Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Dahlia
We spend the entire next day in the bedroom, pretending . Well, I pretend while Lagos humours me.
He takes my body.
He can go all day.
We have been intimate, many times. We never stop, only to eat and feed Spero.
Inside me with his fingers, or mouth, or dick, he rolls me around, so even while I fight to stay awake, I sense his hands on me. Spreading. His eyes on me. Gazing. Memorising.
The day ends too soon.
And then we leave at first-light. Tomar locks the house up, saying he hopes to visit again in the future as there are more supplies than we can fit into the truck.
Goodbye, farmhouse.
One little death.
Now, Lagos is driving, and Tomar has his feet on the dashboard, his hood pulled down, and deep, rough snores coming from under the brim. I don’t think he slept much last night… And Lagos and I didn’t come up for air either; all three of us are exhausted.
“He snores,” I half-laugh.
“Hm,” is all I get from Lagos.
Spero is in my lap, feeding from my breast, and the feelings of bliss coursing through me has a wide smile rushing along my lips—I did it. We did it.
My cheeks heat, and my lips part as I remember what I let Lagos do to my body last night, how I let him lick me between the thighs and suck milk from me while I was half-asleep.
It is so wrong.
So, so wrong.
And yet, when the milk comes down it feels like a release. When Spero is there, there is nothing but wholesome peace, but when Lagos is there, the sensation seems volcanic and strange and overwhelming. I’ll never say it aloud; I’ll never admit that I enjoyed it.
I look up from my tiny assassin and peer out the window to watch a curtain of red sand beating the glass between me and The Cradle.
I can make out the hazy outline of a mountain. We have been following it for half a day. The desert burns like wildfire. We haven’t seen a windmill or any sign of civilisation for many hours.
Lagos watches me in the mirror, every time I lift my gaze, his eyes catch mine in that moment. As if I might disappear, slip through his fingers before we have a chance to say… goodbye.
Goodbye to a little death.
“You’re you. Bits of every place you have been and every person you have spoken to. Unique.”
But he doesn’t feel like a bit… Saying goodbye to him doesn’t feel like one little death. It feels like all of them.
My throat tightens.
Accepting the unacceptable— Lagos is not a part of my future. I swallow, and my breasts tingle. My pulse, or emotions, or heightened state, seem to stimulate the milk production.
I inhale hard and exhale.
Thick Redwind blankets the bonnet, dusting the truck in sand and debris as we head north this time. Further north than I thought The Cradle went.
There is a place at the top of the border called The Horizon. It’s the end of civilisation, the end of life, a capricious, uninhabitable death zone. Or at least, that is what we are told.
You get lost.
Sucked in.
Into oblivion with Lagos… A sad smile moves across my lips. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.
“We’re close to the tunnel.” Tomar looks across at Lagos, reading the volatility that I feel in my bones.
The creeping tendrils of anguish make themselves known, moving into my belly and flailing around. I don’t want to say goodbye.
I love him.
I inhale hard and look at Spero, using him to ground myself in our reality. He is fast asleep, so I place him in his nest beside me.
“There is promise for your future,” I whisper to him, stroking his chubby cheeks with my finger. I sing a few words, curling new rhymes around my tongue as I go. “Your eyes full of promise… dreams yours to chase, you’ll have freedom to grow, at your own pace, with no Trade control, you’ll…you’ll…” I can’t think of another word. “I’ll work on that shanty for you, Spero.”
“That’s lovely, Dahlia.” Tomar sighs, and I know I’ll miss him, too. “Your gentle voice will be missed when it’s just us men again. Sing another for us. Please .”
Abruptly, Lagos veers the car to the side of the road, tyres spitting red dirt up at the windows until the vehicle comes to a jerking stop.
“I want to provide for you,” he states, the words punching out with fierce determination.
I blink at him in the rearview mirror. “What do you mean?”
He turns, staring at me in the backseat. “Even after this. I know how to care for you now. What a young Common girl needs. I want to provide for you. You’re mine.”
“Lagos?” Tomar looks between us, brows furrowed into deep lines.
