Chapter 20
Enemies and Lovers
HARPER
‘So, Harper.’ Niko slides into the empty chair between me and Tia, their smile artificially bright. ‘You won’t believe what happened today.’
I resist a sigh. ‘Do tell.’
‘Lune threw a bus at Raven and it hit her straight-on.’ Niko grins and claps Tia on the shoulder, glossing over the way she’s avoiding my gaze and staring intently into her bowl. ‘I’m so proud of her.’
My entire body feels like a throbbing bruise. Through a forced smile, I say, ‘Wait till Raven gets her with a cement-mixer.’
Niko’s smile vanishes.
‘And Tia gets to catch it, of course.’ I wink and spoon fried rice into my mouth. ‘Model Sentinel. I’m sure Raven’s in so much pain right now.’
Tia glares at me. ‘She better be.’
My fork dents under my tightening grip. Shit. I hide it behind my bowl and shoot Tia my worst death stare.
It’s almost impossible to believe the plan to get close to Tia crashed and burned overnight, but my path to completing my assignment while keeping Tia safe is gone now. There’s nothing left to salvage my leadership, to save Tia’s life.
Instead, I apologize to Ah Ma and assure her that I’m finding a new plan. I assure her that everything is all right. That I’m not holding together the slivers of my heart with my cold facade.
Unfortunately, it’s convinced Ah Ma that I’m finally fit for moonstone heists again – but moonstone heists mean Lune, Lune means Tia, and Tia means I spend every mission almost dizzy with emotional whiplash.
Niko looks between the two of us and finishes up the rest of their rice with a sigh. ‘You know what, I’m done. I thought you guys were making progress and becoming friends, but I give up. I’m going to bed.’
The second they’re gone, Tia begins clearing her plate. ‘I’m not apologizing.’
‘A bus, bunny. You could have killed me!’
‘Yet here you are, like a cockroach.’ For a second – God, a beloved, blissful split second – her voice slips into the lilting banter we had before.
Even Tia catches it, because she pauses for a second and glances over at me.
The entire galaxy spans the space between us, every star a word unsaid.
Finally, as Tia leaves the living room, she says, ‘And it’s been two weeks. Don’t call me bunny any more.’
The worst thing is that I can’t stop thinking about her, even if I try. Sleep brings nightmares of chasing Lune, gruesome death after gruesome death looping until I wake up alone in the dark, shivering with sweat, my heartbeat screaming in my ears.
Tonight is no different. I force my eyes open to evade the terrors of my subconscious, until my empty room is too much to bear, and I drag my pillows to the living room.
Staying awake on the pleather couch is easier than on my bed – but it’s still made of expensive pillows and wide enough for me to toss and turn to exhaustion, unwillingly submitting to sleep as the moon inches through the sky.
In this dream, Raven runs a knife through Lune. It doesn’t loop like usual, and Lune calls for Harper, over and over, her eyes wide and desperate and pleading, a hand shaking Raven’s shoulders awake.
Wait. My eyes snap open. There are warm hands on my shoulders, a familiar voice telling me to wake up.
My Fox vision adjusts to the darkness immediately, to Tia’s wide gaze, her heaving chest.
Tia’s lips part. ‘You were shouting.’
I don’t know what to say. ‘I’m sorry.’
She turns to something outside of my field of vision. ‘Is that what you see when you dream?’
I turn. An image of Lune lies on the living room tiles, a blade broken through her suit, blood pooling over the floor, her eyes blank and empty.
I look back at Tia and place a hand over her wrist to still her. God, to touch her again. It feels like breaching a boundary between us, unspoken and taboo and only invisible under the cover of darkness.
‘I’m scared.’ My voice breaks. ‘Every night, I imagine losing you. Or hurting you.’ Confession spills into the gelatinous night, and it makes me weak. Desperate. I don’t need anyone. I shouldn’t be doing this, saying this. ‘I don’t know how much longer I can take it.’
Tia withdraws. In the scarce light from outside, and behind her tortoiseshell glasses, her eyes sheen with tears. ‘We can’t be together.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ I let go of her soft knuckles, calloused palms – hands made from training with weights, not fighting with her fists – and turn into the couch to sleep. ‘You should leave.’
From behind, Tia shifts, and the sofa dips behind me.
‘I’ll stay.’ Her arm circles my waist. I lean back into her embrace. Time has changed us both, but our bodies have stayed the same, and it hurts so much to physically feel how we both fit. ‘Just tonight.’
This time, I surrender willingly to sleep.
TIA
I wake with a numb arm and a still Fox. Light slants over Harper’s face, finally serene in sleep. The last few weeks have carved deep lines of pain in her brow, tightened the edges of her lips, but the Sunday midday light brings tranquillity at last to her troubled features.
