THIRTY
As it turned out, there wasn’t much to do at Asthall Cottage after dinner. I ended up playing hearts with Callum, who was extremely good at it and beat me three hands out of four. Finally, I pled exhaustion and turned in for the night. Callum walked me to my room, lingering at the door.
“I like it out here,” he told me. “It’s so peaceful.”
“Me too,” I told him. It was such a relief to be away from most—if not all—of the prying eyes at the Citadel.
“When we’re married, we should come out here all the time,” Callum said. “Every weekend if we can.”
“That’s a good idea,” I murmured. Briefly, I tried to pretend that I was actually getting married to Callum, that any of his plans for the future might come to pass. It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant prospect—if I was going to be forced into marriage, there was no one I could think of better suited to being a husband than the sweet, considerate young prince—but it didn’t feel right, either, and not only because I was way too young to get married.
He kissed me on the cheek. “See you in the morning.”
I smiled. “See you.”
He got halfway down the hallway before turning back. “You know what’s weird?”
“What?” I asked, hand on the doorknob. It was ridiculous, but I was overjoyed by the fact that all the doors in Asthall had knobs. There were no panels, no biometric scanners, no codes to memorize. I could have stayed there forever.
“In a few days, we’ll be sleeping in the same bed,” he said, raising a playful eyebrow.
I swallowed hard. “Yeah. Weird. Well, good night!” I slipped through the bedroom door and shut it firmly. Kissing Callum was one thing, but sleeping in the same bed with him … we had to find Juliana by then. We just had to. I did the calculations in my head. Two days. We were running out of time.
“Hey.”
I jumped. “Thomas, you scared me. What are you doing in here?”
He rose from where he was sitting, in an armchair close to the window. “I was hoping to talk to you,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.
“About what?” I sat down on the bed and watched as he paced the room. “How jealous I am? And manipulative? Are you here to call me a liar again?”
“Stop, please.” He hung his head in shame. “I spoke to my mother, and I asked her when the last time was that she’d seen Lucas. She told me that he came out to her house for her birthday, April eleventh. Except Lucas told me that he’d just gotten back from seeing her this weekend. Which means that first of all, he lied, and second of all, there’s no explanation for his absence during the time when you saw him in your visions.”
I sat perfectly still, not even breathing. I knew where he was going with this, but I wasn’t going to make it easy on him, not after the things he’d said to me.
“And I found this.” He held up the origami star. “On the nightstand in Juliana’s room. Do you know what it says?”
I nodded. “I saw her write it. Through the tether.”
“You were right. About all of it.” He shook his head, despair etched all over his face. “She left. She turned her back on us and she left. I thought bringing you here would buy us time to rescue her, but she doesn’t want to be rescued. I ripped you out of your world for nothing. I’m so sorry, Sasha. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Please don’t,” I said, tears springing to my eyes. I was so tired, and he looked so sad, that my anger evaporated. “It’s all right. If I were you, I wouldn’t have believed me, either. She’s your friend, he’s your brother. I’m just some girl you barely know.”
“No, that’s not true,” he insisted. “You’re not just some girl. And you would’ve believed me. But I couldn’t … I couldn’t bring myself to see what was right in front of my eyes. I didn’t want to see that I was wrong, that I was capable of being wrong.”
“We’re all capable of being wrong,” I whispered.
“I didn’t want to be. I’m supposed to be better than that; otherwise what was all my training for?” He sighed. “I let you down. You deserve better.”
“So do you,” I said fiercely. I stood and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, pulling him close to me. I could smell the comforting piney scent of his cologne and feel a faint heat rising off his skin; his cheeks and ears were flushed, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to look directly at me, as if I was an eclipse, a dangerous celestial event. “You trusted them and they betrayed you. You would never have done that to them.”
He stared at me, struck dumb, then took me by my wrists and pressed my hands against his chest. “I’m taking you home,” he said, his voice hoarse. He looked as though he’d seen a ghost—he was pale, wide-eyed, trembling—but there was something building inside him, something strong and resolute. I imagined I could see it swirling in the darkness of his pupils.
“What? When?”
“As soon as possible. Tomorrow, if I can manage it.”
“Why now? We haven’t found Juliana yet.” I had a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Shouldn’t I have been excited to go home? Wasn’t that what I wanted? Yet while a part of me was excited, another part was full of dread.
“I don’t care,” Thomas said. “You’re not safe here. That Libertas bombing … if you had gotten really hurt, or God forbid died, I would never have forgiven myself. I can’t believe there was ever a time when I thought I could justify bringing you here and putting you in so much danger. I can’t turn back time and make a different choice, but I can do this.”
“How are you going to do it without the General finding out?”
“I don’t know. I’ll start by asking Dr. Moss if he has an extra anchor, or if somehow he can get me the remote that controls yours,” Thomas said. He was growing frantic now, which worried me. I’d never seen him this unspooled before. I was afraid he was going to do something stupid and rash. “I turned it in to the General when we arrived at the Citadel, but maybe Mossie can get it back under the pretense of having to fix it or something … I haven’t thought it all through yet. But I’m going to make it happen if it kills me.”
“No,” I protested. “No, I’m not going to let you do that. You’ll get in so much trouble.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Thomas insisted.
“How can you say that? How can you—?” The words stuck in my throat. “How can you think I’d go home and leave you to deal with the fallout?”
“You have to,” he said. “There’s no way for both of us to get out of this, and if one of us is going to get their life back, it has to be you. Don’t you see that?”
“I won’t go!” I cried, digging my nails into the fabric of his jacket. “Not until Juliana’s back. There are other lives at stake here, not just ours. You told me that.”
“There’s more than one way to stop a war,” he told me. “I’ll figure something out. You don’t have to be part of this. It’s not your world. It’s not your problem.”
“I can’t go home yet. I refuse to let you send me back.”
“For God’s sake, Sasha, why?”
“Because,” I said in a near-whisper. “I’m not ready to leave you.”
The frankness of my admission seemed to catch him off guard, but I was tired of hiding how I felt, from him and from myself. He had a right to know, and I had a right to say it.
The shock of what I’d revealed wore off in seconds, and then I was in his arms. His lips fit perfectly against mine. The kiss was tentative at first, and we were both shaking. He started to pull away, but I grabbed him by the back of his neck and pushed myself up hard against him, tangling my fingers in his hair and letting my tongue graze his top lip softly, sending a shudder down his spine. Thomas held my head in his hands, cradling it like a precious object. His lips roamed the soft planes of my face, pressing against my cheek, my temple, the corner of my eye. He traced the ridge of my jaw with kisses. I arched my back, offering him the smooth skin of my neck to kiss, gasping, breathless, before pulling him back up to meet my mouth once again. The weight of him kept me from floating away, atom by atom, into the universe.