Chapter 22
The Beginning of the End
TIA
I lay the contracts across the bed. It barely takes a genius to figure it out, but anyway between Harper and I, we have two.
She’s looking at another set of contracts, her face sombre as she flicks through it. ‘These are . . .’
‘Grim,’ I conclude. ‘I don’t know what I was expecting, but still.’
We’re also finally looking at the bomb blueprints, Ferrix’s logo splashed on every page.
‘I used to think Ferrix was an energy plant company. I didn’t know they were in the weapons business.’ Harper sets them aside.
‘It’s not really public information. The Sentinels were told that they had the bomb blueprints, but—’ I run my hand down my face. ‘God. Niko told me that Ferrix was supposed to delete it, but the Foxes got to it before they could.’
Another horrible thought occurs to me. ‘So when the Sentinels were transporting moonstones to the warehouse, they were for this?’ I look up to meet Harper’s gaze, my gut sinking. ‘What— Who let us do this?’
‘Who gave you the orders?’ Harper asks.
The government. ‘There has to be some way for us to get the moonstones back.’
Harper hesitates. ‘I can get my clan to do it. Just disable the Sentinel alarm so Kevin can’t call for Niko and Kiran, and I can have people go in and slowly empty the place out. Obviously, we won’t be able to do it all, but it’ll help.’
‘What will you do with it?’
‘We usually just stash them somewhere safe. Both us and the Nagas have our own people make the moonstone supplements, but we mostly store them in rock form in our own warehouses.’
‘I can try to tell Niko and Kiran. If I explain to them what Ferrix plans to do with them, maybe we can get the moonstones back.’
Harper scoffs. ‘Respectfully, you guys are puppets of the government. You can’t do anything yourselves and, to be fair, this is a legitimate business. It’s not like they’re doing something illegal.’
I don’t like this. I don’t like the fact that I’ve spent the last few years of my life training to help people, and it’s come down to this.
Harper seems to see it on my face, because she softens. ‘Hey, it’s going to be all right. We caught it early.’
The contracts are on my bedside table, and we lie in bed and sift through those together, like we’re reading a bedtime story.
‘Just so I know I’m not reading it wrong,’ I say, placing them back on the table, ‘Maria was trying to cut a deal with Ferrix, to return the blueprints you stole. And I guess other things, like helping them plant that bomb. And in return they’d give the Foxes moonstones?’
‘I think so.’ Harper buries her face in her hands. ‘God, no wonder Av’s so pissed off with me. What kind of shitty deal was she trying to make him sign? This is so fucked up.’
‘At least we caught it early.’ To be honest, I’m exhausted. I’ve spent the last week slogging through nearly a hundred resumes, fighting despair when none jump out at me. Too many people want to be a Sentinel for either the money or to do good for the world and give back to society.
Which is nice, but some part of me struggles to choose someone. Paper-long personalities are the last thing that makes a Sentinel. Each night I fall asleep restlessly with nightmares of missions alone, a team of one.
And Harper’s been out almost every night on Fox business. I do my best not to ask.
Harper sets the contracts aside and slides an arm around my waist.
‘We’ll figure it out,’ she murmurs as she pushes her face into my shoulder, the words pressed hot against my skin.
I feel her mood shift as she lays kisses up my jaw, and I welcome the way it lays my tense shoulders out.
‘We said we’d sleep after looking at the blueprints,’ I accuse. Harper’s hand slides to the small of my back, pulling me in, lips teasing a searing path down the sensitive expanse of my throat. It takes everything not to yield. ‘You haven’t slept in thirty hours. I counted.’
‘If you counted, then you haven’t slept either.’ She pulls back just enough to fix me with a clouded, feverish stare. The words tickle my neck, and a knot in my stomach tightens. ‘Why not?’
Because every time I close my eyes, I see you shooting me. Wrong answer. That answer would send Harper into a spiral of guilt, and I would never do that to her. ‘I don’t like sleeping when you’re not asleep yet.’
