Chapter 41
41
Riding a dragon is the most breathtaking, wondrous, terrifying experience of my lifetime. But I don’t have long to appreciate it. In what feels like mere moments, we land on the institute’s ornithopter pad. Prince Alex immediately heads to the council room as Bioscience masters check Rafe’s vitals. Everyone is too busy to question how and why I’m back on the island.
I duck into the first bathroom I pass to wash the blood off my hands. I scrub them till they’re raw, but there are still brown traces under my nails, so I keep scrubbing.
Everyone’s alive. Everyone’s alive.
I keep repeating it over and over. I left New York this morning with that goal in mind, and it’s been fueling me for this entire endless day.
I look at myself in the mirror. Yep. I look like someone who hoverboarded through a tunnel for hours and then did impromptu surgery on the beach. My adrenaline is still pumping, every heartbeat communicating urgency, but I’m not sure what I should do next.
I could go to my room, find Georgie, get some sleep. But my feet don’t lead me to the Winter wing. Despite successfully managing to avert tragedy, I feel so empty. So lost. And there’s only one person I want to see.
When I reach the door I was instinctively drawn to, I feel foolish. He’s probably not even here now. But I knock anyway.
“Come in.”
Michael straightens, startled when I step into his office. “Ada?” He’s standing at his desk surrounded by a larger-than-usual mountain of files and books.
His hair is a tempest, his jacket and cravat long gone; a light dusting of curling brown hair peeks through the V of his unbuttoned collar.
“Hi,” I say.
“How…? Hi?” He’s not wearing shoes, and his socks don’t match.
He blinks, and then the papers in his hand fall to his desk and he rushes to me, enveloping me in a hug. He smells like tea and chocolate, and even as my pulse quickens from his nearness, I feel calm for the first time in hours. Maybe days.
“I thought you weren’t coming back.”
“I had to,” I say into his chest. “I’m not sure there’s a place for me in the provincial world anymore.”
He pulls away, holding me at arm’s length. “Don’t say that.” His brows knit. “Your world is amazing. You’ve done so much to remind me of that. Don’t forget it yourself.”
Your world. Is he saying he thinks I should have stayed there?
When it comes to Michael, it’s always been this same endless carousel of doubt.
He smirks at me as if I’ve said something funny.
“What?”
“It’s just… that look on your face. The one you always make when you take an intended compliment as an insult.”
“Well, I did warn you that I’m a chronic cynic.”
“You’re not a cynic.” He shakes his head knowingly. “You’re way too hopeful to be a cynic. A cynic would anticipate everyone letting them down instead of expecting them to do better.”
His eyes have turned so serious, and I realize he’s never stopped touching me, his hands warm and firm on my shoulders.
“You can’t take a compliment because you’re too humble to see your own worth—”
I cut him off. “Trust me, Michael, I’ve never been the girl you thought I was. I’m not humble, I’m just a total mess.”
“No,” he insists, squeezing my shoulders. “I won’t let you put yourself down anymore. You have all this insecurity, but underneath there’s this steel resolve of wanting to understand what’s right and true, and you’re so open to questioning what you think you know.” He steps closer. “Meanwhile, I’m the one everyone thinks has it all figured out, when inside I’m actually just a ball of noisy, conflicting ideals that I can’t make sense of. Except when you challenge my beliefs, and suddenly everything that really matters comes into sharper focus.”
My breathing is unsteady as I look into his eyes. His guard is down, and I see the boy I met in Italy. Not the prodigy master who’s younger than all his colleagues and working twice as hard to prove himself, but the passionate boy with a sweet tooth who craves connection, sees the wonder in everything, and is willing to open his mind to different perspectives.
I know him. And he knows me. We have always understood each other.
“Michael…” But I don’t have the words to express any of my jumbled thoughts.
“I missed you,” he says, voice tight. He strokes my cheek, and my breath catches. His eyelids are heavy, his pupils wide, and when instinct has me tilting my face up to his, he leans to meet me. Our noses brush, then hesitantly our lips. Michael cups my face in his hands as he kisses me, soft and sweet and tender.
I’m kissing Michael. Michael is kissing me.
“I’ve thought about this so many times,” he breathes between kisses. My lips part, and his tongue slides against mine.
Me too , I want to say, but I’ve lost my ability to form words, so I say it with my kisses instead. I think about you all the time. You mean so much to me. The thought of not seeing you again was tearing me apart.
I grasp his shirt as the kiss deepens and grows more urgent. And then he’s pushing me up against his desk, his body pressing into me. He buries his hands in my hair, the remains of my braid crown coming undone.
