“And what aboutyou, Talin?” she asks. “What do you want your role to be in all this?”
I give her a soft, steady smile. “It is not my responsibility to undo the Federation’s crimes,” I answer. “I just want to go home.”
My words must hit something hidden deep in her, because she smiles some secret smile, and I wonder for a moment if it’s a smile that she used to share with Constantine’s mother, the queen who had once been a girl who lost everything. Whatever it is that goes through the mayor’s head, she doesn’t share it with me. But she bows her head anyway.
“We will do as you’ve said,” she answers.
And in that gesture, I feel something more genuine than anything a Karensan noble has ever done. There is grief in her movement, an acknowledgment. And a resolve.
A couple of the advisors seem to choke in surprise at the mayor’s reply. But others hold steady, as if acknowledging they will go along with her. In the half circle, I see Adena grin at me. Jeran and Aramin exchange a small smile. And my mother looks at me as she always has, with the unwavering assurance that she will always be here.
Red touches my hand beside me, as if it’s something he’s done all his life.You said you want to go home, he tells me through our bond. His eyes, soaked in that beautiful deep blue, turn down to me.Where’s home?
I think of the night when Red and I met each other in our dreams, when we connected through our unconscious minds. I think of Red telling me to envision a place that brings me peace, that can still the surface of my heart into contentment.
I think of that old avenue from my childhood, shaded by the wide-brimmed leaves of ancient trees, and of us sitting together in one of those branches, our lips sticky with watermelon juice. I picture windows letting in the light and the colors of flowering plants, the breeze dancing through the trees and showering our rooftop with curtains of dew. A butterfly chrysalis hanging on a twig, suspended in a glass jar under the light. My father’s deep chuckle. Then I think of the warfront in Mara,of the warmth of the Strikers’ mess hall, the arena where we used to train, the memories of sitting in a row on a wall with one another. I think of Red and me, each of us resting in a warm, hazy pool, separated but not separated at all.
It isn’t a place, I answer as I squeeze his hand back.
It is a feeling. A people.
It is those I’m brave enough to open my heart to, and those who open their hearts back.
It is us.
44
TALIN
It is another few weeks before I’m ableto move around regularly. My muscles are weak from resting for so long, and when I walk, I tremble, but Red is there, holding me steady. My mother continues to stay at my side, gossiping with me late into the night about what she hears is happening outside the city. Gradually, she allows me longer and longer intervals on my own. I can now take comfort in the peace of these moments of solitude. My friends come and go in their regular intervals.
And then, one morning, I find myself waking up before dawn, my room still awash in deep blue light.
I toss and turn for a while before I finally sit up with a sigh. Then I swing my legs over the side of my bed and change out of my loose white shirt and wide dark pants. I switch to a Striker uniform, cleaned and tailored for me and hung neatly in my wardrobe. The familiar weight of the fabrics makes me smile.
The hall is cool and dark. A few nurses bustle here and there, but others are asleep, and most don’t bother me. One recognizes me and looks like she wants to say something, then stops. They know what I’ve beenthrough. The last thing they want to do is tell me where to go and what to do.
I give her a brief smile, hoping she understands it asI won’t be long.She blinks at me, then responds with a subtle nod. She leaves me alone to continue down the hall.
The dawn is already making way for day by the time I step outside. I close my eyes for a moment, relishing the bite of a cool breeze against my skin, and breathe deeply. The aches in my back, my still-healing wounds, seem to recede for a moment, and for the first time since I left Basea, since my mother and I fled into Mara’s borders, I feel light. Soldiers dot the thoroughfare, but otherwise the city seems quieter than I’ve ever seen it.
From somewhere high above me, I hear the faint, unmistakable sound of Adena’s voice. I turn my head up to the roof of the hospital. The stairs against the side of the building lead up there, and as if on instinct, I head toward them, searching as I used to do as a Striker for the highest vantage point.
The stairs tire me faster than they should, but I still make my way to the top. And there, instead of seeing an empty ledge, I come upon Adena sitting beside Jeran, speaking in a low, rapid voice as she demonstrates the clips on a belt she has designed. On Jeran’s other side, Aramin crouches against the ledge and stares down at a crew working to disassemble one of the hundreds of structures lining the main thoroughfare. Jeran leans back on his hands, answers Adena now and then as she turns the belt in her hands. As I watch them, I realize that the slowly emerging dawn has outlined their bodies in pale blue, casting them in light so fine that I’m afraid they might disappear before my eyes.
Aramin is the first to look toward me. As if tied to him, Jeran liftshis gaze too. Adena pauses in mid-sentence as I approach them, then breaks into a smile.
“Look at you,” she says, leaning back to take me in, then motions me to sit with them. “Should you be walking around this much? Don’t pitch over the side of the ledge, now—I don’t want to leap after you.”
I roll my eyes at her, then settle gingerly at her side and stare out at the warming horizon. It is an unfamiliar one—the curves of distant ruins from the Early Ones are nearly lost amid the towers of Cardinia and the domes of its many exhibition halls. But the sun begins to rise over it, just as it will soon be doing over Basea. Over Mara and Newage, where we once used to sit in a line on top of the Striker complex to greet the morning together.
We all fall silent now. The breeze carries with it something nostalgic. The memory of a different time. I find myself looking from the brightening horizon to my companions, soaking in the comfort of their presence. Adena still has some burn marks on her arms and cheeks from the blast at the lab complex. Jeran’s scars are healing, his arm still in a cast. Aramin’s face, ravaged with a vicious cut from the final night of battle, looks subdued.
But we are all still here.
The feeling of Red’s presence, followed by a slight sound near the steps, makes me turn my attention toward him. I see him emerge on the rooftop too, his eyes softening in relief at the sight of me. He doesn’t say a word. Instead, he walks quietly over to me, and we twine our hands together as if we were meant to do it all our lives.
Somehow, broken and unbound and rebound, we have survived. And as the first hint of sun peeks over the edge of the horizon, washing the city in a ray of gold, I lift my hands and sign.
