Lament groans and buries his face in his hands. We’re sitting on the patio behind his parents’ house, surrounded by the lush oceanside gardens of their home on Planet Urporator. To say my first impression of Mr. and Ms. Bringer was a shock would be an understatement. They look like supermodels, their home is a mansion, and they’re sonice. The kind of people who pull you into a bear hug and insist that you help yourself to whatever’s in their pantry. I haven’t yet taken them up on that since we arrived ten days ago, but that’s because I’m trying to be Model Guest Keller and not Raids-the-Pantries-of-Strangers Keller. (Also, I really want them to like me.)
“Come on,” I coax, tugging Lament’s fingers away from his face. The sun is setting over the ocean behind him, giving the world a pearly pink hue. Light spills across the nearby seawall, the tropical landscaping, the cobblestone walkway leading back up to the house. “It’s a good story.”
Lament casts his eyes skyward like he’s hoping he’ll find help in the clouds. “I’ve already told it fifty times.”
“You’ve told itthreetimes, and I will remind you that Idied, so I think I deserve a fourth.”
“You can’t keep using your death to get your way.”
“I can and I will.”
“It’s morbid.”
“It’s inspired.”
“Keller.” Lament heaves a sigh. “I don’t want to keep reliving that day.”
I don’t understand how that can be true. All I want is to relive eruption day, again and again, in his voice. When I went into the volcano, I thought that was it. Lights out. Game over. I’d sort of made peace with it, as much as you can make peace with your own untimely end. But it wasn’t the end. Because Lament—in a twist not even FPS could have predicted (had FPS been real)—came for me. He put the lifestone around my neck and told me he loved me and brought me back to life.
It doesn’t seem possible. None of it does. I am sitting here—living and breathing and thinking and feeling when Irememberdying—and I still don’t fully believe it.
In the twenty or so days since Lament’s death-defying stunt (he hates when I call it that), the universe has gone into a veritable frenzy. It’s part of the reason Lament and I are here on his home planet in the most remote corner of Romothrida Galaxy—to avoid the hysteria. Currently, Romothrida is experiencing what we call amass migration, which is what happens when one galaxy makes a discovery so groundbreaking that other galaxies flood in to take part. And what Lament did in that volcano… I mean, you can’t get any more groundbreaking than bringing someone back from the dead, can you? It’s never been done before. Not once, in our tens of thousands of years of recorded history, with all our vast advances in technology. Until me.
So yeah. The universe has taken notice. Life-forms from as far away as Sculpitor Galaxy (we’re talkingreally fucking faraway) are racing to Romothrida in hopes of getting their hands on the now famous zurillium, and the Legion—weakened after its recent Determinist purge—isstruggling to control the influx. Since the Legion can’t ensure our safety, let alone our privacy, they’ve sent us here. To Lament’s childhood home on this tiny paradise of a planet. Sort-of-but-not-really in hiding. Waiting for the madness to die down.
I’m okay with it. I think it’s probably healthy for me to use this time to process all the ways my life has changed, even if I don’t actually feel that different from before. Or—that’s not true. I do feel different. But, like, different in a good way.
I look at the man sitting across from me. I think there’s a reason for that.
I reach out to trace a finger lightly over Lament’s knee. He’s wearing tan linen shorts today and a white button-down—both staples on Urporator—and there’s a scar that stretches from the back of his calf up around his shin. Another on his opposite knee, in the shape of an oval.
“What if,” I hedge, “you tell me the story of how you brought me back from the dead one more time and IpromiseI won’t ask about it again for the rest of the day.”
Lament glances at the setting sun. “The whole rest of the day, huh?”
“I am being very generous.”
“You are being intolerable.”
I grin. “Is that ayes?”
“It is very clearly not ayes.”
He catches my hand where it’s resting on his knee, links our fingers together. A thrill races through me, because this doesn’t feel real, either: I get to touch Lament whenever I want. He likes it. He touches me back.
We’ve been taking it slow. I think we’re both still holding on to some of our old fears (and, given the way I went off and got myself killed for a selfless yet nonetheless reproachable reason, some of our new ones). Lament doesn’t always seem to trust that my undeadness is real. He’ll wake me up in the middle of the night, eyes darting, fingers going to my pulse. Like he needs proof I’m still there. It breaks my heart and fills me with so much light all at the same time, because his anxiety is my fault (as always) andI love him (so fucking much) and I didn’t entirely realize what my death would do to him. How badly it would hurt him. I knew he cared, but I didn’t know hecared.
I know now, though. I guess that’s what happens when the man you love uses a magic stone to bring you back to life. It forces the truth, raw and pure, out into the open. For him and for me. We’ve both been stripped to our bones, and we’ve found that the things we were hiding under our skin were the same all along.
“Even if I agreed to that bargain,” Lament says in a tone that makes it clear he does not and will never agree to my bargain, “we don’t have time for another retelling. Vera and the others will be here soon.”
That perks me up. “I thought they weren’t coming until tomorrow?”
“Avi has begun to suspect us, so Vera changed the plan.”
“How does Avi suspect us?” I complain. “We’ve been so careful!”
“She’s Avi,” Lament replies. “Frankly, anyone who thinks we can pull off a surprise birthday party for a literal spy is deluding themselves.”
