Nico’s softer whimpers and cries. “Twelve hours just. . . wasn’t enough time. The magic wore off too quickly and it. . . it just wasn’t enough.”

  “No. . .” That simple word, whispered past Takako’s lips, felt like having the breath ripped from her lungs. With the hand that wasn’t rubbing comfortless circles into Nico’s back, Jo gripped ruthlessly at her own knee. She shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Takako.”

  A whimper this time, Nico’s hands falling from his face.

  “So that’s it then?” Samson whispered, and when Jo turned her head in his direction, he was staring at her with sad, scared eyes.

  In fact, everyone looked worn out and filled with a hopelessness that overtook each of their usual features. The bags under Samson’s eyes were prominent, his fingernails chewed down to the nubs. Takako looked like she was facing down the barrel of a gun, her hands tangled in the short hair on either side of her head. Wayne paced the room, the usual slicked-back perfection of his hair in complete disarray, his bottom lip bruised from being chewed on. Eslar’s complexion was pale, the usually rich darkness of his skin almost resembling the lighter brown of Jo’s own, and his face held more heavy emotion than she’d ever seen in him.

  It took Nico rising slowly, shakily to his feet, for Jo to realize he’d stopped crying. Though how long ago, she had no idea. For all she knew, they could have simply been staring at each other, staring off into the panicked black holes of their own minds, for hours since their return. But now? Now everyone’s eyes were on Nico.

  His hands, splayed out on the briefing room table, still trembled. His eyes, staring down Eslar with a fierce attempt at an even fiercer determination, were still red-rimmed and wet. But when he opened his mouth to speak, his words were steady, steadier than any of them should have had any possibility of being in that moment.

  “I’ll do it again,” he said. Plain and simple.

  Jo’s heart ached. “Nico, your restriction—”

  “I’ll find someone else. There must be, right? Another diplomat. Perhaps the leader of an allied power? There has to be someone else to try.”

  “There’s not enough time,” Eslar replied, brow furrowing in obvious frustration.

  Nico looked down at the space between his hands, head falling between his shoulders. “I’ll do it. Again.”

  “Nico—”

  “I’ll do it again!” He cried, ripping himself away from Jo and turning to face Eslar fully. “I can do it, Eslar, I can! Just let me try one more time!”

  He was screaming now, Eslar looking from Nico to the rest of the room and back before walking around to their side of the table. Samson buried his head in his hands. Wayne kept pacing. Takako finally let her fingers fall from the stranglehold she had on the strands of her hair, knuckles of one hand hitting the briefing room table on its way down to her lap; she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Nico, enough,” Eslar said, tone bordering on an order, but Nico just let his head hang again, shaking it back in forth. Jo watched, her own eyes burning, as fresh tears made new tracks down Nico’s cheeks. Eslar placed a hand on Nico’s shoulder, but Nico shrugged him off.

  “If we have even an hour left, a minute, then I have to keep trying,” he whispered, words beaten and battered beneath the weight of his own guilt, beneath the cruelty of their own hopelessness. “I have to try. I’ll show a painting to every individual citizen if I have to. Please let me keep trying.”

  For a long moment, there was silence. Everyone looking at Nico and Eslar in turn. Even Wayne had stopped his pacing, though he chose to look down the hall instead, away from the room. In the hand that wasn’t buried deep into his pocket, Jo could see Wayne’s thumb rubbing circles into the face of his nickel.

  “Eslar, I can fix this. I can do better. Please let me—” Nico started again, but Eslar just sighed, the unexpected sound cutting him off. He didn’t bother with words, a nod of his head and gesture of his chin towards the door the only indication of his acquiescence.

  Nico wasted no time, grabbing the painting and sprinting off towards his chosen recreation room.

  There wasn’t enough time. Eslar knew there wasn’t enough time the same way they all knew. And even if there was, who else could they show that would be as effective as the Prime Minister? It was like a visceral thing writhing inside their bellies, their chests, weighing them down and keeping them from moving.

  But Nico had asked anyway. Eslar had let him go anyway. Because what else could they do at this point but pretend, and wait?

  Jo looked around the room; no one returned her gaze, each too caught up in the suffocation of unknown consequences to do more than stare off into space. When Jo let her stare finally fall to her lap, the shift in line of sight helped a tear slip beyond its hold. It fell in a silent lament down her cheek, off her chin, and onto the white-gripped knuckles of the hand still clutching her knee.

