Quillan pulled away from the wall and stalked over to me, forcing me to fall back a step until he had me caged against the window, though not an inch of him was touching me in any way.
“I…” He worked his throat, trying to get the words out, his eyes growing darker until his pupils seemed to blend into his irises, opening a chasm fathomless enough for me to tumble through and never see the light of day again.
Fear. It took me too long to recognise the emotion, and as soon as I did, I immediately lost my fight. Quillan was scared for me; so scared that he didn’t even know how to tell me, or how to conduct himself, and that was a first.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, reaching up to touch his shoulder.
At the brush of my fingers, he pulled in a deep breath and hooked an arm around my spine, pulling me up in a hug that I was sure he had intended to be a stern sort of acknowledgement that he was glad to see me safe. I slipped my arms around his rigid shoulders, threading my fingers into the wavy strands of hair that had been cropped short to the back of his neck.
“Give us a minute,” he grumbled.
I heard the sound of the door opening and closing, and then Quillan was pulling my hands away and setting me back on my feet.
“You can’t touch me like that,” he said warily.
I frowned, shoving my hands into the pockets of the workout pants I had borrowed. He followed the movement, running his eyes over my clothing as though only just noticing that I wasn’t dressed normally.
“You stayed at Le Château?” he asked.
I nodded, staring at my sneakers while I waited for another lecture. “I’ll be staying there from now on. Tariq too.”
He sighed, reaching out for me again. I wanted to heed his warning and respect the distance that he was trying to establish between us, but the second he pulled me back into his arms, I was clinging to him again. He jostled me higher, his one arm banded around my back again as he caught my chin with his free hand, lifting my face up.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m feeling a little out of my element. I hate that you’re there with Weston, but I’ll worship the ground you walk on for the rest of your damned life, because you put yourself in danger to save Silas. Nobody has ever done that for him. If I didn’t love him so much… I think I would be jealous. Maybe I am. I don’t know.”
I could tell that he was about to set me down again, so I tightened my hold on him, burrowing into the warmth of his neck and drawing comfort from the way his arms tensed just enough to draw me in closer.
“I stole you, Miro. I stole all of you.” It was the first time I had acknowledged it out loud to any of them.
“We know,” he replied gently. “Silas told us.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“We don’t deserve you either.”
“You deserve the Atmá you were born with. She probably wasn’t anything like me.” You probably wouldn’t push her away.
“I don’t doubt that. Nobody in this world is like you. It frightens me. I’ve lost someone before, and it hurt more than anything I’ve ever felt. I suddenly went from bringing a woman flowers to laying them on her grave. I thought I would never be that close to anyone again… and here you are. Incredible, independent, and so goddamn soft-hearted. You’re an experiment in contradictions and every time you show me something new, it becomes clearer and clearer that there will never be another person in the world like you. I’m terrified, because you’re something I crave now. I need to know more about you, I need to see you home safe every day. I need to see you shuffling for coffee every morning. Just to see you. Just to know that you’re still there. That you haven’t disappeared on me yet…”
He paused, and I could feel the breath that trembled through his lungs, spilling warm air onto my exposed neck. I remembered Noah and Cabe telling me about the girl that Quillan had dated, the one that Weston had apparently paid to keep Quillan occupied so that he wouldn’t go searching for his Atmá. I hadn’t thought about the ramifications of that woman dying, but obviously Quillan had been unaware of the deal between her and Weston at the time of her death; it was only something that he had learned later. Her death must have crushed him. It must have made him feel as though he wasn’t allowed to love: he had known all along that his Atmá was an impossible option thanks to Weston, but even a normal partner had been denied him.
“You won’t lose me,” I promised him. “And I know that I mean something… different… to you, but however you chose to have me in your life, I’m not going anywhere. You won’t be visiting my grave ever. I refuse to die.”
