Chapter 26
Nova
I don’t know where I am at first.
Warm. That’s the only thing that registers. Warm and soft and something smells like coffee and I’m not cold, I’m not on concrete, I’m not—
The ceiling comes into focus. White. Clean.
The house.
I turn my head and my neck aches, my whole body aches, but in a distant way. Like the pain belongs to someone else and I’m just borrowing it.
Beckett’s sitting on the floor near the window, back against the wall, scrolling through his phone. He looks up when I move. Doesn’t say anything. Holds my gaze for a second, then nods.
You’re okay. You’re here.
That’s it.
I try to sit up and my arms shake. I make it halfway before I have to stop, breathing hard, which is embarrassing. I used to walk ten miles on an empty stomach. Now I can’t even sit up without my body staging a protest.
Beckett sets his phone down. “Take your time.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” There’s no judgment in it. “But you will be.”
I manage to get upright. The blanket pools around my waist and I realize I’m still in the same clothes I was wearing when I—
When I what?
The alley. The cold. My phone dying. And then… nothing. Flashes. Warmth. Being carried. A voice in my ear I couldn’t quite hold onto.
“How long was I out?”
“Since last night. It’s almost five now.”
Almost a full day. I’ve lost a full day.
“Where is everyone?”
“Kyron’s in the kitchen.” I glance over—he’s leaning against the doorway with a mug, watching me with those sharp blue eyes. He lifts the mug slightly in greeting. “Vaelor’s upstairs charging your phone. Locke and Rane had class.” Beckett pauses. “Trey’s been with them. They should be back soon.”
Footsteps on the stairs. Beckett stops talking.
Vaelor appears with a sleeve of crackers in one hand and a glass of water in the other. My phone is tucked in his pocket, charging cable trailing.
“Finally got enough juice to turn on,” he says, setting them on the coffee table. Then he looks at me—really looks—and something shifts in his face. Relief, or something close to it.
“You’re awake.”
“Apparently.”
He pulls the phone from his pocket and sets it beside the crackers. “Figured you’d want it back.”
“Eat,” he says. “Slow. See if you can keep it down.”
“I’m not—”
My stomach growls. Loud enough that all four of us hear it.
Vaelor’s mouth twitches. “You were saying?”
I stick my tongue out at him. Pick up a cracker anyway.
I make myself go slow even though my body wants to inhale everything in sight. One cracker. Sip of water. Another cracker. Vaelor watches without commenting, and I’m halfway through the sleeve when I feel it. That prickle at the back of my neck.
I look up.
Vaelor’s watching me. Not the food. Me.
I take another bite. His eyes follow the movement.
“What?”
“Nothing.” But his voice is lower than it was a second ago. “Glad you’re eating.”
I take another bite and his gaze tracks to my mouth and—oh.
Oh.
I shove another cracker in because it’s easier than figuring out what my face is doing.
I finish what I can. Set the rest down. My stomach feels strange—not full, but not empty. Something in between.
Beckett moves from his spot by the window. Takes the glass from me, sets it on the coffee table, then drops onto the couch beside me.
Vaelor takes the package of crackers without asking. “I’ll grab you a real blanket. That one smells like Rane.”
He heads upstairs. I hear his footsteps overhead.
“How you feeling?”
“Fine.”
He gives me a look. The kind that says he’s not buying it.
“Nova. You don’t have to be brave with us. You can tell us what’s going on.”
I take a breath. Something in my chest loosens, just a little. “I’m just—”
Vaelor’s footsteps on the stairs. Coming back down.
The door opens.
“She’s up,” Beckett says without turning around.
Voices in the hallway, the thud of bags being dropped, footsteps. And then they’re coming through together. Rane first, moving fast, pulling up short at the edge of the couch. My skin remembers his chest against my shoulder. The way I leaned into him without meaning to.
Locke behind him, stopping in the doorway. Arms crossed. Jaw tight.
And suddenly I’m back on those steps. His hand on my face. His mouth on mine. The sound he made against my lips—
My whole body flushes hot.
I look away so fast I almost give myself whiplash. Stare at my hands like they’re the most interesting things I’ve ever seen. My heart is pounding and I don’t know if it’s from the memory or from him being right there and we haven’t talked about it and everyone probably knows and—
There’s movement behind Locke, and I lift my head to look again.
