“And when did you figure this out?” Dara flung the question at him like a grenade—there was no right answer there; Dara had to know that. His cheeks were bright with anger. “Last time I saw you, you didn’t remember a goddamn thing I told you about him. When did you figure it out?Beforeyou slept with him?”
Noam couldn’t answer, couldn’t say a word. Everything he might have told Dara was jumbled in the back of his throat, too many excuses, too many hollow apologies. He couldn’t keep looking at Dara either. Looking at him meant imagining a younger version of Dara, all wide eyes and baby fat—imagined how vicious you’d have to be to ever want tohurthim. Fuck. Noam pressed his face into his hands instead, eyes clenching shut against his overhot palms.
“After?” Dara pressed.
“I swear I didn’t know when we started—when I—”When I threw myself at him.“But I figured out—I put a Faraday shield around my own mind so he couldn’t influence me anymore, and that must’ve done something, because then I remembered what you told me about Lehrer, and—”
“And youkept sleeping with him?” Dara’s voice spun higher in pitch. Noam didn’t have to open his eyes to guess that sound was Dara kicking the dresser.
“Would it help if you—I can take the shield down, you can read my mind, you can see for yourself—”
Dara’s footfalls went silent. Noam lifted his head to find Dara standing there in the center of the room staring at him with an incredulous look on his face, lips parted. “Noam. I took the vaccine, in the quarantined zone. I don’thavemagic anymore. I can’t read your mind.”
Wait, what?
“And even if I could,” Dara went on, “I wouldn’t want to. Why the hell would I want to see—god, Noam!”
Noam almost didn’t believe him. The idea of a Dara without magic was—it was—Noam couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Magic and Dara were so intertwined as to be synonymous. That was who Darawas: the too-powerful, too-brilliant prince of Carolinia.
If Dara didn’t have telepathy anymore, Lehrer might be able to read his mind. That was what had kept him from being able to do so before, wasn’t it? Dara’s telepathy interfering with Lehrer’s.
Noam couldn’t tell Dara the truth now, not without taking the risk it’d get back to Lehrer.
But if Dara was anywhere near enough for Lehrer to read his mind, they were all dead anyway.
“I had to keep sleeping with him,” Noam said. “Don’t you get that? I’m trying to bring him down—I remembered everything you told me, about the virus, the vaccines—I’m trying tokillhim, Dara! If I don’t act like everything’s normal, he’ll know something’s wrong!”
“That is such bullshit, Álvaro.”
“It’s not,” Noam insisted. He pushed up to his feet and moved toward Dara, reaching for him—he wanted to touch him, had to feel the solid weight of Dara’s body under his hand. But Dara stepped back almost as quickly and shook his head. He was crying, too—the tears hadn’t fallen, not yet, but his eyes gleamed with them. “I love you, Dara—I swear, I never meant to ... to hurt you, I just—I swear to God.”
“Youloveme?” Dara’s voice cracked, his hands balling into trembling fists. “Forgive me if I find that incredibly hard to believe. First you left me—you sent me off to the quarantined zone alone while you stayed behind withLehrer—then you start fucking him? Were you justwaitingfor me to leave so you could—”
“It wasn’t like that!”
“Really? Because it sounds like it wasjust like that.”
“I didn’t—” he started, but Dara didn’t let him finish, just grabbed a discarded book off the end table and hurled it at him.
“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t. You say you love me, but you’re exactly like every other guy I’ve ever fucked, aren’t you? You’re not different at all.”
“Dara—”
“Who started it?”
“I don’t ...”
“It’s a simple question, Noam. Even you should be able to figure out the answer to this one. Who. Started. It?”
Dara was practically luminous with rage, limbs quivering ever so slightly. And he was—god, but he was right to be; this was all Noam’s fault, Noam’s idiocy. His cheeks burned. Still, he owed Dara this much. He owed Dara the truth.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I was ... I wasreallydrunk, Dara; I couldn’t even see straight. I remember kissing him. That’s about it.”
Dara stared at him like he still thought he could slide between the pages of Noam’s thoughts and read the truth there. “Did hetellyou to sleep with him?”
Noam knew what answer Dara wanted. Maybe not hoped for, but what answer Dara would find more palatable than the alternative. He even thought about lying. But he couldn’t. He’d done enough, hadn’t he?
“I ... don’t know. But I don’t think so. He ...”God.“He wouldn’t have needed to tell me to do anything.”
