“Elliot, those other boys on the mission,” she said slowly, and Elliot’s shoulders relaxed because it was not about them. “None of them were saving themselves?”
“Saving which part of themselves exactly?” Elliot asked. Serene looked put out with herself for putting it wrong, and Elliot grinned. “I know what you meant. Well, I suppose we’re all on the young side, but given that they’re in military training and constantly exposed to mortal danger—I’ve read about emotions running high, and life-affirming . . .”
He trailed off. He had never considered that Serene had kissed him for the second and more frenzied time after the library attack, that they had come together after the battle. He had not applied what he’d read to his own life. Elliot glanced at Serene again, nervously, unable to look at her steadily but likewise unable to stop looking back.
Serene still looked worried. “None of them want to wait and be courted?”
“Well, we’re all definitely too young to get married!” said Elliot. “But they might get married later on. It’s not like you’re disqualified from being married if you’ve dated before.”
“Oh,” said Serene. “Oh, I see, of course. Of course, that makes perfect sense.” She gave Elliot a small smile, dazzling as a single ray of light on snow. “Of course they might change their minds later, and of course nobody should be disqualified.”
She squeezed Elliot’s hand. Elliot felt the impulse to go with it, to smile at her, to not raise a question or face a challenge, but he had never gone with that kind of impulse before in his life and he did not know how to do it now. He did not know how to let anything rest.
“Change their minds?” he asked. “Do you think that dating is—a whole different thing from courting?”
Serene’s head tilted interrogatively, and then he felt her hand in his, her whole body, go still.
“It isn’t,” continued Elliot, speaking with difficulty. “Dating can be casual, but it isn’t always. Sometimes people who are dating get married, and sometimes they don’t. It’s a way of—testing out a relationship. We have dating instead of courting, not as well as.”
“Oh,” said Serene, the sound abrupt and terrible, and then with gathering anger: “That shouldn’t be how it works. That is totally confusing and inefficient!”
“This isn’t a humorous cultural difference, is it?” said Elliot. “We shouldn’t be talking about this in public, should we?”
Serene took a breath, and Elliot almost thought that she might brush this off, instead of him. He almost wanted her to. But his Serene had never been lacking in courage.
“No, we shouldn’t,” she told him, squaring her shoulders. “Let us go discuss it in your cabin.”
They went. They did not speak again until they were in the narrow confines of the wooden cabin where he had spent his first night in the Borderlands, wondering what he had done by deciding to stay for Serene. It was so different from being with her at the start of this, with no walls and both of them free under a night sky filled with stars and possibility.
“I’m so sorry, Elliot,” said Serene, as soon as she had shut the door on them. “I got it all wrong from the beginning. This was much more difficult than I thought it would be—it should be easier than this.”
“Don’t be sorry,” said Elliot. “I’m not sorry. And don’t talk to me about what should be easy. I’ve never had anything be easy in my whole life. I don’t want easy. I wouldn’t know what to do with easy if I had it.”
Serene was pacing the cabin floor and not listening at all. “You’ve been insulted because you were with me—not just insulted by my mother, but I made so many mistakes, and I heard people whispering, I know what things my cousin must have—and all the time—”
“I don’t care!” said Elliot. “I got insulted a few times? Don’t act like it’s never happened to me before. I know it’s happened to you before. As for the other stuff, what your mother and your cousin said, even the stuff you said sometimes, do you think the humans do it any better? Do you think I want to make a girl feel the same way I’ve been feeling? Relationships are difficult. Every world I know of is messed up.”
He spoke as quickly as he could, desperate to convince her. He had messed up: in two worlds full of blundering and flaws he was always the one who made the worst mistakes, the one who ruined everything he touched. He remembered how Serene and Luke had read out his love letters to an army troop. How stupid could he be? Had he really thought Serene would do that, if she knew he’d meant them?
She didn’t know, just as Luke hadn’t known and Myra hadn’t known. But he could tell her. He would tell her now.
“I am—I’m serious about you,” Elliot said. “I’m not saying that any of this is easy. And you can—there could be years before you decide what you want. There will be more insults and more misunderstandings. I know that. But I . . . I really love you,” he said. “And I think we have a chance of making it work. If you love me back, enough to work through every difficulty, the way I love you.”
Serene was silent for a long time. Her pallor was alarming: she was white as salt, white as exposed bone. There was so much pain in her face that she almost looked like a different person. She almost looked human.
Elliot felt his heart sinking in that cold silence, as if he had thrown it like a stone into a deep dark pool.
He had to look away. He stared at the wooden walls, which bore the marks of countless knives thrown by countless careless children who had not known what they were getting into.
“You don’t,” he said quietly.
“I do!” said Serene. It came out as a cry, like someone had hurt her when she was already injured.
Elliot lifted his eyes to her face, but hope died when he saw the expression she was wearing. There was too much pain in it for any possibility of falling into each others’ arms.
“I love you very dearly,” said Serene. “I would gladly die for you. But the kind of love needed for courtship . . .”
“It’s fine if you don’t feel ready for courtship,” Elliot broke in.
He hated himself for being so pathetic. He wished he could be nobody at all, as long as he could stop being himself and feeling like this.
“I don’t think I could ever feel it,” Serene continued doggedly, as if he had never spoken.
“Not for me,” Elliot finished for her, when she could not seem to. They could both hear the bitterness in his voice. “I’ll stop,” Elliot said. “I won’t be any more trouble. I won’t keep bothering you with—with feelings that aren’t your responsibility. But I need—I need to hear you say it. Could you just look at me and say it.”
Serene was a soldier, before she was anything else. She was brave and never backed down from a challenge. She met his eyes when she spoke, and he saw how sorry she was to say it.
“I do not think I could ever feel that way about you.”