  “What do we do now?” She asked, though the words were purely selfish
, her own spiraling mind throwing a plea out into the universe. It wouldn’t have mattered if no one had responded, but it was Eslar who did.

  “We wait.” He sat down next to her, and it took all she had to lift her head enough to look him in the eye. She’d never seen his face filled with so much emotion; she just wished it was a better emotion than grief. “Other than that. . . I don’t know.”

  Chapter 30

  Please

  IT WAS PROBABLY only a few minutes later that Jo found herself in front of Snow’s door, but her time in the briefing room felt like hours and weighed on her like years. She’d offered to break the news to their leader, refusing to feel self-conscious when nobody was surprised. What was the point in that, after everything that had happened? Everything that was going to happen?

  She wanted to see Snow. Even if just to tell him of their failure, she wanted to see him. She wanted to find solace in his presence and comfort in his arms. She wanted to hear words of hope spill from his lips and swallow them up with her own. So for the first time, led purely by that need, that fragile and terrified desire, Jo knocked on his door without hesitation.

  And for the first time, as if knowing she would come, Snow opened the door at once.

  As much as she wanted to look at him, touch him, fall into him until nothing of her was left, all Jo seemed able to do was stare at her own feet. They’d failed him. She’d failed him. Surely he was disappointed, maybe even angry. Why would he want to see her? Why would he want to see any of them now?

  The sting of tears from earlier returned, Jo’s throat tightening enough that she had to clear it twice before she felt brave enough to speak.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to her feet. “I. . . we tried.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, willing that burn to go away, for the pathetic grip this whole situation had on her throat to loosen. It took a moment, the pain still fresh (if not overwhelming), but eventually she felt confident enough that tears wouldn’t fall if she opened her eyes.

  When she did, it was to find a pair of crisp, white dress shoes standing centimeters away from her own. She glanced up, breath hitching at the sight of Snow’s face, not looking down on her in shame or disgust, but in something soft and open and otherwise indescribable. Much like at the Rangers’ compound (a moment that now felt like it belonged to another lifetime), Snow raised a hand to her cheek, thumb dragging lightly across her cheekbone to catch the remnants of a stray tear.

  “You did everything you could,” he affirmed, and his voice settled over her shoulders, into her chest, its own kind of comfort. A warm blanket to keep out the cold, a deep cave to wait out the storm. When he motioned for her to step inside, she did so with lighter steps than the ones that had brought her to his room only seconds ago. Or perhaps more accurately, steps heavier in a different way.

  Snow closed the door behind her and stayed, waiting for her to come back to him, reclaim that space between them. So she did, nearly pressing against him from thigh to chest, arms wrapping around his waist to pull him even closer still. Her head fit perfectly beneath his chin, and as his arms returned the embrace, his breath brushing her hair, she let her ear rest against his chest. For a long moment, she did nothing more than listen to his heartbeat.

  Suddenly, it was all she could do not to focus on the fragility of their situation, the creeping sensation that was quick to replace the timeless warmth of his comfort with a cold and pressing desperation not to lose this, not to lose him. It became clear—through some kind of evidence she wouldn’t have been able to provide, but nevertheless knew existed—that if they didn’t do this now, they never would. If they didn’t do something, say something, right now, neither of them would get another chance.

  Something terrible was coming. Jo could feel it like a shadow, looming closer and closer as the sun split apart the sky. And when that something finally got here, who knew what it would mean?

  For the Society. For the team. For them.

  “Snow,” Jo whispered, pulling her ear away from his chest to look at him again, raising a hand to his face. Her fingers brushed lightly against his cheek before traveling to the back of his head, settling along the fine, silver hairs at the nape of his neck. Ever so slightly, she tugged him down. “Kiss me.”

  He bowed easily to her will, arms tightening around her waist as he brushed a chaste kiss against her lips, then deepened it into something not chaste at all.

  His tongue traced her bottom lip and she opened her mouth for him in obvious invitation. She wanted every inch of him, wanted to melt into him until they were one person, close enough as to be indeterminable from each other, unrecognizable to the world beyond. Then maybe, just maybe, she could forget for a little while. After all, working and running was all she could do now. And there was no more work left to be done.

  As Jo moaned into the kiss, fingers tightening in the fabric of his shirt, she felt something slotting into place, a familiar yet wholly new sensation. Her chest ached and her eyes burned, but her heart sang with the feeling of rightness, of finally, finally being where she was supposed to be.

