Nova
The bottle of pills is small enough to fit in my jacket pocket but I keep checking for it anyway. Third time since I left the house.
It’s there. I know it’s there.
I’m going next door… what is my problem?
The Hollow is loud — not chaos anymore, just the sounds of people putting things back together. Someone’s fixing the fence section that went down. I can hear hammering from somewhere past the Community Hall. A group of shifters I half-recognize are moving debris from the east side of the main road.
I’m almost to Zoe’s door when a kid tears around the corner of the adjacent house and nearly collides with my legs.
He pulls up short. Looks up at me.
“Hi Nova!”
I know his face. Darcy’s boy. He was at the community meeting, staring at me from behind his mother’s legs.
“Hey.” I force a smile. It’s not as hard as I expected. “Shouldn’t you be helping with something?”
He makes a face. “Mom says I’m in the way.”
“Sounds about right.”
He grins and bolts back around the corner. I watch him go.
I stand there for a second longer than I need to. Just looking. I didn’t realize how much I missed this place. How much it feels like home.
I shake my head as I make my way up the front steps.
I knock.
Zoe opens the door before my hand’s even dropped.
She looks me over — checking for damage — and then she pulls me in. The hug is tight and I know I’m smiling before I think about it as I squeeze her a little harder.
“How is he?” I say into her shoulder.
She pulls back. Her face changes. I don’t like what I see. “He’s managing. It’s a lot of pain.”
I nod. Follow her inside.
“Where is everyone?” I ask.
“Fence. Storage building. East perimeter.” She doesn’t look back. “Putting things back together.”
“Yeah.” I check the pill bottle again without meaning to. “Mine are headed out too. Beckett’s already somewhere.”
Zoe stops on the landing. Turns to look at me.
“Yours…” she says.
She’s not asking. Her face is perfectly serious.
Fuck.
“Well — I—” I breathe. “I just meant—”
She grins. Slow and enormous.
“Oh, shut up,” I say.
She laughs. I laugh. It feels good, easy. For a second the staircase feels like any other morning and not the day after everything.
We get to the room and Zoe opens the door.
I follow her in and I stop.
My breath catches.
He’s worse than I thought.
Eli is propped against the headboard with his shoulder bandaged from collarbone to mid-chest, the wrapping thick and tight. His face is pale. There’s a tightness around his eyes that wasn’t there the last time I saw him.
Zoe crosses to him immediately. Checks the bandaging, adjusts a pillow. He lets her.
I blink.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. It comes out quiet. “Eli, I’m—”
“Hey.” He looks at me. His voice is rough but his eyes are clear. “Please. You did not cause some rabid coyote shifter to do this to me. Mangy fucker did it all on his own.”
I can’t help it. The smile gets out before I can stop it.
“There it is,” he says, satisfied.
“Stupid mangy fucker…”
He nods, smiling.
My head is still spinning as I watch them. Everything Laith has done. Everything we’ve all been through. What’s real, what the system manufactured, and what any of it means for people like Zoe and Eli. None of us, no one in the entire Nightmare Order asked to be caught in the middle of any of it.
My stomach churns.
I take a step deeper into the room.
“There’s something I need to tell you both,” I say. “About — about the system, and what I found out, and—”
Eli shifts trying to sit up straighter. The sound he makes stops everything.
Zoe is already moving. Repositioning the pillow, hand at his good shoulder, saying something low and steady I can’t hear. He breathes through it. His jaw is tight.
I reach into my pocket.
“Oh — here.” I cross to the bed and hold out the bottle. “Vaelor got these. I don’t know from where.”
Zoe looks up. Her eyes widen. “Oh thank god.” She takes the bottle, reads the label. “These are the good ones. Where did he find these?”
“Minerva,” I say.
She laughs. Shakes one out into her palm and passes it to Eli with the water glass from the nightstand. “That woman can get anything.”
“She really can,” I say.
“Like some kind of magical being,” Eli says. He swallows the pill. Leans back. “Honestly I think she might be terrifying.”
“She is,” I say. “In the best way.”
“One hundred percent,” Zoe agrees.
Eli looks between us. “You’re both afraid of her.”
“Respectfully afraid,” I say.
“There’s a difference,” Zoe adds.
He starts to laugh and immediately regrets it — his hand going to his shoulder, his face scrunching. “Stop. Don’t make me laugh. It pulls.”
“Sorry,” Zoe says, not sounding sorry.
“Not sorry,” I confirm.
He gives us both a look and settles back against the pillow. His color is already slightly better. The tightness around his eyes easing.
Zoe tucks the blanket up around his good side. Smooths it. He catches her hand when she goes to pull away and holds it for a second without saying anything. She lets him.
I watch them.
His hand and hers. The way she stills when he holds it. The way they look at each other like nothing else matters.
The system assigned them. I know that now. The mark on their wrists isn’t what mine is. It’s the system’s version.
It doesn’t make it not real.
I can see it. Zoe’s care, the blanket. The way he looks at her, reaches for her hand and neither of them needed to explain it.
That’s not the system.
That’s just them.
My throat goes tight.
I look down at the blanket. Look back up.
Eli’s watching me now. His head tilted slightly.
“What did you need to tell us?” he asks.
I open my mouth.
Close it.
“Nothing,” I say. “Nothing important.”
Zoe looks at me. I can feel her looking. She knows that’s not true.
She doesn’t push.
“Okay,” she says.
I sit down on the edge of the bed on Eli’s other side and he adjusts slightly to make room.
Love isn’t fated, or destiny.
Love is messy and real and so true it hurts sometimes.
That’s what they have.
That’s what I have too.