I close my eyes in relief. “How long can we stay?”
His lips graze my ear. What was Callie thinking, insisting Paris was the City of Love? Rome is. Rome is all that and more. His words are soft against my skin. “As long as you want.”
Forever sounds about right.
I’ve just come back from the market, carting some fruit that looked surprisingly appealing enough to buy, when I find Giuliana sipping espressos with Jonah in the living room. “Ciao, bella!” She stands up and kisses me on the cheeks. “Your ears must be burning. We were just discussing you!”
Jonah takes the canvas bag I’ve brought in from me. “I was explaining to Giules that we’ve decided to stay here awhile.”
I nod enthusiastically. Stay. Yes.
Or . . . no? Giules is grimacing, albeit contritely. “And I was just explaining to Jonah that I’ve been sent to bring you back. You’ve got work to do.”
Anxiety stirs in my belly, rising in my throat until I taste ash. The appetite I’ve slowly reclaimed falls away. No, no, no, no, no. I don’t want to leave Rome.
Jonah drops the bag and leads me over to the couch. Giules is staring at me funny. Why is she staring at me funny?
“Are you okay, bella?” she asks quietly.
Jonah says something in Italian to her. Have they done this before? Did I really never notice this? How can I not have noticed that Jonah speaks Italian?
The anxiety doubles and then intensifies until it consumes me. And yet, I paste on my cheerleader smile. “I’m great! Why do you ask?”
Her brows furrow. “It’s just . . . you went silent. Like a statue.”
My hyena laugh fills the apartment. “Oh my gosh. Really? How funny!”
Now her eyes widen. Jonah says something else in Italian. Her features smooth out, and she once more looks as if everything’s okay. In English, she tells me, “I feel terrible about taking you away from the beauty of my homeland, but I’m afraid Battletracker is insisting on your expertise to help transport the Elder you caught back to Annar. He’s afraid Emotionals and Dreamers alone won’t be able to fully contain it.”
Over the last few days, I’ve completely forgotten about the Elder. “Why does he want it in Annar?”
“Council edict,” she tells us. “At Monday’s meeting, it was decided that it was too risky to keep in California. There’s a fair amount of hysteria over its presence after what happened during its capture. The goal is for you to imprison it in Annar like you did the others last year.”
We missed a scheduled Council meeting. I turn to Jonah to judge his reaction to this, but he’s unfazed. Like it’s no big deal we completely shirked our duties.
And in the end, we go. Inside, I’m screaming and crying and wishing there was a way I can say no. But Giules only ever sees a smile on my face. I refuse to let her, or anyone else, see anything different.
Kellan doesn’t ask about the medications he brought to Italy. He doesn’t ask what they’re for or why I’m bothering with drugs rather than Shamans. And I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing.
What I do know is that the ulcer’s reforming. Jonah wants me to go back to Kate, but I’m resisting. I don’t want anyone to know what’s going on with me, especially after I apparently broke down in front of Giules and can’t even remember it. It’s bad enough Jonah knows.
The truly ironic thing is that, after keeping so many secrets from Jonah, now I’m keeping new and different ones from Kellan. Secrets are a heavy load, and I loathe them with every fiber of my being. But, to spill them would only serve to hurt people more than I already have, so it’s my burden to suffer.
A week after I returned from Rome, and six days after I imprisoned another being under the streets of Annar after an uneventful transport and subsequent imprisonment that an Intellectual could have probably supervised better than me, I find myself sitting on a couch with Kellan at an outdoor café a block away from his apartment. I’m nursing my tea as he tells me about his latest mission. I like it when he tells me things other people don’t get to hear, because it means he trusts me.
Even though I don’t deserve it.
One of his arms is draped across the back of the couch, so close to my shoulder. Because the pull between us is too hard to resist, I reach up and play with the ends of his fingers. He stops talking at my touch, and then moves his arm away.
I whisper an apology, like so many before, and so many that will surely come after.
“I don’t need your apologies,” he murmurs back, voice hoarse.
I know what he needs. So much of me wants to give it to him. But then, isn’t it always simpler to consider betrayal when the other person isn’t around? In Rome, it was so easy to be certain of what I have with Jonah. Sitting with Kellan, it’s different. Harder to remember.