CHAPTER FOUR
A week passed. I spent every night tossing and turning, staring at the ceiling or out the balcony door into the early hours of the morning.
Another week passed, and I started to find sleep again. But I still jolted awake at the slightest noise.
By the third week, I was convinced that if Nya and Kieran were going to return, this would be the time.
Three weeks was sufficient to surveil the marsh wolves and lay a trap.
Then I remembered with dismay that I had told them they may need to lay multiple traps, to whittle away at the pack a few at a time versus taking them on all at once.
I kept this thought in mind as it hit the one-month mark.
By five weeks, I was convinced that Nya and Kieran had gotten everything they needed from me. I would never see them again or be able to satisfy my curiosity about why they sought me out.
The days dragged on as they always did. Brielle and I walked to our work assignments every day, ate lunch together, and walked back to our apartments together.
We didn’t see much of Zander, and eventually Brielle learned through the rumor mill that he was seeing someone.
But the relationship was short-lived, and it wasn’t long before word around the Knowledge Center—once again, according to Brielle—was that he was single again.
One stormy morning, as Brielle and I were staring out the glass doors of the living quarters, dreading our necessary walk through the courtyard, Zander appeared beside us.
“Well,” he said with a sigh. He held up two umbrellas. “I was going to offer these to you ladies, but it’s practically raining sideways. I’m not sure what good an umbrella’s going to do.”
“Oh!” Brielle exclaimed at the sight of him. “That was so thoughtful of you.”
He waved away her praise. “It’s nothing. I just have a few spare umbrellas and always figure on a day like today, I’m going to run into people who could use them.”
I had my compact umbrella tucked away in my bag and knew Brielle did as well. But I also knew she wasn’t about to tell Zander that. Not if it meant an opportunity to get her hands on something that belonged to him.
“How have you been, Mai?” Zander asked. Even in the darkness of the storm, his amber eyes were bright. And the shadows cast across his face highlighted his dimples.
“I’ve been fine. How about you?”
“Eh, could be better.” An awkward pause. “I’m sure you two heard that I was seeing someone for a while.”
“We did,” I agreed, wincing slightly.
The corner of his mouth turned up in a grim smile. “Yeah, it didn’t end very well.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Brielle chimed in. “She’ll be hard-pressed to find someone as great as you, Zander. Seriously.”
My eyes darted back and forth between the two of them, gauging Zander’s response.
He just shrugged and shook his head. Either he really didn’t hear her words as anything other than the appreciation of a good friend, or he was making the conscious choice not to hear them as anything more.
“It’s not like that,” he said. “I was the one who ended it. I thought she was feeling it, too…that we’re better off as friends. But I guess I really hurt her.”
If it were any other guy telling us this, I would have thought he was boasting about breaking some poor girl’s heart. But that wasn’t Zander.
He was staring out at the driving rain, absent-mindedly knocking the umbrellas against his leg, his jaw flexed.
“Why did you end it?” I found myself asking.
His eyes shifted back to mine. He let out a long sigh. “I just wasn’t feeling it. She’s…not the one for me.”
“Since we’re not heading out into that anytime soon,” Brielle said abruptly, gesturing to the rain. It was coming down so hard now that in the gardens, only the first row of raised beds was visible. “I’m going to run to the restroom. Be right back.”
She touched my arm as she walked away. A touch that conveyed that she didn’t have to go to the bathroom that badly. Or at all.
I swallowed.
“So,” I said as Brielle’s footsteps echoed down the hallway. “Are you going to get in trouble for being late?”
“No, our Mentor will understand,” he said with a smile.
My stomach lurched.
I didn’t doubt his Mentor would understand. I didn’t doubt that he would show that almost fatherly understanding that would make Zander let his guard down. That made a person trust that no matter what, he would always have your back.
I wanted to scream at Zander that he was a fucking fool. The desire was so overpowering, so intense, that I felt my throat start to close.
Breathe.
Focus.
“What about you?” Zander asked, oblivious. “Will Cato expect you to wade through this torrential downpour?”
“No,” I managed to get out. I stretched my arms overhead, hoping the movement would disguise the true reason my voice was strained. “Cato will understand.”
