Page 25

The sun is hot on my brow as I knock on Enola’s door. Her house is smaller and wider than Tristan’s, since it’s only one floor. Full-bloom red roses edge the entire front porch. I reach out and cup one in my hand as my belly knots with worry.

Enola’s kindness and friendship has come to mean a lot to me. What exactly I’ll say to mend this, I don’t know.

Sorry for thinking you attacked the very people who have been attacking you for years.

No. Just keep it simple.

I should have stopped to listen to you. I’m sorry.

What if it’s not enough? What if she never wants to see me again?

The door opens, and I stiffen.

Enola pauses. Smiles. Then pulls me into the type of hug I wish my mother knew how to give.

Enola hands me a cookie and a cup of tea that isn’t made of fesber leaves, then sits down on the gooseberry-colored couch across from me. Her living room is a garden of soft fabrics and bright colors. “So, how is Tristan? I take it you two worked things out?”

“You could say that.”

Fighting the deepening flush in my cheeks is a losing battle. I brush a strand of hair from my eye. “I’m going to stay and make Kingsland my home, like you suggested. I was hoping you’d help me find a place at the hospital. I want to study more under Dr. Henshaw.”

“Wonderful.”

Enola’s eyes gleam with pride. “But it’s probably best that we continue to go together. In the meantime, I’ll speak to the staff and make it clear that you’re welcome there. They may be a bit cold to begin with, but I’ll see what I can do to help. How does going back tomorrow morning sound?”

“Perfect.”

And just like that, my dream of getting to study old-world medicine is coming true. It makes me wish that Mum and Freia could meet Enola. I want them to see that a person could be educated and enlightened by some things of the old world without being tainted by its greed and corruption. But mostly, I want them to be as amazed as I am that a woman could run a hospital. Would that not open their eyes to the other possibilities we could have?

My posture slumps. No, it wouldn’t. At least not for Mum. She’d say Enola is being irreverent. Unnatural. Then she’d go on a rant about how women ruling over men is just another of their failed old-world ways.

Only, Kingsland is not failing, it’s flourishing. And the truth of that, as well as revealing all the other truths the clans don’t know, is exactly how I plan to stop the fighting. If Tristan is elected mayor and the clans understand that it hasn’t been Kingsland attacking us, maybe both sides can finally reach a ceasefire. We can stop this reckoning. Then, we re-address the heart of the issue for Father: security and supplies. Getting the clans their own electric fence is how we’ll stop whoever’s actually attacking them. After we’re protected, we can focus on trade and accessing crucial supplies, like medicine. Only this time, it will be done the right way—without hurting Kingsland.

“There was something else I wanted to talk to you about,”

I say quietly. I take a breath and meet Enola’s gentle eyes. “What do I have to do to help Tristan get elected?”

Enola bites back her smile, then stands. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d ask. But first, can I get you another cookie?”

When I return home, Tristan’s meeting is still going on. Or perhaps it’s another one. With a disappointed sigh, I take the stairs back to my room. As I fall onto the bed, prepared to wait until he’s done, I consider reading more from the new book I’ve started from a bookshelf in the living room. It’s about the creation of the Republic, and although its explanation of the constitution is interesting and not alarming like I expected, my gaze lands on the bedside table and Tristan’s journal. I didn’t hide it again after I wrote my goodbye note yesterday. I grab it and return to the bed to flip through it.

The door opens with a snick. I jump as the connection snaps tight.

“How was it?”

Tristan asks, his voice gravelly as he steps inside.

I pause, but the smile on Tristan’s face tells me he’s not suspicious about the book I have in my hands. He’s genuinely happy to see me. “It went much better than I expected. How have your meetings been?”

“Well, none of the rest were as eventful as the first one . . .”

I tip my head to the side, playing coy. “You mean to tell me you didn’t enjoy that?”

He shuts the door, and the air suddenly becomes thick. He laughs, and his whole face lights up. “Remind me never to bring you to a town hall meeting.”

I return his smile. “I do believe you started it.”

His brows shoot up like he’s about to argue, but then his eyes catch on what I’m holding in my lap.

“I . . . I’m sorry, I was . . .”

I lift the journal in the air. “Curious.”

Thankfully, he doesn’t seem upset as he sits beside me on the bed, then takes the offered book. He opens it to a rough sketch of a cube with a series of numbers and letters stretched across the bottom.

“What is it?” I ask.

“It’s an accumulator,”

he mutters. “In the old world, they made these to store electricity to power things—this one’s for a motor vehicle. In my free time I’ll sometimes take things apart and try to make them work again. Drawing them helps me figure them out.”

He flips to another page. “Some of these I’ve sketched so I could keep track of what I’ve requested from the traders. Specialty items.”

“And you’re running out of certain things.”

“We are. But we have been for decades, and we always find a way to make do. We fix what we can, trade for the rest. Some things we never get working again. That’s just the way life is here.”

“So you want to send more people and go farther in your search? How can you be sure there’s anything beyond the Republic?”