  It felt like home, like love, something she’d never known but somehow instantly recognized.

  “Please,” Jo gasped into his mouth, hearing her own voice on half-second delay. They hadn’t even done anything yet and she already sounded wrecked, felt wrecked. Snow pulled back just enough to see her face, though he remained as close as possible, as if desperate not to put any unnecessary space between them. It wasn’t until she saw the flush to his cheeks, the plush wetness of his lips, that she even realized how heavily she was breathing. Panting breaths whispered humid air between them; she felt dizzy from the lack of oxygen.

  He looked beautiful, she decided then. More beautiful than she’d ever seen him, and more beautiful than he had any right to be. His eyes were heavily lidded but still shining like moonlight beneath the fringe of his silver hair. And the way he looked at her. . . it did things to her heart that, were she not already outside of time and reality, would have probably left her worried for her health.

  Snow raised a hand and ran gentle fingers through her hair when she didn’t answer right away. “Please what, my love?”

  Ah. So he felt it too. Jo wasn’t sure if she felt more like laughing or crying. Both probably. But later. There were more important things that needed taking care of right now.

  “Please take me to bed.” Jo tried for sultry, confident, but the heaviness of the day had left her emotionally exhausted, barely hanging on by a thread. The crack beneath her words, the undeniable shakiness to her tone, had her burying her face in Snow’s chest, face heating.

  She was no stranger to sex, even Wayne could attest to that, but this? This cliff they were both standing on the edge of? This wasn’t sex. This was so, so much more than sex. This was something she couldn’t put a name to, something she wasn’t even sure she wanted to put a name to. All she knew was that it was important. And incredibly fragile.

  “You have always had a place in my bed,” Snow said. “Then, now, and for as long as you want it.”

  “Have I?” Jo whispered back, something about the words seeming odd, though unimportant in comparison to the meaning behind them. “I’ll always want it. I’ll always want you. You should know that by now.”

  In lieu of a response, Snow leaned forward to recapture her lips, a deep and searing kiss that seemed to instantly return her to breathlessness. He sucked her bottom lip between his teeth and she gasped, arching reflexively against him. As close as that left their bodies, there was no denying the already hard line of his arousal pressed between them. The realization of his own desire alone was enough to have her all but drowning in her own desperate need.

  There were suddenly too many layers between them, her hands wandering the planes of his chest, the wiry muscle of his arms, his shoulders. Every spot of skin felt like it singed her fingertips, sparks of electricity running up her arms at the contact. As he walked her back towards the bed, never once br
eaking his fierce and persistent kiss, Jo tugged just as fiercely on his shirt.

  When simply tugging the fabric up wasn’t enough for him to get the hint, Jo groaned, reluctantly pulling away. “Off,” she huffed, lifting the bottom of his shirt enough to afford herself a delicious view of his toned abs. He chuckled in response, though whether at her shameless staring or her eager demand, she wasn’t sure. Either way, he followed her order, which was all that mattered. Because within a handful of breaths, Snow was standing bare chested in front of her, a sight to behold.

  Jo felt her mouth go dry, reaching out to place her hand against his chest, simply because she could. Snow’s heart beat quick and firm beneath her hand, and Jo couldn’t help but shudder at the rush of connection she felt—an unexpected intimacy when they hadn’t even been properly intimate yet. So, as not to get off track, Jo ran the tips of her fingers across one dusky, pink nipple, then the other, secretly thrilled when Snow took in a quiet breath as they hardened in response.

  His hands were suddenly at her back, slowly inching the fabric of her hoodie up until his fingers could rub circles into the revealed stretch of skin. Just that simple touch alone had her eyes fluttering shut, her heart stuttering into a faster rhythm.

  “May I?” Snow asked, lightly tugging on the material. Jo nodded, lifting her arms when he pulled both her hoodie and the shirt beneath up and over her head. A fresh heat crawled up her neck to settle in her cheeks as Snow’s gaze drifted lazily over her half-naked body. When he licked his lips, a seemingly unconscious motion, Jo felt the pang of her own arousal like a burst of adrenaline.

  She took a step forward and placed her hand on the waistband of his trousers, only barely touching despite the obviousness of her intention. “May I?” she asked, a breathless request. She waited just long enough to see his head tilt forward in a nod before lowering herself to her knees.