To my embarrassment, I feel the blush rising on my cheeks. Maybe I’ll stop teasing Jeran so much. “I don’t know,” I admit. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in love before.”
He looks unfazed. “You’ve never had the chance to be with anyone before?”
“No.” My blush deepens and I curse the warmth of it. “Not… like that.”
He smiles gently at me. “It’s always easier for someone else to tell than for you to see it.”
“And you see it?” I hesitate. “That I’m in love?”
He nods. “I see it.”
“I’m disappointed to be so easily read.”
Jeran’s lips twitch in good humor. “If it makes you feel any better,” he replies, “I’m just good at reading people.”
“I like this confident Jeran. He should hang out with us more often.”
We pause for a moment. And for some reason, I find my thoughts turning again to my father and sister. To little Laeni. That kind of love, I understand. I look off into the night, back to where the National Museum looms in the distance. Laeni and I used to compete with each other as we raced around in there, rattling off as many of the Early Ones’ sculptures we knew by name. We’d hurry from one exhibit to another until my father would call us back to him. Laeni was too short to see some of the plaques, so I’d always lift her onto my shoulders. I can still feel her weight shifting as she’d lean forward, reading out each description.
When my father looked at his children running around the museum, did he see our mother in us? Did his love hurt him, on nights when we were asleep and he stayed up alone?
“How did you know?” I ask Jeran after a while.
“Know what?”
“When you first fell in love with Aramin?”
He hesitates, then answers, “When he visited me after my first kill on the warfront.”
I’m silent, waiting for him to continue.
“I’m usually the one cooking for our patrol, you see. But that night, I didn’t show up around our campfire. Adena was already out searching for me, but Aramin was the one who found me. He knew, somehow, where I’d be.” Jeran looks up at the bridge. “I’d gone behind the bushes that grew thick around our defense compound, and wedged myself deep in there so that I couldn’t be seen. I’m still not sure how he saw me.”He shakes his head. “I couldn’t breathe. I was covered in sweat. I just remember sitting there, my hands clinging as hard to my knees as I could, trying to take in gasp after gasp of air but feeling like I wasn’t getting anything. I have a blurry memory of Aramin bending down toward me and taking my hand. He squeezed it hard enough for me to feel it through my panic. And all I can remember is that steady voice of his.Breathe with me. One. Two. Three.He would count and count, and I remember the hypnosis of those numbers as I struggled to keep pace with his measured breaths.” His voice turned into a whisper. “He kept telling me, ‘It’s just your thoughts. It’s only your thoughts. They can’t hurt you.’ How did he know what I was thinking?” Jeran shakes his head. “And somehow, I came out of it.”
He stretches his legs out, grimacing at the water soaking his pants. “When I finally managed to contain myself enough to come out of the thickets, he guided me back to the others without a word. He had a hand on my shoulder and a hand holding my own, and I just remember… how warm he felt. He told the others I’d gone off to pay my respects to the dead. He never mentioned it again.”
In the silence that follows, I nod at him. “We’re going to get him out of there,” I say. “Just like how we’re going to save Talin. I don’t know how, but we will.”
He nods back. “I know how love can power you,” Jeran says softly.
Love. I think of the ways it can trap us, make us do things that can destroy us. And how we do it anyway.
That is why I’m here. To save the other Strikers, to rescue Talin. And somehow, that’s how I know I love her.
My eyes return to the museum in the distance.
This time, when I stare at it, I remember something different. In one of the displays that Laeni and I used to run past was a small object that looked like a steel cylinder.
Something that looked remarkably like what we’d seen loaded onto the train.
That’s why I’d thought the artifacts in Mara looked oddly familiar. That’s where I’d seen them before.
That’s where we might be able to uncover some clues about why Constantine is so interested in these artifacts, and what they might be capable of.
I must have sucked in my breath, because Jeran glances at me. “What?” he asks.
I look at him. “Care to tour the National Museum with me?”
18
