This is where Lillian’s guards came for him and took him away. If he’d been Outland they never would have found him.
I pass my cold kitchen and wonder if I’ll cook again. I miss it, but I can’t imagine myself cooking anymore. The fun of preparing a big meal is in whom you make it for, not eating it.
I’m still not used to this. This half-life I’m living. I find myself speaking to empty rooms and engaging in mindspeak with thin air. It reminds me of a stupid body trick Tristan showed me when we were kids. You stand in a doorway and lift your arms so that the backs of your hands press into the frame. You press with all your might for as long as you can. Then you step out of the doorway and your arms seem to float up like magic. They feel so light—light, but also sore. Whenever I find myself imagining I hear someone coming home, I think of that sensation. That weightless ache.
I leave my building (another gift from Lillian) and hurry down the street of my oh-so-fashionable neighborhood. Close to the trains, the park, and the Citadel of course. Close to Lillian. She gave me the building five years ago now. I only use the top floor and the roof. The rest I rent out, the proceeds of which go to Alaric. Not that I spent too much time in my building before this year. Usually, I was with Lillian at the Citadel, but we still slept apart every now and again when we both tacitly agreed that we needed a bit of space between us.
I used to enjoy missing her once in a while. I think that’s part of the reason I would go buffalo hunting with Da every year. Spending a month away from her, past the reach of even her enormous range for mindspeak, I would come home so hungry for her I couldn’t see straight. It wasn’t just a physical need, either. I missed the whisper of her thoughts in mine, the chatter of her busy mind as it reeled through the dozens of tasks and goals she set for herself each day. I used to feel such pride knowing that those goals were as selfless as they were ambitious. The to-do list of things she ticked off in her head each day was a list of things that she thought would make the world a better place. How awed I was to be a part of that. How empty I felt the day that chatter stopped.
I pick up the pace, hitting the heels of my boots against the pavement as if to strike these unwanted thoughts beneath them. I have too much to do today to let myself be distracted by ghosts, but I can’t seem to shake them. It doesn’t help that I live in Lillian’s shadow. Literally—the shadow of the Citadel blots out the thin morning light around me as I push open the door of my favorite café. I can’t help but give a bitter laugh at the thought as I taste the tea-perfumed and pastry-sweetened air.
“Something funny, Rowan?” asks Mirabelle behind the till.
She tilts her head down and throws me a look through her eyelashes, pressing her hands against the counter to perk up her breasts. She’s really leaning into it this morning. I don’t even have to use my willstone to see the flush of lust turning her cheeks pink and softening her mouth. I wonder if non-magical people like Mirabelle know that mechanics like me can look right into them and see that they’re ovulating, which sends their hormones through the roof and bathes their brains in dopamine, essentially shutting off all rational thought. I bet they’d be embarrassed.
“It’s nothing,” I say.