I have to play this off. Only, now that I’m thinking about kissing Lament, my eyes sort of… drop to his mouth. And I am quietly dying inside. And honestly, fuck this semi-dark workroom, and Vera’s conniving schedule- making, and the hundreds of hours I’ve spent learning Lament, the exact shape and smell of him, the way his muscles move under his shirt, the line of his jaw, soft skin behind his ears, because if not for any of that…
Oh, who am I kidding? I’d be dreaming of kissing Lament regardless of the circumstance. Because he’s him. And I’m me.
And this is a mess.
“Everything has just been so intense from the moment I got here,” I say, trying not to sound like I’m backpedaling. “It’s been hard for both of us. And I know I’ve pushed for things you’re not ready to give, and asked for more than I should, and it’s not fair to you or to me. So, yeah. I think maybe we should take some space.”
“Keller.” He looks genuinely upset. “I don’t want space.”
“You don’tthinkyou do, but that’s only because—”
“No.” He takes a step closer. “You don’t get to tell me what I do and don’t think. I mean it. I don’t want space.”
“Youdidhate me,” I whisper, the words slipping helplessly from that small, hurt place inside me. “Sometimes, I think you still do.”
“That’s not true.” He grips my arms with both hands, gives me a little shake. The contact is so unexpected, I have to swallow a gasp. “You have to know that’s not true.”
Words leave me. I have no idea how to respond to the way he’s touching me or looking at me, frustrated and concerned and… something else. Some strange mix of outrage and care and resolve.
“We’re going to have disagreements,” he continues, quieter now. His grip loosens on my arms but doesn’t drop away, his thumbs smoothing the fabric of my shirt. “We’ll probably piss each other off more often than not. But youaremy partner. Your well-being is my priority, more than any of the other Sixers in our fleet, more than anyone else in this entire—” He looksaway suddenly, drops his hands. My heart is pounding. “If there’s a problem,” he finishes, “you need to talk to me. You need to respect me enough to know I can handle it. And I’ll do the same for you.”
“Will you, though?”
He meets my eye. Starts to say something, pauses, sighs. “I promise to try.”
The anger eases out of me. My muscles unwind, and I manage to take my first full breath since he marched over here. We still have things to work through. I don’t expect everything to be fixed after one conversation. But my hurt has lost its edge, and I realize maybe this is all I really needed: a place to start.
Lament searches my face. “Can we try again?”
“Lament.” I give a small laugh, a real one this time. “Sometimes I wonder if you can read my thoughts.”
“Is that a yes?”
“It’s a yes.”
He nods. Doesn’t step back. His eyes drop to my chest. “So,” he says, poking his tongue into his cheek, “you really don’t know why it does that?”
I drop my gaze. Under my shirt, my lifestone is going absolutely mad.
24
“Ran doc min islike a mole,” Avi gripes one evening as she rubs softening oil on a spare sheet of zurillium. She, Lament, and I have been assigned Moon Dancer duty tonight, and we’re each currently occupied by various tasks around the workshop: Avi’s on the zurillium, Lament is reinstalling plates under the craft’s body, and I’m using Char-Be-Gone to recover the burnt pages of Moon Dancer’s manual.
Avi waves her oiling rag as she continues. “He pops out of his hidey-hole and then just as quick, he’s gone again. The eruption is only twenty-two days away, but Jester and I still haven’t managed to find a single clue about where he might be located. It’s like The Parallax doesn’t even exist.”
“I thought this would be easy for you,” I comment as I peel apart a particularly stubborn set of pages, “seeing as you’re our spymaster.”
“Shh,” Avi flaps the rag and glances around. “Someone could hear you.”
“You’d better hope not. This workshop is supposed to be private.”
“That’s naive. Nowhere is private.”
I frown. “Did you just call me naive?”
“No, I saidthat’snaive.”
“I’m not sure there’s a difference.”