Trey.
He’s still standing in the doorway when his eyes find mine.
I think I stop breathing.
I smile before I can stop myself. And then I look away because I didn’t mean to do that. My face is warm again.
Why does my face keep doing that?
I catch Rane and Kyron exchanging a look I can’t read.
“How are you feeling?” Rane’s voice. I grab onto it like a lifeline.
“Better.” I risk a glance up. Not at Locke. At Rane. “Thanks.”
“You scared the shit out of us.” He says it lightly, but something underneath isn’t light at all.
“I know. I’m—”
“Don’t apologize.” Kyron pushes off from the doorway, moving into the room. “Just don’t do it again.”
I nod trying not to think about what that means.
“So,” Rane says into the silence. “We should probably talk about—”
“Not tonight.” Beckett’s voice is quiet but firm.
Rane opens his mouth. Closes it.
“He’s right,” Kyron says. “It can wait.”
“We’ll still be here tomorrow,” Vaelor adds. “All of it will still be here tomorrow.”
I watch Locke’s jaw work. He wants to push. I can see it in every line of his body. But he doesn’t.
“Fine,” he says. “Tomorrow.”
Rane rocks back on his heels, shoves his hands in his pockets.
“So… dinner?”
And suddenly they’re moving.
Rane disappears into the kitchen and comes back with plates. Vaelor follows him and returns with more food—enough for everyone, like he’d been planning for this. Kyron grabs silverware. Locke moves one of the chairs closer without being asked.
And Trey—
Trey settles onto the floor with his back against the couch.
Right next to my legs.
Close enough that if I shifted my knee, I’d touch his shoulder. Close enough that I can feel the warmth of him through the blanket. He doesn’t look at me when he does it. Just drops down like that’s where he belongs and starts eating.
My skin is humming.
I stay on the couch, legs tucked under me, plate balanced on my knees. I’m hyperaware of every inch of space between my leg and his shoulder. The urge to move closer wars with the urge to climb over the back of the couch and flee.
I do neither. I sit there, trying to remember how to eat.
“Our girl’s finally got some color back,” Rane says, and something in my chest stutters.
Our girl.
The words hang in the room. No one corrects him.
I shove a forkful of food into my mouth so I don’t have to respond.
“You should’ve seen Rane while we were looking for you,” Kyron says. He’s on the floor by the window now, plate balanced on one knee. “Insufferable.”
“Like you were any better,” Rane fires back. “Mr. ‘Let’s check that alley again for the fourth time.’”
“We all wanted to check it again,” Vaelor says quietly.
I keep my eyes on my plate. My face feels like it’s on fire.
“Okay,” Rane says, too loud, clearly trying to reset. “Someone tell me something that isn’t about the last three days. I’m begging.”
“You could try not talking with your mouth open,” Kyron says.
“I could. I won’t, but I could.”
“Disgusting.”
“Thank you, I try.”
Vaelor shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “Remember when Rane tried to cook for the first time?”
“We don’t talk about that,” Rane says immediately.
“We absolutely talk about that.” Kyron’s mouth curves. “The fire department talked about it.”
“There was no fire department.”
“There was almost a fire department.”
“Almost doesn’t count.”
I take a bite of food so I don’t have to figure out what to say. They’re bickering like brothers, and I don’t know how to join in. But I don’t feel like I have to, either.
Trey shifts against the couch. I feel the movement more than see it—the brush of his shoulder against the cushion near my knee. My breath catches.
He heard it. I know he heard it because he goes still.
Neither of us moves.
“I used to go to this place,” Trey says.
The conversation stutters. Everyone looks at him.
He’s staring at his plate, turning his fork over in his fingers.
“Near the border of Reverie and Dream. There’s this—I don’t know how to describe it.
A courtyard, kind of. Old buildings around it.
Felt like no one had used it in years.” He shrugs, still not looking up.
“I kept ending up there. I don’t know why.
I’d tell myself I was going somewhere else and then I’d just… be there.”
Silence.
Kyron sets his plate down slowly. “Where exactly?”
“South side of the neutral zone. There’s a fountain that doesn’t work anymore. Stone benches.”
“Holy shit.” Rane’s voice has gone strange. “That’s—”
“That’s where we met,” Locke finishes. His voice is flat, but something underneath it isn’t flat at all. “All of us. That’s the spot.”
