“We had reason to think LaRoux was planning something tonight for the gala.” I brush past the issue of trust, trying to ignore the way Flynn’s eyebrows shoot up at the word together. I glance at the girl—Chase—who’s still looking wary, though her hand’s no longer hovering over her gun. “Something to do with…uh…”
“With the rift.” Flynn finishes the sentence for me, earning him a sharp look from Jubilee and a startled one from Gideon. “Might as well acknowledge the elephant in the room. Or not in the room, as the case may be.” He tips his head toward the empty spot where the hyperspace engine—or the rift—would have been.
“If you’re from Avon,” says Chase, stepping toward us, “then you’ll understand. We have to make sure what happened there doesn’t happen anywhere else.”
Flynn puffs out a breath. “Look, in a minute, the rest of our team will be here. I sent them a signal when we found the rift was missing. And you’re going to have a hard time believing this, but—”
He trails off. He can see from our faces that we’re looking past him now, taking in the staircase. At its head stands Tarver Merendsen in his impeccable evening suit, and beside him Lilac LaRoux, in all her perfectly coiffed glory.
How is this possible? I can feel my pulse pounding at my temple. The rest of our team, Flynn said, but this is Roderick LaRoux’s family, standing and staring down at us.
How could these four people be in this place? And together?
And then I find myself remembering Gideon’s words back when we first met: that he was certain the Icarus survivors had encountered the same creatures that had terrorized Avon last year—whispers, Flynn called them in his broadcast.
I’m still gaping up at them, every last play from my hard-earned book emptying out of my head, when I realize Lilac LaRoux is staring straight past me. I glance over my shoulder to find Gideon standing there. My heart kicks up another impossible notch as I see his face. Grave, unsmiling, rigid; and when I look back again, Lilac LaRoux’s face has gone absolutely white.
Her mouth opens, lips working the shape of a word I can’t identify. It takes her long seconds to put breath enough behind it to speak, and when she does, it’s in a thin, frightened whisper.
“Simon?”
Our keeper’s daughter; the green-eyed boy of the gray world; the girl whose father will die and leave her broken; the poet with steel and beauty in his soul; the orphan whose dreams hold such hope…
They will all soon shatter because of the man with the blue eyes, and when they do, we shall see what they become. For if they fall as we are falling, we will turn away from this universe forever and leave it to its darkness.
Tracing their paths, their possible futures, we see a dimness where the lines intersect. A nudge this way or that and they will go their own ways, never meeting, never showing us what humanity can be.
But there…a sixth path. Add him to the others and the dimness clears. It is not so very hard, for his path lies close to that of our keeper’s daughter already.
Six lives, six threads. We shall see what fabric they weave.
TARVER MERENDSEN’S GAZE SNAPS FROM my face to Lilac’s, his own expression tightening with surprise. “Simon?” he echoes—the name means something to him. “Simon, the boy who…”
“Who she was supposed to be with,” I finish for him, when Lilac makes no move to answer. “Simon who died for her, Simon who she forgot the second he was shipped out to the front lines.” I don’t want to look at Lilac’s face, but I can’t help it. She’s staring at me like I’ve risen from the dead—she’s staring at me like I’m simply one more ghost, one ghost too many.
Tarver has to take her elbow as they make their way down the stairs—she’s not looking where she puts her feet, and she nearly stumbles. “What the hell is going on?” he demands, all but ignoring Sofia now. Sofia, who’s standing just a few feet away, silent, expressionless. Sofia, hearing me reveal yet one more lie—I hadn’t realized just how much of what I’d given her was false. But now, seeing the lies lined up one after another…and I’d thought I couldn’t trust her?
“Simon—” Lilac’s voice is barely a breath, but her brow is furrowing, the initial shock of seeing me starting to wear off. What’s more surreal than anything about this moment is that neither she nor Tarver seems to think it’s impossible that I could be Simon, even though he’s been dead for years.
“No,” I say finally. “But you’re close.”
“Oh my God,” she whispers. “Giddy.”
I haven’t heard that nickname in four years, and it goes through me like a knife. Suddenly I want nothing more than to curl up in the bottom of my brother’s closet again, stowing away amongst the shoes and circuits and card collections. I swallow, forcing my voice to come out level. “Bingo.”
Tarver reaches out, hand coming to rest in the small of Lilac’s back—how many times did I see my brother touch her like that?
“Lilac,” Flynn says carefully. “This is my friend Sofia, she’s from Avon. This guy’s here with her. You know him?”