There’s a twisting inside me that pulls everything tight like tuned guitar strings.
Scratch the dragon ride; this is the most breathtaking, wondrous, and terrifying experience of my life.
Michael hoists me onto his desk, papers scattering. His kisses travel to my neck, and he murmurs my name against my skin. I slide my hands into his hair and pull his face back to mine, my teeth nipping and sucking at his bottom lip.
His hands move down my back, lower, his fingers press into my curves through my jeans, and I swallow his strangled moan. My legs wrap around his waist, and as I press against him, I can feel how much he wants me.
Everything about this feels so right.
But how can it ever work while I’m lying to him? And if I tell him the truth, I’ll surely lose him.
My momentary hesitation causes Michael to still. His breath is ragged as he slides his hands up to my waist and gruffly whispers into my ear, “We shouldn’t be doing this.” His breath hits my neck in hot gasps as I feel him trying to get control over his body.
“Yes, we definitely should,” I say, pulling him close and resting my cheek in the hollow of his throat. I feel his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows, and I turn just enough to be able to press my lips against it, then my tongue. I feel the vibrations of his groan.
Please stop not kissing me .
But he gently pushes my legs from his waist and peels away from me. A rush of cool air steals the warmth of his now absent touch.
“Ada—” But Michael’s words are swallowed by a gasp of pain as he clutches his stomach. He lifts his shirt, and we both watch mesmerized as letters form on the bare skin of his abdomen.
“Gravdammit, Ari!” he chokes. Michael’s skin is reddened and swollen as the letters continue to form. His teeth clench with obvious agony.
When it’s clear what the inverted letters say, all the color drains from his face.
They have Hilde.
What? My blood chills.
Of course. Kor told me that they’d found another universal blood donor. I slide off the desk to my feet. How is that people I love keep harming other people I love? I take a deep breath. No, they won’t harm her.
Michael looks up at me with complete and utter hopelessness. “I warned her. I… I can’t help her.” He runs both hands through his hair and clutches his scalp.
But maybe I can help her. The Atlas is down, and Kor is detained here on the island, but I can use Georgie’s computer to call Mom.
“Ada, I’m so sorry. I know the timing… I have to go.”
“I understand.”
He gives me an awkward hug, rushes to his desk to retrieve something from the center drawer, and then hastens out of the room.
I take a moment to fix my hair, straighten my clothes, and have a total mental freakout about the fact that I just made out with Michael. Then I follow him out and head to my apartment.
It’s too late at night to have any chance of reaching Mom, but I assure myself that I have no reason to think that Hilde is in any immediate danger. I’d met some of the other Sires when I was home, and Kor had been truthful when he said they were well treated. The ones I spoke with—including the renowned scientist who had been a missing person in the news for months—were cooperating voluntarily, excited to be a part of ground-breaking experimentation. Plus, with Kor here, Hilde’s blood is safe for now.
When I get to my apartment, Georgie shrieks and jumps up, overturning a pile of spidersilk masks she’s been sewing with the help of Mbali and Hypatia.
The next few seconds involve a lot of hugging.
Mbali asks, “If you’re back, does that mean the air contamination was prevented?” Her being here and knowing what’s going on means she knows what I’ve done. Yet she seems just as happy to see me as Georgie and Hypatia.
“Yes,” I say, my throat tight with emotion. “It’s over.”
There’s more hugging.
“How dare you not tell me that dragons exist!” I say into Georgie’s neck as she squeezes me tight.
“Wait. Dragons exist?” she asks, pulling away, her brows cocked skeptically.
“You didn’t know? But I saw dragons on the television in New York,” Hypatia says.
“Those are pretend ones!”
“How did you think they know how the pretend ones should look if there were no real ones to base them on?” Hypatia asks, as if this logic should be completely obvious.
This leads into a discussion of how I learned about dragons, and I tell them a very protracted version of what took place at the cove.
“Simon flew all the way up the cliff?” Hypatia asks incredulously.
“He sure did.” I don’t mention it was because her cousin had been shot in the chest.
That feeling of déjà vu returns. The imagery of Simon flying up the cliff as Rafe bled below jostles something in my memory.
A long hoverboard ride. A crack of thunder. Simon flying over Rafe, who is lying in a field of red flowers…
That incessant dream I’d been having.
An unknown beautiful girl pouring wine for Kor.
Oh. Ohhh.
That was why Hilde looked so familiar when we met. I had dreamed about her.
I don’t understand how or why, but I dreamed about everything that happened tonight.
And now I understand how Kor went from weak and exhausted to reinvigorated after he went back into that submarine.
I don’t need to call Mom. I know exactly where Hilde is.