Chapter 7
After Flash said those last words, he looked at Twister.
His non-verbal she’s had enough, and we need to be alone look did the trick.
He’d never manipulate her, but he wanted to find out how she was dealing with all this lunacy.
They barely had time to get to know each other, but deep down in his gut, he was aware that she would be struggling with ultimatums.
Twister nodded and stood. “Let’s go, guys, and give Flash and the woman of the hour some time.” He grinned. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Easy chuckled, “So, the sky’s the limit then?” He nudged Twister and gave Fly and North a wry look. They chuckled.
“Fuck you, Twist,” Flash said, not even bothering to turn around. He just flashed his middle finger.
“Don’t stay up past your bedtime,” Twister said when he got to the top of the stairs.
Flash listened to the team go up. Five sets of boots, the second-to-last room door, the easy back-and-forth between Twister and Easy about whose snoring had ruined more deployments, Fly saying something low to North that he didn't catch, the door closing.
The tower upstairs settled into the silence of men who'd been moving for too long and were finally allowed to stop.
She'd lowered the lights when they moved from the table.
The amber pooled across the rug and along the leather and made the weave look like it had been spun out of the kind of gold you couldn't buy. Lechuza sat at the far end of the couch with her boots off and her knees drawn up, the line of her body angled toward him without committing to him, the way she'd been angled toward him all night. Watching him like he was a particularly delicious morsel she wanted to devour. His whole body tightened up at that thought. Christ, he couldn’t get distracted by the physical here. She’d agreed to listen, and she had.
She had already decided to join him, so that was also decided.
He knew this woman in his bones and didn't know her at all.
But she had some things to say. He wanted to give her the opportunity to say them.
But first things were first. Aurelion needed to know she was on board.
He let the channel open in his chest. He reached for the Guardian the way he'd reached a dozen times, the way he'd reached every day since the conscription, the miscommunications, and the vow, a rote action, and anticipated response.
Nothing came back.
The channel was always open. The silence on the other side of it was concerning. Aurelion was quite aware of the stakes, and he was well aware that Flash had found Lechuza. He was waiting for Flash’s response.
Flash held the channel for a long count, uneasy. Without a reply, there was nothing to be done, but the concern remained in his bones. He'd try again in the morning.
Tonight was for her. He looked at her across the soft tawny distance. "How are you holding up?"
She looked back at him. She gave herself away in increments, the slight tightening at the corner of her mouth, the recalibration in her eyes, her body a quarter inch stiller while she chose her next move.
"I made it through dinner without shooting any of you. I'd say I'm over-performing."
He smiled at that. He couldn't help it. "In other words, you like to choose your own path. I get it."
"Do you?” She huffed something close to laughter, looking away from him at the lamp.
He watched her profile and felt the same low thing he'd been feeling all night, drawn to her in body and soul, with recognition that didn’t stack up to the amount of time that he’d known her.
Somewhere, some other time, he had looked at her face in a flickering circle of light, but not this pale hue.
One more luminous, with a deeper orange and reddish-amber with the scent of…
pine. But sweeter, citrusy. Pushing the awareness aside, he had enough to manage tonight without trying to understand these strange perceptions, naturally hating being tied to them.
“Not many people think I’m very cooperative."
He reached across the couch, moving slowly enough that she could refuse it. “I like that about you.”
He turned his palm up, halfway between them, an offering with no weight behind it. She looked at his hand, then, his face.
She slid forward and settled her fingers across his palm, and the warmth of her hit him in three places at once, the hand, the chest, the back of his neck, where his hair stirred in a way that was so much more than sexual.
Her eyes ignited, that molten gold with a thread of orange, the color of that strange perception.
"I’ve been drawn to you from the moment you offered me your shirt," she said quietly. "I don’t know what that means, but it just keeps getting stronger the more time passes, which is strange since we’ve been apart. "
"Yeah, and you wish it weren’t true. Don’t you?"
"I want to be angry at you, and I can't find the angle."
"You're allowed to find one. I'll wait."