I press my palm over my heart as it frantically pitter-patters. Don’t say things you don’t mean. Don’t… I can’t bear it. “What do you mean?”
“I don't want to...” His deep voice trails to a dark sigh, one filled with brittle helplessness. With emotion so rare to outwardly hear from him, and in front of Tomar. “Things I like… You and me. The farmhouse. The bath. I liked it.”
I close my eyes, shaking my head as I hold them like that. Fending off his words as they slide in deep. Too deep. I can barely breathe around them.
“I know you did,” I choke, my throat containing emotion, my will stifling hot, needy tears.
“I’ll come back.”
My forehead pinches as that statement rolls over me. I open my eyes to find his pinning me in place. “Please don’t say things you don’t mean.”
“I'll come back,” he states adamantly. “And I'll meet you when it's safe. Outside the community, somewhere close. Do you want to meet me, little flower?”
I splutter, demanding tears falling, my head nodding and nodding, unable to stop because yes, yes, yes. “Yes!”
“I’ll provide for you.”
I try to catch my pulse, slow it down so I can hear him over it. “In what?—”
“In every way.” His steel-coloured gaze holds me arrested, his tone dead-serious and inhumanly deep. “I'll give you anything. Everything .”
These are just words. Goodbyes. Niceties to sugarcoat the end, a cloak of pretty lies, and then I’ll simply never see him again. “I thought you weren't here to pamper me, Lagos?”
“I was wrong,” he growls. “That's exactly why I'm here. I want to give you life’s great experiences. I want to see them through your eyes.”
Oh, my. Is he serious?
Tomar fades away. There is no truck, no howling wind, no beating red sand that rushes the bonnet. Lagos the Rogue is the only thing I see, feel, hear.
A sad smile touches my mouth, tears falling everywhere, their salty kiss reminding me of The Bite. “Will you bring me bananas and chocolate?”
The corner of his mouth turns up, a half-smile. A lovely one, framed by his neat dirty-blonde beard. “I'll find you bananas and chocolate, little flower. All your great experiences. I will provide them all.”
He is serious. “Will you kiss me?”
His eyes roam my face, mapping, tracing—imprinting. “Every inch.”
“When it's safe?” I confirm, believing him. I believe him. He will. My lower lip wobbles so hard it’s nearly impossible to keep smiling at him. “How long will you stay with me each time you visit?”
“A day.” He looks down and then up again, and my breath catches. That’s it? My heart squeezes. “Perhaps.” He growls, thinking. “I'll find a way. A place close, but outside the community.”
It’s not enough.
I gasp for air; hope is drowning. Scary. It can end in ruin. “How will you get the information to me?”
“Nothing can stop me, little flower. I've broken through The Cradle. Nothing can stop me. No one can stop me from getting to you.”
Stupid feelings rise and bubble over. The ones I have been burying, the ones not fair to Tomar or his loyalties, but they spit out with desperation anyway. “Then why can't we do that now! Find a place. Stay together, and we can have new, great experiences. We can kiss, and I will protect you, and you can protect me, and we will be together."
Pain scores a path across his features, his half-smile falling away. “I have to go with Tomar.”
I can’t look at Tomar right now, afraid he’ll see my misdirected hatred and jealousy, but that isn’t fair. It isn’t…
I nod slowly but don’t feel it. “Because you owe him?—"
“My life,” he finishes.
“And you need to save people.” My voice breaks. I try to smile harder, forcing it, but it’s crooked, and now I am not sure it is a smile. I’m not sure how to smile right now. “That's because...” I inhale a shaky breath. “You're good, Lagos. I have to share you.”
My words are just as desperate as I am. I need him to know. A sea of unshared affection swirls in his steel-coloured gaze. Then he swallows, his throat rolling before he turns back to face the road, jerks the wheel, and continues down the highway.
I risk a glance at Tomar, who is staring contemplatively out the window, seemingly unfocused and distant.
We drive in silence.
Staring at Spero in the nest beside me, he smiles at my attention. He knows me—I am his person. I will care for him.
Lagos cares for me.