My phone rings, and I pick up before it can disrupt the peace.
‘Fox clan,’ Niko says over the phone. ‘Tonight, Raffles Place. Come to the meeting room so we can debrief.’
Fox clan. Instinctively, I look down at Harper.
More than thrice over the last couple of weeks, I’ve walked all the way to Niko and Kiran’s door. I’ve lifted my hand to knock. I’ve turned the words over and over – Harper is Raven – in my head, and choked on the lump in my throat every single time.
Because Raven is cruel and scheming, but I’ve felt her flinch under my hands, melt into my mattress, unstitched and undone with pain.
I’ve seen her without her mask. I have committed her touch to memory, exchanged secrets with her like marriage vows officiated by moonlight, been kissed like I’ve been ordained. We’ve held each other too close for the world to come between us, and yet still it wasn’t enough.
It was too little to keep us together, but too much to keep us completely apart. Worse, the final thread keeping us tenuously connected tangles with every move, and it strangles us.
Gently, I remove my arm from under Harper’s head and leave.
Niko, Kiran and I spend the next three hours going through the plan over dinner before dispersing. At midnight, I activate my Lune suit and jump out of the window right after Niko and Kiran.
We land on the roof of an office building.
‘Kiran and I will sneak in and subdue the ones inside. You stay here and take out any Foxes on the perimeter,’ Niko says before leaping off the edge of the building, leaving me alone on the roof.
I scan the furiously purple mass of clouds drifting to block out the moon. ‘ALFRED, any warm bodies?’
‘No.’
Huh. I draw my sword anyway, trusting the stir of anxiety in my lower gut.
In the darkness of the cloud’s shadow, a thud sounds behind me. ALFRED’s alarm screeches in my suit and I whip around, lashing out with my sword.
It clangs against a familiar pair of moonstone daggers.
Raven’s face pops out from the side. ‘When you said we had to talk, this really wasn’t what I was expecting,’ she says, her voice strained.
‘Likewise.’ I push my sword down, but Raven darts away to let the blade fall into air. ‘You didn’t think to tell me you were coming?’
Raven scoffs and blasts me into the ground with telekinesis. ‘You were gone when I woke up.’
I collapse from the blow. ‘Could’ve texted.’
Raven’s expression is unreadable. ‘You blocked me, remember?’ She kicks my blaster just as I shoot, and I curse inwardly when the ball of lunar energy explodes into the sky.
‘Could’ve asked ALFRED to pass a message.’ I aim again but shoot prematurely and Raven dodges. It’s a piss-poor battle performance on my part, but I must admit I’m more than a little distracted. ‘Come on. You’re not fighting me properly.’
‘This is the longest conversation we’ve had in a week. I don’t want to spend it fighting you.’ Raven kicks out. ‘Verbally or physically.’
I duck and, taking advantage of our proximity, jam my blaster against her chest. ‘Say what you want to say, then.’
I shoot, point-blank. It sends Raven crashing to the floor with a hiss and a groan.
‘What, that I like you and still want to be with you?’ She gets up, hand pressed to her sternum. As the clouds shift off the moon, silver light illuminates the wavering confidence in her eyes.
The blaster must be hot, but I push my concern aside and advance on Raven, pressing it into her chest until she stumbles back. ‘We’re literally throwing each other off rooftops right now. It’s not going to work out for us.’
Raven glances down. ‘Love and war, right?’ Lightning-quick, she grabs the blaster and unclasps it from my wrist before tossing it off the roof.
I watch it sail over the edge of the building and disappear.
I turn back to Raven. ‘That’s so foul. How’d you even know how to do that?’
Her eyes twinkle with mischief. ‘Don’t leave your weapons lying around if you don’t want me to figure out how they work.’
This is why it’s only a matter of time before having the devil close to your heart will burn you. I blast Raven with my other hand, sending her crashing into the edge of the building. ‘All right, enough. We have jobs to do.’
‘Then you’re going to have to be okay with a lot of things really quickly, like slamming a bus into your girlfriend’s face.’ Raven’s telekinesis grabs me and pins my arms to my side. ‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten that, by the way.’
‘You weren’t— aren’t my girlfriend.’ I struggle, but the telekinesis threatens to crush my suit. In my peripheral vision, I catch a couple of other Foxes trying to slip into the office building. ‘After all that’s happened this week, I might take some satisfaction in doing it again.’
Cranking my flight blasters up to a hundred, I shoot. As expected, the blast hits the floor and I jet straight out of Raven’s grasp, soaring into the sky.