In the dim light, he looks so tired; so changed, in his pilfered military gear, so different from the cocky guy in an LRI shirt who winked at me across the holosuite. I can see his breath stirring the dust in the air, making it dance in the beam from the flashlight. It quickens as I watch him, until I can almost hear a waltz, each particle of dust twirling to the ghost of that old song.
“The hell with it,” I blurt, the gun clattering to the floor from fingers no longer obeying my commands. “I don’t care.” I move forward, closing the distance between us and reaching for him. My fingers curl around the edges of his jacket, tug him in close—he’s already moving, ducking his head, lips parting to meet mine. One hand slides around my waist, pulling me in against him, as the other tangles in my hair, his palm hot against my cheek.
We stumble backward until my shoulder blades hit the wall. Someone’s foot connects with the flashlight, sending it and its beam skittering wildly off into the dark. My hands are shaking as they peel his jacket away, as my fingertips curl against his shoulders, as the muscle beneath his T-shirt shifts and tenses in response to my touch. His mouth finds my jawline, my throat, the hollow behind my ear; the air goes out of me in a gasp.
“Sofia,” he mumbles against my skin, hips pressing against mine, arm tightening around my waist. “I always knew you.”
All the things I wanted to say…I’m sorry. I should’ve told you. I wanted to tell you. I don’t care about the Knave. The thoughts come in fragments, too confused to speak aloud, too difficult and too numerous to track. I let you down. I let you hurt me. I’d take all of it back, and I’d do it all again.
“God help me,” I breathe, the words falling out of me like dust and debris, crashing in my own ears and bringing the world to a grinding halt. All I can hear is Gideon breathing, his skin hot against my skin, his body hard against mine. I struggle to breathe, the air rushing into my lungs like it’s trying to drown me. “I do trust you.”
I have never seen her face, the girl with the beautiful dreams, only the inside of her mind. But now, through the eyes of the boy who loves her, I can see she is beautiful. I can feel the others trying to push past me, to seek more destruction, for destruction is all they know. But I cannot stop looking at her. I wish that I could look at her forever.
She lets me take her hand, our fingers interlocking the way she and the green-eyed boy have let their hearts interlock—separate but inseparable. In this moment I find I envy them their individuality, their uniqueness, the beauty of being able to touch like this. In this moment I envy the green-eyed boy that he will always be able to touch her like this.
In this moment I decide that they must live, that they must show the others all there is to learn from humankind.
“Jubilee Chase,” I whisper through the green-eyed boy’s lips, “I wish…”
ALL I CAN FEEL IS her body against mine, the heat of her skin through the fabric of her shirt, the catch of her breath hot against my neck.
All I can hear are her words echoing around the silence of the abandoned arcade. Whether you could have loved the real me. I do trust you.
The two of us are the only spots of warmth in this world of darkness, and I want more than anything to have the words to make her see the truth. That though she’s played me almost every moment I’ve known her, I do know her.
My heart’s been pounding since the moment she walked into the arcade, and I want to abandon myself to her—to this—even though I know that loving her and trusting her are two different things.
I can’t trust her.
And yet I do.
Oh, hell.
My arms tighten around her of their own accord, and she surges in against me, lips parting as we lose ourselves in each other, try desperately to close the distance between us we both wish wasn’t there. My jacket hits the floor with a thud, pockets full of gear rattling, and with a kick I send it off into the dark. Her hands slide up inside my T-shirt, finding skin, and my brain starts to shut down higher function so I can concentrate on getting her shirt off without breaking the kiss for more than a couple of seconds.
But one thought persists, ricocheting around inside my skull, demanding to be heard.
Did she mean what she said?
I trusted her on the Daedalus, and she was playing me every second. She kissed me then, and when I held her, I thought she was sincere in the promise she made to abandon revenge. I couldn’t bear it if she was just taking her best, last chance to soften me up, change my mind.
Perhaps she needs to make peace, the night before it all comes undone. Perhaps she needs to speak her truth. Perhaps it is truth.
“Sofia, I have to—” I murmur the words against the skin of her shoulder, half my mind busy mentally mapping the distance to our old nest of blankets.
“Hmm?” She’s distracted, that one syllable dragging out into a moan I want to hear again. Then she’s dragging my shirt off and planting both hands against my chest so she can push away from the wall, walk me back toward the nest. Great minds, Dimples.
“Never mind,” I whisper. She feels so right in my arms, she fits, and yet some small part of me still can’t tell if all she wants to do is pull me away from Tarver’s side, make sure Lilac dies like Sanjana says she must. I know it would hurt her to manipulate me like that, but for stakes as high as these…could I blame her?
“Say it, whatever it is,” she murmurs, as my back hits the wall by our nest, and she comes to rest flush against me.
“I have to do it.” I whisper the words, even as some small version of myself howls in the back of my brain to shut up. “I won’t leave Tarver to face her alone.”
“I know,” she whispers in reply, and when I bow my head, she presses her forehead to mine. “After everything that was done to the whisper, maybe that’s what drove it so mad in the end. Being alone.”
The wistful sadness in her voice calls up an answering pang deep in my own chest. We both know what it is to be alone. I reach up to smooth back her hair, careful to keep my fingers from catching in the snarls the last few days have left there. “They’re not inherently evil. If they were, Lilac wouldn’t be here at all. She’d still be dead on that planet they crashed on.”
“I know,” she replies, turning her face away so she can rest her head on my shoulder. “Jubilee knew one of them as a child, the same one that helped her and Flynn on Avon. We turned this one into the monster that’s taken over Lilac.”
“LaRoux did this to it.” Just as LaRoux hurt Sofia, twisted the girl in my arms into someone capable of murder. Just as he twisted me into someone who could justify hunting her, terrifying her. The thought sits right there before me—which species is more dangerous, truly?
My mind throws up the passing thought I had at Mae’s…just a few days ago, though it feels like a lifetime. Now, I voice it out loud. “I wondered once if the whispers could see all our data, everything we send through the hypernet. And what they think of it, if they can. What they think of us.”
“Our data,” she echoes. “You mean…”