"That's the problem." Her fingertips moved along the edge of his hand, slow, exploratory, like she was reading something written there. "You keep being so reasonable. It's harder than if you'd pushed."
"I'm not going to push you."
She looked up at him then. The dark in her eyes had gone soft at the edges. "No surprises there. But I do feel pushed, and I don’t like having my back against the wall with no way out."
He let the silence sit between them for a beat. He felt her thumb find the place where his hand met his wrist and stroke once over the pulse point, and he had to pull air slowly so she wouldn't see what it did to him. His body, everything in him was humming again. He let it hum, holding her gaze.
"What I said when I got here. That was a message, not a question. You've already answered the question, the one we need your consent on. I told you everything because you needed that data to make a choice."
She held still, her hand in his and waited.
"The world ends if the font doesn't open.
I want to be clear that I'm not saying that to push you.
The world ending isn't me asking. It's the fact you're going to weigh against everything else.
This ask requires you to trust me as the key to your lock.
I also have no context for what that means.
I'm asking because I want you to choose me with all of it on the table.
Not because I'm leveraging the apocalypse. "
“You might not be leveraging the apocalypse, but the universe is. I don’t give a damn about what the universe wants. I dislike being a lock that someone has to open. That’s insulting.”
“I don’t know what it means, babe. Really, I don’t. The last thing I would do is coerce you.”
“You could, you know. I’m already losing my perspective around you. You do something to me I can’t fight against, and that pisses me off and makes me want to know you even more to get at what it is about you.”
Her hand tightened on his. He felt the change. She didn't speak for a moment. The light moved on her face. He watched a muscle work at the corner of her jaw as she fought the tears forming, and the way she won, by the narrowest margin, against the thing trying to crack her open.
"Don't kill the messenger," he added, lighter, because he could feel her shaking under that strong, still surface, and he didn't want her to have to hold it without an exit. "I just got here. I'd hate to die in your living room before you've even let me make breakfast."
A breath of a laugh broke out of her with a telltale shiver. "I make no promises."
"That's fair."
"You should know I have an arsenal behind the bookcase."
"I saw the arsenal, babe."
"I'm just saying."
He grinned, his thumb finding the inside of her wrist where her pulse was running too fast for the conversation they were having. "As I said before, my sweet babe…you’re lethal. I’m very well aware. Every fucking part of me."
She tracked his thumb on her wrist, the depth of her showing in her eyes.
She planned on taking more, and her hand turned slightly in his so that her palm was open against his palm.
She pushed back, the way she usually pushed back, because she had to.
Even now. Even with the apocalypse on the table and his confession sitting in the air between them.
"You all came here to convince me. I want that on record. You arrived with a team. You arrived with a plan. You arrived with the assumption that I'd hear you out, and I have. I want you to know I'm aware that I've been arranged."
"Yeah."
"That's not an accusation. It's an observation."
"Observation noted."
"Why my bloodline? Why am I the lock to your key? You say I have a choice, Flash, but you've handed me a choice between compliance or ashes. That’s a prison sentence masquerading as free will. I don't like being arranged, Jae."
"I know." He looked her dead in the eye and said, "You’re right. It is unfair. It’s a completely fucked up position to be put in. I had the same damn decision, and believe me, I resisted like a stupid son of a bitch until I understood and accepted. I pledged service. I pledged my life fully aware of the consequences of my actions. If I were you, I’d want to burn the cosmic loom down just for looking at me. "
"I would have come if you'd asked first."
He absorbed that. He met her gaze, and he understood, with the cold clarity of a man who'd just been corrected by someone he had no labels for, that she had named something true.
He and his brothers were a team, that was irrefutable, but the cosmology, the ending of the world, was now their mission.
“I don’t expect you to take me on blind faith, babe. So, asking you before you had all the facts and the time to process them was premature.”
"I know," she said.
He took a hard breath. “Now that you do. I'm asking. Will you save the world with me?"
She held his gaze for a long moment as her palm traveled up his forearm. Her breath rushed out, while the room held them, and that thing he had developed for her since their eyes met, relaxed.