He chuckled, stepping forwards until the backs of my thighs hit the edge of the desk, and then he lowered me slightly so that I could sit there. His leg brushed against my knee, and I instinctively parted my legs so that I could continue to hug him. He stepped between my legs and passed his hands down my spine, making an annoyed sort of sound at all the cloth that bunched into his grip.
“This stuff doesn’t fit you, you need your own clothes. You can’t defy death wearing Cabe’s hand-me-downs.”
“Sure I can. Immortality doesn’t discriminate based on looks.”
He laughed again and the door swung open, admitting Noah and Cabe. They both seemed surprised at my position on the desk, but didn’t comment on it. Quillan pulled away, passing a hand over the back of his neck as he moved to sit beside me on the desk instead.
“So,” he said, his tone back to normal. “What do we do now?”
I sat in the back of the limousine with Quillan and Cabe on either side of me and Noah directly across from me, looking uncomfortably sandwiched between the two silent giants. Hans cleared his throat as the limousine pulled away from the campus and I folded my arms stubbornly at the look he was giving me.
“What?” I asked. “You didn’t have to come with us. You could have waited until I was done.”
Hans frowned and looked back to the window, but then Andrei cleared his throat. I sighed, rolling my eyes at the man. They were clearly upset because I hadn’t bothered to tell them about the plan.
“We’re headed to the hospital,” I said, looking from one to the other to catch the way they shifted about, pretending they hadn’t been demanding answers with their passive-aggressive throat clearing since they had gotten into the car.
“Why isn’t Seph sitting here?” Noah suddenly spoke up, apparently made even more uncomfortable with the recent shifting around. “She’s the little one.”
“She wanted to sit with us,” Cabe replied.
Noah grumbled something and then shot out of his seat, plucking me from mine and taking my place. He tugged on the back of my shirt and I landed in his lap sideways, my hand catching onto Quillan’s arm to steady myself.
“She can’t sit in the middle like that.” Cabe pulled the back of my shirt out of Noah’s grip and slid me from Noah’s lap to his, putting my back against the window. “She’ll fall or something.”
Noah shrugged, picking up my legs and laying them over his lap, looking out the window. “Problem solved.”
The silent giants pretended not to watch, and I knew that my reputation with the Adairs and Quillans had filtered down through the ears of the Klovoda agents. I considered standing up and taking Noah’s vacated seat, but Cabe’s arm had slipped around my middle, his hand gently splaying along my side, and I was suddenly too comfortable to move. It was odd to be in his embrace without the scratching feeling making me wary of our contact, but I was curious enough to not want the space I had been so desperate for the year before. It made me wonder, once again, whether Cabe and Noah had managed to get all of their memories back or not, but I couldn’t ask in front of the silent giants. Cabe rested his other hand on my thigh, his palm facing up, and he ducked his head briefly, burying his nose in my hair.
“You used my shampoo?” He sounded shocked. “When?”
Quillan looked over at us, his expression unreadable, and I realised that my sneakers were resting in his lap, spilling dirt onto his pants. I tried
to move them off, but he draped his forearm casually over my shins and turned toward the front of the limousine, dismissing us.
“There was some in your old bathroom,” I told Cabe.
“At Le Château?”
I nodded, and Cabe made a humming sound in the back of his throat. “You stayed in my room?”
I nodded again, and Noah suddenly released a deep, rumbling laugh. Even Quillan’s lips were quirked into a smile.
“What?” I asked.
“We all used to crash in that room most of the time,” Cabe admitted, pressing his nose into my hair again so that his voice was muffled. “If you look under the bed you’ll find two single mattresses.”
“Ah.” I clucked my tongue lightly in understanding, shifting a little bit so that I was more comfortable. “It was the closest room. First door.”
“The rooms are situated by order of importance,” Cabe said, a laugh in his voice.
I was distracted from my laugh by Noah’s fingers plucking at the pants I was wearing. “We should stop by home on the way and pick up our stuff.”
“Our stuff?” I asked.