Trey’s head comes up. “What?”
“Four years ago. That’s where we kept running into each other.” Kyron’s blue eyes are sharp, calculating. “Before the system flagged us. Before any of this. That courtyard.”
“I was there,” Trey says slowly. “Four years ago. I was there all the time.”
“We never saw you.”
“I never saw you either.”
My fork is halfway to my mouth. I set it down.
The courtyard. The neutral zone between Reverie and Dream. Old buildings. A broken fountain.
I know that place.
I know that place because I spent three weeks sleeping behind one of those old buildings. Because the fountain had a ledge that blocked the wind. Because I used to sit on those stone benches in the early morning before anyone else was awake and watch the sky turn gray.
Four years ago.
“Nova?”
Someone’s saying my name. I don’t know who. I’m too busy trying to breathe around the thing that’s lodged itself in my chest.
“Nova, you okay?”
I look up. They’re all watching me now. Six faces, six different expressions of concern.
“That was a really dark time for me,” I hear myself say.
My voice doesn’t sound like mine. Too quiet. Too far away.
“What do you mean?” Rane asks.
I swallow. My throat is tight.
“I think I was there too.”
Heavier silence now.
“Four years ago?” Kyron’s voice is careful.
I nod. “I stayed there for a few weeks. Behind one of the buildings. There was this ledge by the fountain that blocked the wind.” I’m looking at my hands, at the plate I’m no longer holding because at some point I set it down. “I remember the benches. I used to sit there before dawn.”
“I didn’t see any of you,” I say. “I would have remembered.”
“We were usually there in the evenings,” Vaelor says slowly. “After training hours.”
“I was always gone by then. It wasn’t safe to stay in one place during the day.”
The math is happening in all of their heads. I can see it. Four years ago, they were being pulled to the same spot. Finding each other. Starting something none of them understood.
And I was there too. Sleeping in the margins. Surviving. Never knowing that the people I was apparently supposed to belong to were twenty feet away.
“Fuck,” Rane breathes.
“Yeah,” I say. “Pretty much.”
Trey shifts against the couch, his whole body has gone tense.
“We were all there,” he says. “All seven of us. Four years before any of this.”
“The system didn’t catch it,” Kyron says. “They flagged five of us, but they missed you.” He’s looking at Trey. “And they definitely missed her.”
“She wasn’t in the system,” Locke says. “She couldn’t be flagged.”
“Neither could I. Not for that.” Trey’s voice is rough. “My mark was already messed up. They weren’t looking at me the same way they were looking at you.”
I don’t say anything. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it—all of us, in the same place, at the same time.
We never even knew.
“This is fucked up,” Rane says, but there’s no heat in it. Just exhaustion. “This is really, really fucked up.”
“It’s something,” Vaelor agrees quietly.
The conversation doesn’t pick back up after that. Not really. Rane clears the plates. He goes to the kitchen and comes back without them. Kyron asks if anyone wants anything. Normal things. Quiet things.
But no one leaves.
Beckett puts music on—something low and soft, barely there. Vaelor dims the lights. Kyron stretches out on the floor with his arm behind his head, staring at the ceiling.
Trey stays where he is. Back against the couch. Close enough that there’s no mistaking he’s there.
I curl deeper into the cushions and watch them settle in around me.
Locke’s still in the chair, but his posture has softened. His eyes are closed, though I don’t think he’s sleeping. Beckett’s head is tipped back against the wall.
I keep waiting for someone to get up. To say goodnight. To go to their room.
No one does.
Rane stretches out on the floor near Kyron. Vaelor shifts in the armchair, getting comfortable. Trey’s breathing has gone slow and even against the couch.
They’re staying.
All of them. Here. With me.
“Same time tomorrow?” Rane murmurs from somewhere to my left.
A few murmurs of agreement. Someone might have said yeah. Someone else might have grunted.
I don’t know if they’re talking to me.
But I hope they are.
My eyes are getting heavy. The warmth is soaking into my bones—not just from the blanket, but from them. From being surrounded. From knowing that if I close my eyes, they’ll still be here when I open them.
For the first time in fifteen years, I don’t feel like I need to watch the door.
I close my eyes.
The door’s right there. I don’t look at it once.