“Cato’s a good guy.” Zander had stopped fidgeting with the umbrellas, but was now shifting his weight from foot to foot. “How are things going in the Library, anyway?”
He was reaching for something to talk about. And the fact that we were both aware of it made me feel on edge in an entirely different way. I pretended that I was a magical being and willed Brielle to hurry back.
“Things are fine. Just the usual stuff. Mostly just researching things for other departments.”
“Sounds interesting. I wish everyone could check out books from the Library whenever they wanted, like you hear about from the Pre-Awakening days. I’d love to be able to read more.”
I nodded sympathetically. I couldn’t imagine not being able to read all the books I wanted.
But then again, my experiences were a little different, being a reformed rule follower.
My memories of reading with Irene—always fiction, always a paperback that was tattered from overuse, and always something that was very much not a Council-approved pamphlet—were some of my favorites.
If only she could see all the books that I had access to now.
“It really is a shame,” I said. “But I understand the thinking behind it. We have limited copies of each book and no way to replace them.”
“Right,” he agreed. “Not worth the risk.” He had become still for a moment. Somber. But he must have realized we had hit another dead end in our conversation because he started shifting his weight from foot to foot again.
A thought struck me.
“Zander,” I began. “Have you ever been Outside?”
He stilled again. Then he looked up at the ceiling, tongue pressed to the inside of his cheek. As if considering how to respond. After a moment, he said simply, “I have, yeah.”
“What was it like?” I knew I was pushing a boundary, almost fully crossing it, by asking this.
In Cyllene, the extent of our discussions about the world outside the walls was the conversations that Cato and I had as they related to research projects.
It was an unspoken rule that you didn’t discuss Outside with fellow citizens, in case your speaking about it manifested some sort of connection between Inside and Outside into existence.
A tether that would cause the horrors out there to suddenly take interest in all of us in here and motivate them to disrupt our peaceful existence.
As an Enforcer, Irene had of course been required to go on supply runs Outside. And even in the quiet darkness of our bedroom, before we fell asleep, she wouldn’t share what happened there.
Discussing this was ratcheting my heart rate back up. But for some reason, I felt strangely motived to keep going.
Zander sighed through his nose. He turned away from the window to face me fully.
“It was like a jungle,” he began slowly. “Everything was overgrown. It felt very…alive. It’s hard to explain. We had to wear gas masks, which felt kind of silly because I don’t think magic is something you inhale. But then, what do I know? I guess there was some incident recently.”
The Enforcer who went mad after experiencing that wind-like phenomenon.
“So this was recent, then?”
I knew as soon as the words came out that I had pushed too far. His eyes searched mine, and I suddenly became aware of how close we were standing to one other.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “It was relatively recent.”
An uncomfortable silence followed, in which all we could do was stare at one another.
Zander’s hair, while Enforcer-short, accentuated his strong jaw and the toned muscles of his neck.
And his eyes…well, they may not have been an indicator that he was some terrifying Outside creature.
But for a human, they were an interesting shade.
This close, I could see the way that caramel and gold feathered out and around his irises, blending into one another.
He broke the silence first. “Mai –”
“Zander!” A male’s voice echoed through the high-ceilinged room.
We turned to see several Enforcers clustered near the back of the staircase, grinning with amusement.
“Come on,” one of them goaded. “The rain looks like it’s letting up, and we’re going to make a run for it.”
Zander’s eyes narrowed, but he was smiling. “Well, guess I’ve got to go.” He held out the umbrellas in a final offer.
“We brought umbrellas. But thanks anyway.” I hadn’t realized until I opened my mouth to speak that I had been holding my breath.
He waved and headed off in the direction of his fellow Enforcers.
If I were Brielle, I would’ve taken the opportunity to watch him walk away. Instead, I found my attention drifting back to the window, watching the paths of the raindrops as they raced one another down the glass.
“Well, I tried.”
Brielle’s voice was so close that I jumped. “Where were you?” I demanded.
“Close enough to see you two gazing into each other’s eyes!” she exclaimed, and I clamped a hand over her mouth.
I twisted around and was relieved to find that Zander was already out of earshot, headed toward the main entrance and out into the city. When I pulled my hand back, Brielle continued talking as if nothing had happened. “He was about to ask you out, you know.”