“Surely you didn’t think that you and Tariq were going to go back to Weston’s lair all on your own, did you?” Disbelief marked Noah’s tone.
I turned to Cabe, searching for confirmation in his expression. His face was closer than I had expected, and his eyes dropped to my lips as I stared at him. The arm across my middle grew tense, drawing me closer.
“If you’re moving, so are we,” Cabe confirmed, his voice rough.
“B-but—”
“I’m going to stay and look after Silas,” Quillan interrupted my nervous protestation.
“When did you all decide this?” I asked, turning away from Cabe to stare at Quillan. I had expected some of them to follow me, but I hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly and seemingly without discussion.
Quillan shrugged. “Just now.”
I pulled away from Cabe and launched across Noah to throw my arms around Quillan’s neck. “Thank you!”
A laugh bubbled from him and I released him to do the same to Noah, planting a kiss on his cheek. He grinned, but quickly tried to smother the smile, and it prompted me to kiss his cheek again. The smile broke free, transforming his whole demeanour: just like his glare, his smile was a powerful force, and I knew that my own smile grew in response. It felt almost wrong, to be this happy. It had been such a long time since I had smiled so much that it made my cheeks ache. Cabe pulled me back as the limousine turned a corner, and I settled against him.
“You should drop me off at the hospital and get your stuff and Tariq while I’m in there,” I said to them, my mind drifting off to thoughts of Silas.
Just like that, the brief happiness dissipated, leaving a horrible, hollow ache in my stomach. The others agreed, and ten minutes later the limousine stopped at the Maple Falls hospital. Quillan got out with me and the silent giants followed as he led me to Silas’s room, carefully bypassing the nurse’s desk at the start of the ward.
I entered the room with my heart lodged in my throat, and the sight of Silas almost broke me into two. He was covered from head-to-toe in bandages and hooked up to several machines. His heartbeat was a pitiful, sluggish imitation of the irregular kick inside my chest that I was used to. I swallowed, pulling away from the others to approach his bedside.
“Block the door,” I whispered. “Don’t let anyone in.”
To my surprise, Hans and Andrei were the ones to do my bidding, moving to stand right up against the door, their fronts turned so that they could still keep an eye on me. I nodded to them and then turned back to Silas, carefully unwrapping the bandages from my hands. I set the wraps aside and placed my palms over his chest, closing my eyes tightly against the image of him. It was weak of me, but I didn’t want to examine him too closely. I didn’t want to see the evidence of him having changed in any way. He was different, though. Of course he was. I had caught the brief impression a trimmed beard shading his squared jaw before I looked away. It tipped the wildness hinted in his usual appearance into something course and intimidating. The nurses had obviously cleaned him up, but I wasn’t sure that any amount of soap could wash away the truth of what had been done to him. It devastated me, and the valcrick spluttered into being, trembling in my arms and begging to be let out after so long. I held it back, needing to draw upon the right emotion so that I didn’t harm Silas any more than he was already harmed.
Quillan must have sensed my turmoil, for he moved behind me, setting his hands on my shoulders and leaning down to whisper in my ear. “Want me to tell a joke?”
A reluctant laugh spilled out, but I kept my eyes closed. “Okay.”
“Do you want to know why all Zevghéri are genetically superior in some way or another? Why they look more physically appealing than their human counterparts?”
“Why?” I asked, keeping my hands steady on Silas’s chest.
“Because if you know you have a pair or an Atmá out there destined to be with you forever, you won’t bother going to the gym. You’ll just sit on your ass all day long watching football and eating Doritos or streaming Sandra Bullock movies and eating Doritos, depending on your proclivities. Imagine if Zevs put on calories like normal people. It would be horrific.”
I burst out laughing, my hands trembling against the bandaged chest beneath me, and I could feel that Quillan was pleased. His heartbeat flipped against mine, a small, happy flutter to take my mind off the task before me.
