Say it. He should say it.
Have you read this one before? We can talk about it if you want.
He’d been too afraid. Nervous Dara would fix him with that derisive glare and say something snide and dismissive that would make Noam want to vanish into the cracks between the floorboards.
He should have said something.
Why had he waited so long to say something?
A terrible wind ripped through Noam’s hair and caught the back of his uniform shirt, whipping it against his spine. Another helicopter. Texan reinforcements.
Get up.
Noam didn’t move.
Get up. You’ll die here.
Noam stayed where he was. He breathed in the scent of smoke and death.
Gravel crunched under the weight of boots on the ground. Noam stayed where he was, his eyes shut, trying to remember Dara’s face. The way Dara had looked up, just then, and met Noam’s gaze across the common room, and the corner of his mouth lifted like he knew a secret Noam didn’t.
“Álvaro!”
They knew his name. How did they know his name?
“Álvaro,” the voice said again, and then a hand pressed against the nape of his neck and turned him over onto his back, the aerodrome lights careening overhead. Then a face slid into focus.
Major General García crouched over him, her hair tangling up in the helicopter wind. She had two fingers pressed to his neck like she was checking for a pulse.
“Oh,” Noam said. His voice sounded like it came from very far away. “Hi.”
“Are you hurt?”
Noam thought about it for a moment. “No. It’s not my blood.”
García’s brows raised. “I can see that. Come on—let’s get you up.”
She curved an arm under his back and helped hoist him to his feet. It was only once Noam was standing, gazing back toward the destroyed hangar and all the wreckage he’d left in his wake, that he realized ...
“Did we win?”
“You demolished them,” she said, and her hand lingered on his nape a beat longer before falling away. “Come on. Time to go.”
Noam was still staring at the smoke, his eyes watering with the heat of it. “Go where?”
“You’ve been called back to Dallas. The chancellor wants to see you.”
From an interview originally published inAriel, a popular magazine in Texas.
Ariel:Dr. Rathbone, you spent six years living in Durham, Carolinia, and studying at Carolinia National University. Can you tell us a little bit about how this was possible, given that you aren’t a Carolinian citizen?
Rathbone:You’re quite right: I’m not Carolinian. I was born in York, actually, and lived there most of my life. I studied biology at Cornell University—but what I was really interested in was genetics. Say what you will about Carolinia being stuck in the past; they have some of the best genetics researchers on this planet. When I was offered a fully funded PhD fellowship at Carolinia National University, I would have been a fool to turn it down. But ... you’re right. I was the only person in my program who wasn’t a born Carolinian citizen.
Ariel:That must have been quite the culture shock.
Rathbone:It was. Not just the fact that I had to get used to using the kind of technology that was popular when my grandparents were university aged. Carolinians have a very peculiar political consciousness. Compared to York and Texas, they have relatively European social policies: single-payer health care, guaranteed housing, free higher education, a livable minimum wage, prolonged parental leave. And they’re very much on par with the rest of the world when it comes to their progressive pro-LGBTQ attitudes, gender equality, and—forgive me, but I have to agree with them when it comes to witching rights. They are the only country in the world right now where it is safe to be a powerful witching.
Ariel:I’m sensing abutthere.
