He doesn’t move, doesn’t seem to breathe. Dead eyes above his dead mouth. Then he opens his door, grabs a small bag, and slides it across the seat with him as he exits.
His door hangs open, the hover’s engine still humming, as he opens mine.
Stupid.
As soon as my door cracks, I slam into it, sending him stumbling as I leap for the front seat. He grabs my wrist as I reach his door and hauls me into him, chest to chest. His free palm flattens on my back, the other reaching for my cheek. He kisses me, desperation made form. Blinding, even with my eyes closed. He is spark and fire, and I will burn him up. I grab the edge of his shirt, curl my fingers in his hair. His hands slide from my hips to neck to waist, until my whole body’s a map of where he is and was and where I want him to be. He’s a fuse, singed, busted, and cracking, and my eyes burn until they leak.
I feel it, the water, the trails. Taste the salt.
“Why you?” I ask under my breath, in my blood. “Dad I get, and Dee, and maybe even Greg, but you? Did this have to be a game? Did you have to—”
“It wasn’t.” His hot fingers find my cheeks. Smudge my tears between our skin. “Not in that way, not like you think.”
It’s too much. Whole worlds too much. He has no right to kiss me, and I have no damn sanity kissing him.
“Go to hell,” I say.
He’s as still as I am, but thrumming tension. It bleeds through his eyes and down his fingertips, which he pulls from my face. “Goodbye, Kit.”
He swings into the streethover and has it in motion before his door slams. Rear orange lights burning streaks through the yawning door into the street. Disappear.
I’m alone.
All I’d have had to do was kick him, and I’d be half across the city by now. But no, I kissed him back.
That was probably the idea.
I gasp—laugh, sob?—hands cupped to my mouth. My ribs crack and I can’t breathe. I can’t—
“There’s a limit,” I whisper, or maybe just think—Gilken’s words the only ones in my head that don’t hurt. “‘History records, but stories ground us. Prove that these limitless terrors have a limit, that our universe holds something greater than darkness and stronger than fear.’”
He was wrong. There’s nothing here but fear and dark, the limits only on us—our souls—and nothing else. The terrors run rampant.
Though maybe not here. The Prime doesn’t materialize in the offing, the Brinkers don’t appear with a sparkblade to Dad’s throat, and the one person more terrifying than them all just jumped into a hover and drove off.
Bastard.
My lungs calm, stop trying to eat themselves. I am quiet in a dark that may be greater than me but hasn’t killed me yet.
Though not for lack of trying.
Except . . . it doesn’t try. The shadows don’t scamper. No Enactors sidle in to haul me away. Someone should have, by now.
I hold my breath, listening.
Nothing. No movement or sound.
If you could do anything, go anywhere, had no ties, what would you do?
Niles had grabbed a bag while getting out of the hover. His hands were empty when he left.
I crouch, fingers scanning the pavement. Rough stone, powdered dirt . . . stiff fabric, rounded and limp. A satchel? I find a flap, flip it over, and dig inside.
There’s next to nothing. Some flat rectangles with round edges, a small box with hinges, and a fatter rectangle with buttons and rippled glass at one end.
A pocket light. I hit the button. Cool white blazes hot enough to blind. I bury it in the bag, and it glows through the fabric. I blink my eyes back to normalcy and ease the bag open.
A transaction card with 500 reds.
A pale ID card, its thin digitech screen looping through text. Please scan print now, Jenna Flesk, setup not complete, please scan . . .
A darker keypass with a miniature flightwing in the corner. I tap the emblem. Across the warehouse, blue running lights flair into the outline of a wing. Crest its smooth nose and flow into its tail. Black and small, and worth more than my suite and Mrs. Divs’s inter-House communicator combined.
If you could do anything . . .
Oh, the idiot.
I dump the cards in my pocket, grab the bag, and almost throw it across the floor.
The Prime will know. Niles will show up empty-handed with no excuse, and the Prime will know. He doesn’t seem the forgiving type. Niles will pay for this. He could have let me steal the hover, or I could have hit him over the head, or—or something. But no, he dumps me with my ticket out and drives off.
The boy isn’t stupid; he’ll have planned an excuse.
The Prime isn’t stupid, either.
I kick the floor, but it’s not thick enough or satisfactory and Niles doesn’t feel any of it. So I walk to the wing instead. It grows bigger the closer I get, looms sleek impossibility.
Does he think I know how to fly? And I’d have learned that skill where? Because obviously I had one of these in my back pocket growing up. Hell, I’ve never even been in a private flightwing.
Autopilot, idiot, my brain snaps. It’s not data science.