“Falling in love feels a little like dying,” she finally says. “No one really tells you that.”
“Fuck,” I breathe, gripping the table. “I don’t want to hear that.”
“No one wants to hear it. But the poets keep trying to warn us.”
“I feel like I’m having a series of heart attacks,” I say, forcing the words out. “I don’t know how to sit down anymore. I don’t even know how to stand still. I feel sick. I seriously think I’m losing my mind.”
“James,” she says gently. She rests a hand on my arm and I nearly flinch at the contact. “It’s only been three days. She’s not dead—”
I make an angry sound.
“She’s not,” Nazeera insists. “He didn’t really kill her, you know that. Warner used her powers against her to put her into a sort of... coma. She’s a major flight risk. Westill don’t know if we can trust her. It’s the safest way to keep her contained while she recovers—”
“Except that we don’t know anything about her supposed powers,” I say sharply, looking up. “Warner’s just guessing. The fact that he can sense and manipulate other people’s abilities doesn’t mean he knows exactly how to use them. We have no idea whether she’ll actually wake up—or if he’s kept her unconscious for so long that it breaks something inside of her—”
“You know what? This is my fault,” she says, drawing her hands back into her lap. “You shouldn’t be learning to chop vegetables. I shouldn’t have taken you to the farmers market—”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I ask, reeling.
“Everything,” Nazeera says, turning to face me. “You’re not thinking straight. I shouldn’t have indulged your fantasies—”
“Fantasies?”
“—and if anyone else were acting this way you’d be the first to call them out for disloyalty to the Republic. The fact that you’re questioning a decision to restrain a violent, known assassin of The Reestablishment is genuinely concerning.”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I say, closing my eyes. “My head hurts. My chest hurts—”
“James, I need you to be realistic,” she says, tempering her tone. “If you allow yourself to wallow in this daydream, things will only get worse.”
“What daydream?” Now I’m getting offended.
“You really think you can date this girl?” she asks, giving me a hard look. “You think someone like her even knows how to be in a relationship? A girl like that doesn’t even know how to relax. She walks into a room and immediately identifies the exits before deciding which everyday objects might double as weapons—”
“That’s called being creative—”
“—she’s not meeting strangers and wondering what they like to do in their spare time; she meets new people and assesses their strengths and weaknesses in order to determine the best way to kill them—”
“She’s just a planner. She likes to plan ahead—”
“You think it would ever occur to her to do something for fun, or buy you a present on your birthday, or express her feelings without fear?”
I blink at her. “Wait, I’m sorry, are we talking about you or Rosabelle?”
“She’s a trained executioner,” Nazeera says, ignoring this. “She’s spent her entire life being emotionally and physically tortured by one of the most tyrannical, oppressive regimes our world has ever known. Even if she wasn’t an active threat to everything we’ve built; even if it wouldn’t label you a traitor by association; even if you wouldn’t lose the respect of your peers, the good opinion of your subordinates, the admiration of the children and widows of our fallen soldiers—”
“Now you’re just exaggerating—”
“—she’s too volatile to make the cut as a candidate for your affections. She’s like a stick of dynamite. Looks harmless until you strike a match.”
I shake my head slowly.
I turn to the window again, closing my eyes as my heart pounds, then contracts. I take an uneven breath, watching a pair of squirrels chase each other up the trunk of a tree. And then I say, almost to myself, “I don’t need her to buy me a present on my birthday.”
Nazeera sighs. “Did you hear anything I just said to you?”
“Unfortunately.”
“And?”
