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I didn’t float. I felt as if I weighed a thousand unmovable tons.

“As are you.” His hand rose and fell, drowning in hesitancy. “Are you—are you all right?”

I grimaced. Nothing either of us said would feel adequate. “As all right as one can be. Are you…?” My eyes stuck to the bandage.

He followed my line of sight. “It’s just a sprain. The tunnels are hazardous.”

“The tunnels?” I parroted, baffled. “Are you mining?” I couldn’t imagine a person less suited. He was toned and straight-backed, but not muscular, not fortified the way Crafters were, like a bullet might bounce off their skin. Theo looked breakable. Had he always been?

He chuckled darkly. “Difficult to imagine, I know. Yet here we are, Clarke. Two Charmers, turned miners. Patty told me he was looking for the earth Charmer. I hardly allowed myself to believe that he might succeed.” He took stock of me as he spoke. “You look shockingly good for someone seven years on the run.”

I blanched. There was accusation in his voice. “As it happens,” I said slowly. “I’ve become rather proficient at it.”

“And it never occurred to you that I might wish to know if you were all right?”

There it was: the canyon between us. “Would it have made a difference?”

“Yes,” he said immediately, unequivocally. His stare was stony.

“I couldn’t risk that.” Surely he understood why.

“Everyone was after you, Clarke. And your aunt… I searched in the rubble all night.”

Shame seized me. I saw again the dust that fell like rain, tiles that moved like rippling water.

Heat practically misted from Theo’s nose as he exhaled. “You disappeared in the smoke. I thought you’ddiedor been taken hostage.” He’d never spoken to me with so much venom, or indeed, any venom at all.

I’d earned every bit of it. “I had to leave,” I said weakly, “so that neitherside could take me.” Those words struck where I’d intended. His eyes—the same warm brown they’d always been—hardened.

Everyone was harder now. War, I’d learned, sapped gentleness from the core.

“I looked for you,” he said. “For a long time, Clarke.”

And what would you have done with me, if I were found?“I’m sorry,” I said instead. And I meant it, all the way to the bone. How many times had I been tempted to write to him in those months? In the end, I hadn’t dared risk it. “You were loyal to the House,” I reminded him. “Ready to fight. And I… I didn’t want any part in it.”

“You picked your side the second you left Belavere City, Clarke.”

“It’s Harrow,” I said, a surge of mettle returning. “And I don’t have a side.”

Theo raised an eyebrow, looked pointedly to the cherry blossoms, then back to me. “Yes, you do, Nina. It’s the same side as mine. Mining tunnels.”

If only Professor Dumley could see his protégés now. “How long have you been here, Theo? What about your lordship?”

“You didn’t hear?” he asked, skeptical. “I was ousted from the House.”

I gasped lightly in disbelief.

“I’m surprised you didn’t read about it,” he said. “It was quite the scandal.”

“What could Lord Shop’s son possibly have done to offend the House?”

“He sent secret missives to brink towns, warning them of imminent raids.”

Again, I was caught short. “You sentwarnings? Under Tanner’s nose?”

“I admit it was foolish to trust a Scribbler of the House,” he said, clearing his throat awkwardly. “But she and I had formed a… close bond.”

I took that to mean he’d been fucking her, though he didn’t say it. He glanced away uncomfortably.