In it, a raven and a dove made an odd couple. Every evening at dusk, the dove mourned the loss of day. Distraught by the dove’s grief, the raven fetched his most cherished stone—pockmarked but brilliantly silver—and hauled it to the night sky to resemble the sun. And so it was said that the raven hung the moon for his dove.
“Why this one?” she asked.
Emory shrugged and studied the page as if unearthing the memories there. “It has the happiest ending, the kind I wanted for myself.”
“And what kind is that?”
“Finding someone worth hanging the moon for,” he said sweetly and smiled at her nestled in a cocoon of his flannel. Pain sullied that smile as he opened his arms. “Come here. I need you.”
Amelia eagerly crawled into his lap. With her body against his—heart to heart, cheek to cheek—she felt the uneven, shuddering quality of his breath. The more it labored, the tighter he held on. She clung to him,the only comfort she needed, but when she closed her eyes, that cinder block wall and stained mattress filled her vision.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” she whispered with her throat aching.
“I know. I was crawling the walls without you.”
Emory placed his hand over her heart as if counting each beat. The meaning transferred in his touch. He needed a sign of life to know it wasn’t a dream.
“I’m okay,” Amelia assured him.
Twice, she’d told him that because if she said it enough, then it might be true. Did she believe it? Only time would tell. In their sanctuary, neither had to pretend, though, so they came apart where no one else could see. The others wouldn’t know how they trembled against one another or the tears that wet both their cheeks.
“What happened down there?” Amelia asked and motioned to the foyer far below.
Emory ran a hand over his face and exhaled a heavy breath. His eyes darted to the shadowed edges of the room that seemed to stretch further across the floor.
“A few street soldiers were murdered tonight. I guess one declaration of war wasn’t enough.”
He snickered at the last bit and shook his head. Amelia searched his face for artifacts of how he’d come apart, the hurt he shared right there in the dark. Ever the master of restraint, Emory had brought to heel whatever overtook him in the foyer. She’d already seen it, though, and was bound to again.
“I meant you,” Amelia said and gently walked a line that seemed to be shifting beneath her. “You were ready to leave here and run away.”
“I still am,” Emory said with a joyless laugh. It rung hollow in the space between them. “You were right, though. This shit has to end, and I can’t run from Ivan forever.”
Resolute as ever, he lifted his chin and put up his defenses with stoic reserve. A pit grew in Amelia’s stomach. The fire still burned in Emory, no matter how often he tried to ice it out. Sooner or later, he’d lose the ability to contain the blaze.
“It’s okay to come apart,” she told him and rested her palms against his chest that rose with sharp breaths.
“For now, I need to keep it together,” Emory said. He combed his fingers through her hair, but his jaw clenched and brow hardened. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want, but did Ivan…”
When he couldn’t manage the question, he abandoned it altogether. Amelia shook her head but spared the details, including Ivan’s assault on Richard.
“He would have but didn’t. You came just in time. I did recognize him, though.”
Emory’s eyes snapped to her with dread that surfaced as swift and fierce as the storm-battered seas in Francisca’s paintings.
“What do you mean? How?”
“I saw him at Rich’s party. He came after me and Brian. I thought you knew.”
“Fuck. No, I didn’t.” Emory bit his bottom lip but must’ve forgotten the cut there. He winced but only clamped down harder until his bite drew blood. “I should’ve known, should’ve seen this coming.”
Of course, he’d blame himself, but it wasn’t a lapse in observation. Amelia remembered well how Emory had scoured the outskirts of Rich’s party and noticed danger long before anyone else. If Ivan had wanted to reveal himself, he would have.
Emory slipped the flannel off Amelia’s shoulder and scrutinized Ivan’s bite. She declined to look at it. She’d derived bitter satisfaction at how it stung with soap and hot water in the shower but resolved herself to ignore it forever.
Troubled, Emory looked for a distraction. Amelia admired that quality in him, how in trying times he couldn’t withstand idle hands. He fetched a tube of ointment and warmed a globbetween his thumb and finger. When he dabbed it on the wound, Amelia held her breath against the sting.
“I didn’t kill him,” Emory confessed in the small shelter of space between them. “I had the chance, a few actually. I could have, but I didn’t.”
