“Four years ago. That’s where we kept running into each other.” Kyron’s blue eyes are sharp, calculating. “Before the system flagged us. Before any of this. That courtyard.”
“I was there,” Trey says slowly. “Four years ago. I was there all the time.”
“We never saw you.”
“I never saw you either.”
My fork is halfway to my mouth. I set it down.
The courtyard. The neutral zone between Reverie and Dream. Old buildings. A broken fountain.
I know that place.
I know that place because I spent three weeks sleeping behind one of those old buildings. Because the fountain had a ledge that blocked the wind. Because I used to sit on those stone benches in the early morning before anyone else was awake and watch the sky turn gray.
Four years ago.
“Nova?”
Someone’s saying my name. I don’t know who. I’m too busy trying to breathe around the thing that’s lodged itself in my chest.
“Nova, you okay?”
I look up. They’re all watching me now. Six faces, six different expressions of concern.
“That was a really dark time for me,” I hear myself say.
My voice doesn’t sound like mine. Too quiet. Too far away.
“What do you mean?” Rane asks.
I swallow. My throat is tight.
“I think I was there too.”
Heavier silence now.
“Four years ago?” Kyron’s voice is careful.
I nod. “I stayed there for a few weeks. Behind one of the buildings. There was this ledge by the fountain that blocked the wind.” I’m looking at my hands, at the plate I’m no longer holding because at some point I set it down. “I remember the benches. I used to sit there before dawn.”
“I didn’t see any of you,” I say. “I would have remembered.”
“We were usually there in the evenings,” Vaelor says slowly. “After training hours.”
“I was always gone by then. It wasn’t safe to stay in one place during the day.”
The math is happening in all of their heads. I can see it. Four years ago, they were being pulled to the same spot. Finding each other. Starting something none of them understood.
And I was there too. Sleeping in the margins. Surviving. Never knowing that the people I was apparently supposed to belong to were twenty feet away.
“Fuck,” Rane breathes.
“Yeah,” I say. “Pretty much.”
Trey shifts against the couch, his whole body has gone tense.
“We were all there,” he says. “All seven of us. Four years before any of this.”