“I can’t. But if pockets of people exist here—small villages, trading posts, even the vagabonds and gangs—then maybe there’s something else beyond them. We’re lucky in that we’re pretty far away from most of them and can avoid their hostility, but it’s dangerous for our traders. For the most part, they’re happy to take our lists and search for what we need to keep things running, but they’re only willing to go so far and risk so much. What if all we had to do was go a little farther to find everything we need?”

I knew people were out there. There had to be for trade to take place. But I was never really taught about the outside world beyond preparing for our most immediate danger—Kingsland.

“Enola told me you want to leave. Why?”

He hesitates. “Politics was never my thing.”

He gestures to the journal. “I’d rather fix things. Find things. Discover the secrets of the past and how they can fit into our future rather than sit in bloody meeting after meeting. That’s why I became a soldier and trained to be in the elite guard—it was a way out of our borders that wasn’t the lonely, nomadic life of a trader. Well, that’s partly why. Learning there were mysteries like you beyond our fence also added fuel to the fire.”

He grins, then grows serious. “I think I’ve always been curious, which has led me to dream of leaving for periods of time. Although now that you’re here with me, it’s different.”

“Where would you go?”

He shrugs. “If the bombs hadn’t poisoned so much of the land, everywhere.”

But it isn’t safe. The land is poisoned, and Father says twenty thousand years will have to pass before it’s safe again.

“You know, the old world had this tram transportation that ran on a track, like motor vehicles but all connected together. People used to ride it across the Republic. Traders have told me where we can find a bunch of trams. I’d love to go and see that one day, find out what we can learn from it.”

Then do it, I want to say. I love that he has dreams and things he wants to accomplish too. But I’m also conflicted. There’s so much riding on Tristan stepping up to lead his people. I need him to stop a war. “It might be difficult to leave if you’re elected mayor.”

His voice drops low. “Yeah. There was a time I didn’t want it at all. I mean, why pick me over someone like Vador? He’s already a respected leader as head of the elite guard. But my father always said he saw leadership in me, and now that he’s gone, I feel like I owe it to him to find it and step up.”

“I don’t think you need to find it. It’s already there.”

He nods, but I feel his aversion to talking anymore about it. We’ll have to circle back to this another time.

A comfortable silence descends on us. It’s too quiet. “Are your meetings finished early?”

“Traders arrived, which meant half the team and a good chunk of the town council had to go and secure the goods. We’ll continue tomorrow.”

So, we’re alone. My stomach somersaults, and there’s no doubt Tristan felt that, but I cover it by casually pulling the journal from his hands. I flip to the back page and point to the sketch of the young girl. “Who’s this?”

Tristan groans, and a ribbon of his embarrassment curls into a ball inside my gut. “Why did I leave that in there? Tear it out.”

“No way,”

I say with outrage as I lift it out of his reach. “I’m keeping this forever—unless it’s Annette. Is it Annette?”

Disbelief fills his face as if he can’t believe I’d suggest such a thing.

“Well, it wouldn’t be outrageous. You were together.”

“We were not together.”

I raise a brow.

“I mean . . . not officially”—he rubs his forehead with the back of his fist—“I considered it, which may have allowed our friendship to blur the line at times.”

“But you . . .”

I pause, unable to finish my sentence as I remember catching him and Annette together. She pushed up against him, and he didn’t stop her. They had a moment. I’m almost certain they kissed. A second too late, I realize my recollection of those events has played out in both of our heads.

Tristan smiles, then has the nerve to laugh. I watch him, confused, maybe even a little hurt. But then he’s moving, pushing me back so I’m lying on the bed. He hovers over me, his arms on either side of my shoulders. The connection whips into a frenzy at our closeness, and as if to seal it, he kisses me.

Then he shows me his memory of that night.

Annette is standing close, and I feel Tristan’s eagerness to pull away, but the tears brimming in her eyes keep him still.

“You don’t love her, and she doesn’t love you. It’s okay to end this marriage. That’s what your father would have wanted too.”

I lean into her ear, needing her to hear me clearly. “You’re wrong about my father.”

I think of how he defended Isadora at our leadership meetings, calling her innocent. Or how he’d tease me about her when I’d return from surveillance of her house. The man had plenty of opportunities to voice any objections on my growing feelings for her, and he never did. “And as for ending this marriage—don’t ever suggest that again.”

“She’ll never love you the way you deserve, and you know it,”

Annette whispers. Her eyes flare with a desperation I’ve never seen before. Then her fingers grip the back of my head, and she kisses me.

“Don’t,”

I say angrily, as I jerk away. I can’t believe she’d—my head lifts at the feeling that I’ve just been kicked in the gut. There’s something off about it . . . like it’s not coming from . . .

The stairs creak. Isadora.

No!

“I think you know the rest,”

Tristan says, bringing me back to the present.

I clear my throat. Tristan’s studying me, carefully gauging my reaction.

“Your father knew of me?”

His lips press together. “Once, he even teased me that I should get a haircut before I did reconnaissance, in case I got caught and finally got my chance to meet you.”

