Chapter 6 #2
He didn’t answer at once. The silence stretched, the kind that changes shape and expands on you.
“The sounds,” he said finally. “Not the kind in my head. The nothing kind: street music, dishes clattering, pounding rain that makes conversation stupid. A bar where you have to lean in to hear someone, and you pretend you didn’t hear them so they’ll say it again. ”
I smiled, helpless. “That’s oddly specific.”
“I’m oddly specific.” He shifted again, a whisper of movement that tugged at something inside of me. “What about you? What do you miss most about heaven?”
“I’m the one asking,” I said lightly.
“Right,” he murmured. “Rules.”
Something in his tone—resignation, maybe—cut cleaner than I liked.
The compromise leapt out before I could lasso it.
“Wind,” I said, and felt my pulse in my tongue for telling him even that much.
“A big, messy wind that pushes your wings back and then billows under you until you're spiraling across the sky like a bullet from a gun.”
He didn’t say anything for a breath, then another. When he spoke, his voice was careful. “That’s beautiful. I’m sorry, Ivy.”
I jotted nonsense on my pad to quell the sudden rise of tears. I didn't cry, and I certainly didn’t feel exposed. The room hummed like a lullaby sung by a patient furnace. Time bent its own rules, drew its legs up, and tucked in beside us.
“Fourth question,” I said, and even I heard how my voice had softened. “What truth have you never spoken aloud?”
The breath he took scuffed the mic. “That I was lonely,” he said, so simply I had to press my hand flat on the table for the jolt.
“I kept telling myself I loved my life: the schedule, the women, the money. But you can be alone in a room full of people and feel poor with a wallet full of cash. Pride is a hell of a muzzle.”
TRUTH
My heart did something dangerous. “That’s… yes.”
“And you?” he asked, as if we were on a seesaw and balance mattered. “What truth’s still in your heart?”
No. Absolutely not. I could say the wrong word and end up with a target on my back and a lecture from Lucy about “sexy abs and a nice pair of eyes” while she dried my tears. Tell him you grind your teeth. Tell him you hate pears. Tell him—
“I’m not as strong as I act,” I said, and didn’t recognize my own voice. “I’m… working on it.”
“I think you’re stronger than you think,” he said, and there went my traitorous ribcage.
“Fifth question,” I blurted, too fast. “What do you want most now?”
There was no pause this time. “Companionship,” he said. “I’m terrified of being left all alone. I want to have someone to talk to, to laugh with.”
To love. He didn’t say it, yet we both heard the words as if they were spoken aloud.
TRUTH
“No follow-up questions,” I whispered.
His voice had gone drowsy at the edges. “How long has it been?”
I glanced at the rune dial and watched numbers that had been marching before. “You’re doing well,” I said, which was the truth and not an answer.
He sighed, pleased. “Keep talking, then. It makes the dark behave.”
So I did. Not everything was on Lucy’s list. Some of it was nothing at all—weather-that-doesn’t-exist talk, food we pretended we could taste, a story about Shana shoving me out of bed with a skull mug and calling it mentorship.
He snorted; I tucked the sound away. Some of it was small truths carefully wrapped.
He told me the first bike he ever rode had a bent wheel, and how he had learned to compensate, and I did not tell him about feathered balance and the mathematics of air.
I told him the smell of bergamot could make me cry if I wasn’t careful, and he did not ask why.
He told me he once watched a man lie on the stand so well the jury thanked him for it, and that he spent a week afterward feeling hollow and rich.
I did not absolve him. I didn’t know how, and it wasn’t my job. I learned where his voice went quiet and what made it brighten. I discovered his breath when he smiled, the subtle drag of it when he was afraid. He learned my deflections and didn’t pry them open with a knife.
Time pressed its cheek against the glass, fogging it. I forgot to be precise. I remembered to be kind. The chamber’s red hum slipped under my skin and stayed.
At some point, I stopped pretending my notes were for Lucy and started writing for me. One-word lines, quick arrows. Honest. Funny. Tired. Braver than he thinks. The kind of handwriting you hope no one else ever sees, but also wish someone would read and say yes, me too.
“Tell me something you don’t usually say out loud,” he murmured, lulled into boldness. “Doesn’t have to be big.”
“I hate pears,” I said promptly, because I am a coward with excellent reflexes.
He smiled into the dark. “Progress.”
“Now you.”
He was silent long enough, I thought he’d fallen asleep, or quit me for the first time in his life. Then: “Sometimes I wish someone would tell me what to do.” It was barely sound. “Just once. Not because I can’t figure it out, but because it would mean I’m not alone in deciding.”
I pressed my tongue to my teeth and thought. “Breathe in for four,” I said instead, because it was safe and practical. “Hold for four. Out for six.”
He obeyed. It felt like stepping onto a bridge and finding it holds.
When the rune finally chimed, soft and green as a mercy, I flinched like I’d been struck. SESSION COMPLETE bloomed on my console in polite letters. I stared at it, unreasonably betrayed.
The chamber sighed. The seam of the door whispered open.
The air moved. He turned toward the sound the way flowers tilt toward the sun.
I stood without remembering rising and met him at the threshold because professionalism had gone to bed far before our forty-eight hours were over.
The blindfold was gone; the lights were gentle.
He blinked, eyes adjusting, and found me.
“You stayed the whole time,” he said, voice raspy.
“You didn’t break,” I answered. “I’m so proud of you, Max.”
His mouth tilted. “I wouldn’t have made it without you.”
“Nonsense,” I replied automatically, but I couldn’t help but respond to the impish smile that had crossed his handsome face.
“Good job, recruit,” Agnus barked, coming to pick up Max from the chamber. “You’ve passed. You can go get some rest in the barracks before tomorrow’s final competition.”
“Thanks, Ivy,” his voice tailed off as he followed Agnus down the passageway. But I couldn’t help the internal kick to the ribs when he turned at the last moment and winked at me.
Damn it all to hell—I might have just gone and fallen in love with a HuBull contestant.