“You should never try your hand at comedy,” I informed him, still putting off the inevitable. “You have a really weird sense of humour.”
Quillan’s hands slipped from my shoulders and down my arms, skimming my forearms to finally rest over my own hands. “No,” he said. “I’ll stick with what I do best.”
His chest settled against my back and I couldn’t help but lean into him, tipping my head a little to bask in the warmth he provided.
“You used to pull away from me,” he whispered against the back of my head, “but now you always lean into me. It’s… it’s clouding up my head. I can’t think straight when you do it.”
“Because you’re not used to it?” I wondered out loud.
I shouldn’t have been used to it either, but everything was different now. I couldn’t hold back from my pairs even if I tried. I was aware that I wouldn’t survive in this world without them, and not just because our lives were tied together. It was because they had redefined me as a person, and without them, I would be nothing more than a single miserable heartbeat attempting to draw breath beneath a sea of remembered pain, imagined terror, and dreadful premonition. With them, however, I was going to redefine that past into a lesson in pain, fight that terror into the ground, and raise a garrison to march into that horrible future.
“Because I’m not used to it,” he finally echoed, though it didn’t sound like a confirmation. It sounded more like a question.
I didn’t wait for him to elaborate, because I was aware that time was dragging on, and the comfort provided by his body hovering over mine had finally brought enough peace to my mind for me to release the valcrick. How he had known that it would work, I had no idea, but I whispered my thanks to him as I closed my eyes and settled into the feeling. I drank up the sensations brought on by Quillan and pushed them into my valcrick, urging the little web of light onward. Quillan made a pleased humming sort of sound, and I figured that he was being given the sensations as well, so I didn’t open my eyes to check that it was working.
He nudged closer, fixing me between himself and the side of the hospital bed as his hands curled around my wrists. I could feel Silas’s heartbeat better all of a sudden: the uneven beat having kicked its way into my chest with a ferocity that left me gasping, even though the body beneath my hands remained as still as a corpse. I started to grow weaker, the healing that Silas required rapidly drinking from my energy reserves, but Quillan was there to prop me up as I began to slump, and by the time my e
yes flickered open, the colour had returned to Silas’s sleeping face. My hands slid from his chest and Quillan caught me before I melted to the ground, my limbs feeling oddly boneless. He pulled me into his arms and turned for the door, leaving me to grapple with the sensation of being pulled away from the dancing sound of Silas’s heart.
It felt like mine was being left behind.
Quillan stopped by the door and I realised that Hans and Andrei were both too shocked to move, their astounded eyes flickering from me to Silas, and back again.
“You healed him,” Andrei said, shock dripping from his words.
“She did,” Quillan answered for me. “And now we need to get her back to the car before someone figures out what happened and who did it.”
They hastened to get out of our way and I caught them sneaking a last glance at Silas before moving to follow us back through the hallways of the ward. By the time we piled back into the limousine, I was fighting to remain conscious. I didn’t know whose lap I was bundled into, but I clung to them and surrendered to the darkness as the limousine began to move. I didn’t wake up until it stopped again.
“Let’s take her past Weston so that he doesn’t send up a search party or anything stupid,” Noah grumbled, the voice rumbling right through my body. He was clearly the one carrying me.
I tried to pry my eyes open, but barely succeeded before I was falling under again. It must have been a while later that I heard someone’s voice declaring that Weston had gone back to Seattle, but it only seemed like minutes had passed, and then I was being tucked between the silky sheets of a bed that smelled of Cabe.
“Do you want to change clothes, little ghost?” The whisper sent a chill of familiarity down my spine, and I finally managed to peel my eyes open.
I stared at the two people standing beside the bed, my mouth falling open as I struggled to sit up.
“Y-you remember!” I gasped, fighting a wave of dizziness to keep them in my sights.
Cabe chuckled quietly and Noah’s face transformed into another breathtaking smile. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes again and I quickly shook my head to chase them away. I had cried enough already.
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