He doesn’t speak right away. Instead, he bows his head. I am next to him, but not. I can feel the stir of his breath against me, buthefeels far away, the warmth of him dampened. I can feel every painful edge of his emotions, but I cannot see the finer details of his face. He looks like I’m gazing at him through a fine, translucent cloth, his features softened. I am keenly aware of the way the moonlight outlines the edge of his arm and neck and shoulder in silver.
I turn away in my dream, in a desperate attempt to escape this meeting. I’ve caused enough pain in one day. If I hurt Red now…
Then Red lifts his eyes and looks directly at me.Wait, he says.
I stop, listening for more.
You fear Constantine sensing the tide of your emotions, he says.But there’s nothing we can do to stop ourselves from seeing each other in our dreams like this. It’s inevitable.
I shake my head.
But maybe wecancontrol what he senses from you during these dreams, he continues softly.Maybe we can alter these meetings somehow, manipulate our emotions so he can’t suspect anything is amiss.
I start to shake my head again. Even with Raina’s tonic, the thought of hurting the Strikers and Red again is terrifying. How can I feel anything but anguish and yearning and fear? How can I—
But as I think this, Red takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.
The dark alleyway, the scene of Cardinia at night.
It all shifts abruptly, like a ripple on a pond. Red opens his eyes and then looks around us. He glances back at me.
Think of the warmest memory you have, he tells me.Think of a place that brings you peace.
Peace. It’s such a foreign, distant thought that I want to laugh throughmy tears. But instead, I find my thoughts going immediately to a tree-lined street.
Thetree-lined street of my childhood.
Their branches once arched so low that I could simply pull myself up into their crooks and idle away. Those trees are long gone now, burned away when the Federation had first conquered Basea. But I imagine it regardless, painting in my mind the picture of their wide leaves and the sun-dappled ground beneath them. Flowering bushes grow thick on either side of the small street leading to my family’s home.
And as I imagine it, it appears around us. Those beautiful, curving trees. The little stall on the side of the street that I used to visit, selling frozen cubes of sweet strawberry juice and ice-cold watermelon slices. The houses of our neighbors, each of their doors unlocked and some of them open, because there was simply no need to worry about thieves. And instead of me crouched in front of Red in the dank alley, we are instead both swinging our legs as we sit on the branches of the largest, oldest tree, savoring a breeze between the shady leaves, watermelon juice sticky on our lips.
It is so real that, in this dream, I believe it. My terror melts away, replaced by the deepest serenity I’ve felt in a long time, a sense of security and belonging and home. My emotions settle into a still lake. Peace hangs over the surface.
I let out a breath.Oh.
Red smiles as he looks around us in wonder.Now this is much nicer, he says gently.
If Constantine feels anything coming from me now, he will sense only my nostalgia, my contentment. And with any luck, Raina’s work in weakening my bond with Constantine should only help.
The warmth of having Red nearby seems so real that I lean into it, letting myself believe that if I wanted to, I could…
Touch his hand.
Touch his face.
Pull him to me.
Feel him whisper against my neck.
With all my effort, I hold back and keep my distance.Where are you in the city?I ask him instead.
Near the National Museum, he replies. He hesitates.We’re trying to gather more information on the artifacts that Constantine brought back from Mara.
An image flickers between us of the lab institute on the day before the first game. I catch a glimpse of him standing with a crowd as two soldiers rush a bleeding man to the institute on a gurney.
I frown.Why?
He shakes his head.I don’t know. But there’s something more to those artifacts—they must be more than a potential energy source for the Federation.
