‘I’m a seminarian, Featherswallow,’ he says. ‘One day it will be my job to hear people’s confessions.’
I hear the smirk in his voice and turn to face him.
‘There’s nothing you can say that will shock me,’ he says in my ear.
So I tell him. I whisper the truth, so nobody but him canhear. I can’t believe the words are coming out of my mouth, the words I’ve never spoken to another soul. But they are. He listens silently as the shame floods through me.
‘Do you see why I can’t abandon everything to join your Coalition?’ I say. ‘My selfishness already cost Sophie everything. But if I give Wyvernmire the code, and tell her Sophie helped me crack it, I can save my family and give Sophie her life back.’
I wait for him to say something, but he doesn’t speak. He’s too disgusted to react. I bury my face in my jacket.
‘Do you think, maybe, I was born bad?’ I say, my voice muffled.
‘No,’ Atlas says quietly. ‘I don’t think anyone is born bad. I think we’ve all got good and bad inside us, don’t you?’
I turn my face to look at him. I can see the outline of his jaw and the curl of his hair.
‘This is the way I see it,’ he says. ‘If you wereallbad, if you didn’t have any goodness in you, then how would you even know what badness is? Without goodness, there’d be nothing to measure badness against. Badness wouldn’t be bad – it would just be a normal state of being. I think you have to have both good and bad inside you to know the difference, Featherswallow. To know which side you want to act on. So, if you feel guilty for what you did, that’s a sure sign there’s goodness in you.’
I turn away, but he pulls me back. ‘We live in a world that permits everything but forgives nothing. I think Sophie could forgive you, one day. You should tell her the truth.’
‘Sometimes I wake up in the night and it’s there, besideme in bed, the guilt. Like a dark void waiting to suck me in.’
Atlas takes my hand. ‘Then tell it to go away,’ he whispers fiercely. He presses his lips to my ear. ‘Banish it, like a dragon banishes the dark.’
I go still. My hand is on his wrist, and I feel the soft hair of his arm. I turn my face up to his. Then he moves towards me, slipping an arm beneath my waist, and pulls my body against his. His mouth finds mine. Something inside me explodes. My lips burn as they move, tingling with tiny flames. His mouth is the softest I’ve ever kissed, and suddenly it’s on my neck, my face, my eyes wet with tears. We move almost instinctively, our bodies melting together, and suddenly I’m on top of him, one hand intertwined in his, the other in his hair as I kiss him again and will him not to stop.
Why did this take us so long?I think as his fingers slip beneath my shirt to dance along my spine.
He pulls away, breathing hard. ‘Featherswallow, I—’
I silence him with another kiss, feeling his laugh before I hear it. He turns his head away.
‘Viv,’ he whispers into my hair. My name in his mouth is like velvet.
‘What, Atlas?’ I say almost impatiently.
‘I don’t think I want to be a priest any more.’
I go still. ‘But you’ve been religious your whole life. You believe in God, and you said He was calling you to the priesthood, so why wouldn’t you—’
‘But what if He’s calling me to something else?’ Atlas says.
My heart races, but it’s not so much from the kissing as it is the hope that he’s about to say the very words I realise I’vebeen longing to hear. A car rolls up the gravel outside and a tiny sliver of headlight slips through the crack between the blackouts, just enough to give me a glimpse of Atlas’s face. His eyes are wide and shining.
‘Viv,’ he says again. ‘What if God’s calling me to you?’
‘THIS IS YOUR DEPUTY PRIME Minister! Open the door!’
I wake up with Atlas’s arm round me and my face pressed up against the cover of a book.
‘Should we open it?’ Marquis says groggily from below.
‘Wait,’ I say, sitting up. ‘Karim, you need to hide.’
I climb down the ladder and Karim squeezes into an alcove that serves as a bookshelf.
‘Here,’ Atlas says, passing down the biggest of the framed maps from the upper level.