Even though no one cared for him. I think about baby Lagos with no smiles, trapped in a cell. Did they cuddle the babies? Rock them? Sing? In my mind, the babies are in metal cages, but that doesn’t make sense. If they are highly trained, educated, and skilled, Shadows are probably held in fancy facilities, with gymnasiums, the best educators, and modern technology. A clinical setting. White cells, clean sheets. No personality.
Spero will have colours.
Messy sheets.
Too much charm.
I can’t bring myself to smile back at Spero right now. I have so much I want to say to Lagos. Most important of all—I think I love you. But I have no breath left to say it. I feel I’ll need all my strength to say those three words aloud.
Last-light sashes the horizon with red, and I wonder how we will find a tunnel in the dark.
I am drawing little patterns on my thighs, envisioning the farm and the Common men and women, when the truck slows down, the taste of metal slices at my tongue, Spero starts to hiccup and cry, and Lagos hits the brakes right in the middle of the road.
Then he puts it in reverse.
We fly backward. Air rushes into my lungs and my rib flares with pain as the car spins to face the other direction. I grip the handle as we are thrown to the side, and Tomar does the same?—
Then we stop.
Which is worse…
I pant. “What is going on?”
A glint of last-light reflects off something in the distance, red dots like eyes in the Redwind.
“It’s too late,” Lagos growls.
“What is too late?”
The sound that follows is a subtle bell, but it quickly builds into a sharp, piercing ringing, slicing through the air like an unwelcome presence.
I cup my ear with one hand while the other tries to shield Spero from the riotous noise, but I watch on in horror as Lagos and Tomar argue in the front seat, their mouths moving fast, eyes fierce.
Palpable energy seems to pound and bleed around Lagos until?—
Time stretches, making each moment feel like hours.
Lagos twists to step from the car, but Tomar lunges for him, taking a fist full of his shirt, desperation and sorrow crumble through his expression.
Lagos turns back, his eyes narrowing on something in Tomar’s hand. Tomar is holding my knickers in his fist. Lagos snatches them and, with the same fist, strikes Tomar right in the nose.
I clutch my heart as thick blood sprays the truck, painting the windscreen and seats. Tomar grips the bridge of his spitting nose as he slides into the driver’s position.
“No. No! Fuck!” I think Tomar chants, but I can’t hear the words, drowned in the screams of metal on metal like a force surrounds us, bellowing.
Scanning outside, my frantic gaze searches through the dense red vortex, despairing, struggling to find an anchor.
Then I find one.
Then he is here.
My car door suddenly opens, and Lagos leans in, his hot lips touching my ear as he says, “You were my great experience, little flower.”
He closes the door.
My insides wilt as I watch him walk down the centre of the road into the Redwind, parting it with his huge body until he is swallowed entirely by the crimson fortress.
No.
I grab the door handle.
No, no, no.
And for a moment, I almost throw myself after him so we can kiss goodbye, so I can tell him I won’t remember it, won’t remember what he did before me, only all the wonderful things he did for me?—
Time snaps back.
Tomar turns the car around to face north again, beating the steering wheel with his fist and sobbing outwardly.
My face has a veil of tears, but I have no memory of when I started to cry.
As I press my palm to the glass, gasping for air, the ringing is suddenly sucked into the direction Lagos left.
Spero’s cries are painful to hear now, so I scoop him up and hold him close to my breasts, feeling the cool kiss of milk seeping into my shirt-dress. “What… What just happened?”
“Trade found us,” Tomar says.
I knew. I guessed. Still, hearing it sends despair racing to every cell in my body. “What?”
“He is giving us time.” He nods and then shakes his head. “He had to. They knew there was a Shadow close. The beacons went off. They would have kept coming. Now… Now they’ll think it was him. Now… now they’ll leave us alone.”
“But… I don’t…”
“You’re safe.”
I’m safe?
One little death .
But Lagos doesn’t feel like one little death, one little bit of me. He is too massive, too consuming, too much a part of the Dahlia I chose to be. The one I became at The Bite, the one who became a mother, who experienced life’s greatest things, all with him at my side.
He feels like all my deaths. None of the other bits exist without him.