“Do what?” I asked automatically, casting around looking for my socks while avoiding his gaze.
He shot me a half-smile.
“That,” he said. “Hiding in plain sight. Retreating behind your armor.”
I stopped and shrugged, then sighed and sat back down on the bed.
“I—I have these nightmares, sometimes. People I’ve lost. My mom, my brother…” I paused and tried to calm myself again. “Skyla seems to have joined the lineup.”
He wrapped his arms around me from behind, careful not to restrain me, just holding me. He treated me like I wassomething…precious. Something that deserved to be protected. He obviously did not know me.
“You saved my life,” he said. “She would have killed me in order to get this, real or not,” he said, tapping the medallion at his throat.
I nodded. Rationally, I knew I had done the right thing, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t left its mark. Just one more death to lay at the door of the Elusians.
“We should probably head back,” I said after a minute, my voice thick.
I felt him sigh in disappointment and start to sit back on the bed. I turned around quickly and knelt, twining my hands back into his hair.
I leaned in slowly until our foreheads touched. Our breath mixed for a few moments before I was able to speak.
“I’m not trying to hide,” I said, struggling to put what I was feeling into words. “It’s just… I don’t think I’ve ever been safe just being—me. It’s hard to break the habit of—of hiding what’s real.”
He smiled slightly.
“I know a thing or two about hiding,” he said, pushing his hair back from his scarred face. “Just know… you never have to hide with me.”
He kissed me gently, then stood and pulled his own clothes on.
We headed back to the tunnels, pausing only to grab some fresh water from the fountain.
“So, is Betts going to be okay with this?” I asked, pointing back and forth between us.
“Betts? Why wouldn’t she be?” he asked.
“I dunno. She seems like… like family, to you,” I said.
“She is like family. Bratty sister family, to be specific,” he said. “She’s the younger sister of the man who—who would havebeenmyMageia, if he hadn’t been killed during our Bonding ceremony.”
I looked at him in horror. I’d come to understand something of what the Bond between a Soma and Mageia meant to him. A weird sense of deja vu washed over me. Had we had this conversation before?
“Fuck, Hel, I am so sorry,” I began.
He didn’t look at me.
“It’s… okay. I lost Ri—His name was Orion, but everyone called him Ri—A long time ago,” he said. “That’s how I got these,” he said, gesturing to the scars on his face.
“There was a missile attack in the middle of our Bonding ceremony. I was too distracted by my new senses to realize what was happening, until it was too late,” he said.
“Still. That’s horrible. I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I said, laying one hand on his arm. Where I touched his skin my fingers sparked, like a welder dropping bits of burning solder.
We both jumped.
“What the fuck?” I said, shaking my hand.
Hel’s eyes narrowed.
“Do it again,” he said.