Skies, I’m going to need a minute to let that sink in. “And Annette . . .”

“It shouldn’t have happened. It wasn’t something I—”

“No. It’s . . .”

My cheeks puff with air. Making him feel guilty wasn’t my intention. “I’m not upset. I mean, she’s pretty and determined, and at that point our marriage only existed because of a couple of desperate words said on my deathbed. It wasn’t real.”

His face turns deadly serious. “It’s always been real to me.”

Truth.

My sternum burns with guilt for being so blind. Tristan watches me with concern, then rolls off me and scoops me into his arms. He stands and places me properly on the bed with my head on the pillow. I reach for him, and he lies down beside me, tucking me in underneath his chin. “Tristan,”

I whisper.

His heart thumps hard but steady against my ear. “Yes.”

“I love you.”

He hugs me tighter. “I think I’ve always loved you.”

Tears blur in my eyes, and it hits me exactly what I need to do. I sit up and stare down at him. “I want to marry you.”

“Well, have I got news for you.”

“No. I want to marry you. I want the words to mean what they should mean when I say them this time. Let’s do it again.”

He pushes himself to his elbows. “Okay.”

Excitement builds inside him. “A proper wedding. A celebration. A dress.”

My hand flaps in the air, cutting him off. “Fates no.”

Now he just looks confused.

“Ask me if I’ll take you to be my husband.”

He grins. “Okay, will you take me to be your—”

“Yes!” I shout.

He laughs, so I shout it again. “Yes. I do. I take you, Tristan, to be my husband, and I do it with all that I am. From this day forward, I open my heart to you completely.”

Then I place a hand against his chest and gasp as a pressure increases in my own chest as if my heart literally expands. “Did you feel that?”

He looks at me in a way that makes my stomach quiver. “I did.”

Stars, I think it’s very likely we just unlocked something significant in the connection.

His eyes sparkle. “That’s it? That’s all you want? Are you sure?”

Lifting my hand to his jaw, I trail my fingers in a feather-light touch. Maybe if our family and friends could come and be happy about our union, then a ceremony would be beautiful. But it’s impossible, so why even think about it? However, there’s no mistaking the ache that comes from leaving them behind and moving on with my life like they never—

I stop my thoughts and lower myself back down beside him. Now isn’t the time to think about sad things. “No,”

My head turns to him. “That’s not all I want.”

The words come out breathy. “I want you to seal it with a kiss.”

He leans over me, and although I feel his eagerness, he takes his time bringing his face close. Our mouths come together in the softest, gentlest kiss. It’s filled with reverence. A new commitment to each other.

The connection pulls tighter than the string on a bow, and the way it sews us together, stoking passion while heightening our pleasure, makes this all the sweeter.

Tristan brushes something in my mind, and I sigh against his lips. “What the sun above was that?”

“What? This?”

He does it again and tingles explode over my skin.

The energy around us ripples. Suddenly the space between us is too much. I pull him closer as our lips meet again. It’s not enough. Wordlessly, Tristan lies back down, and I end up more on top of him than not as our kisses take on a fever pitch. Our mouths move faster, our hands grip each other at first, then grow bolder, reaching for more. Exploring. I touch his chest, drag my hands down his sides. His fingers slide over my back, then wrap around my hips.

My skin lights on fire. I become aware of my softness pressed into his strength, and it’s too good to keep to myself. I send him the ripples of pleasure he’s causing me and watch with glee as his eyes go unfocused, then close.

He recovers quickly and threads his fingers into my hair. My breath hitches, and I send the spine-tingling sensation to him. He grins and attempts to kiss my jaw, but I kiss his neck instead. It’s exactly like the first time he kissed me, and I don’t need his thoughts to know what he thinks about that. He sends them to me anyway. Soon we’re basking in each other’s sensations, silently using them to guide our exploration. It becomes a competition of sorts, and the prize is something we both share.

Our lips find each other again until we both run out of air, and I sit up. I could do this forever.

He presses a snapshot of me from seconds ago into my mind. My blond hair is mussed and lying over my shoulder in waves. My lips are parted in bliss. His thoughts ring out, captioning it. You’re so beautiful.

Slowly, I reach for the hem of his shirt and lift it up. He sits up and rips it off. His arms reach for me, wanting me closer, but I push him back down, needing to look. He’s beautiful. Flawless, except for the barely healed star-shaped scars we both share. I kiss them, first his elbow, then his shoulder.

“Thank you,”

I whisper. These marks represent sacrifice. And life. More than the words and promises we’ve made to each other, it’s proof that I matter to him. That I’m a person of value. I’m not a means—a marriage—to an end.

Lifting a hand, he finds the matching pink mark on me, just under my sleeve. He kisses it. “You saved me too.”

I did, and now as much as I’m his, he is equally mine. I lean into him and he goes still, knowing exactly what I’m asking of him.

I say it out loud anyway. “Tristan.”

I create a memory of my own—a shot of my own beautiful view. Him. Love pours from my heart as I petition him with a word.

“More.”