The way Harper holds my gaze feels like a challenge. I know you’re lying. We might have swapped our clashing blades for warring secrets, the blood-spilled battlefield for my gentle bed, but we’re the same doomed warriors fighting a cursed battle. Conflict haunts our very existence.
This isn’t about winning, though, so I swallow and brandish the white flag. Just for tonight. Just for now.
I offer Harper a wavering smile. ‘How much longer do I have to wait for another kiss?’
The kiss starts off apologetic, tentative – we both know we’re bluffing, and this feels like another act.
Then Harper nips the bottom of my ear and I explore the muscled terrains of her back, firm at the ridge and soft by the side, before toying with the warm clasp of her bra.
It feels like we’re slowly dismantling the walls we’d built against each other in the past months. Harper grants me permission with lips crushed to the shell of my ear, then it’s a final piece of armour surrendered.
As I flip Harper onto the bed, a small, contented sound thrums at the base of her throat. ‘You’re learning about me pretty quick.’
‘I mean, I was almost valedictorian.’ I nip the junction of her neck and shoulder, bunch the back of her sweater up and pull her closer. ‘I was the top student for astrophysics, now I get to be the top student of you.’
In my peripheral vision, pink and green wisps push through the dark as Harper’s illusion magic activates just as it does whenever she gets caught in the moment.
Harper tangles her fingers in my hair, eyes darting down to my lips. ‘Does it turn you on if I say I’d give you a top grade?’
I grin as I pull her into my arms. We stay tangled in bed, our kisses slow, our bodies relaxed.
But in the witching hours, Harper resting in the crook of my arm, we both lie awake. Even though it’s been a long time since she last shifted, I’m tracking her breathing enough to know she hasn’t succumbed to sleep.
‘Penny for your thoughts?’ I murmur, running my fingers through Harper’s hair.
A sharp inhale. ‘We’re meant to be asleep,’ she reminds me.
I shift to be closer to her eye level. ‘What’s keeping you awake?’
Harper runs her fingertips across the length of my forearm, her words squished into my inner elbow. ‘Everyone around me gets hurt because of me.’
‘That’s not your fault.’
‘It’s a curse,’ she continues as if I haven’t spoken. ‘They end up hurt because of me, or they end up leaving. I keep trying – I promised I’d never hurt you. God, I was so fucking stupid.’
‘No. Kit, hey.’ I pull Harper against my chest, hoping the pressure will ground her. ‘I chose this. I knew the danger and I chose this, because I know you, and I knew you’d never hurt me. It was an accident. Stop blaming yourself.’
She shifts in my hold. ‘You don’t understand. There are things I can’t tell you. Next week . . .’ She trails off.
I frown. ‘What’s happening next week?’ My mind flashes suddenly to the one thing I know. Blood moon.
‘Nothing.’ Harper places a warm hand over mine. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
‘You don’t have to apologize, kit. I’ll be fine. We both will be.’
She’s silent.
The blood moon? I want to ask. What are you doing on the blood moon? But I don’t know how to say it. Don’t know if it’d break us apart again, to be reminded of the fight we can’t control.
I almost think Harper’s fallen asleep, but my palm rests against her chest, and I feel her heart go thump-thump-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
‘Go to sleep,’ I whisper. I press a kiss to her forehead.
HARPER
The moon is bright tonight. Darkness curls around the slumbering city, and I’m thinking about a girl.
I lean against the railing of Lain Co.’s roof, my hips pressed into its edge, my body aching with sleep deprivation. Last night, I almost let the assassination mission slip when I was with Tia.
I don’t know how much to tell her. How would she take it, knowing I initially only got close to her to kill her?
But she needs to know the plan, and it’s impossible to trust myself to stay mum when the vulnerability of the night and Tia’s warmth apparently have the power to open me up like a zipper.
I speed through my contacts and zero in on the one I’ve been dreading to talk to.
‘Why’re you calling so early?’ Maria groans through the phone.
It’s three a.m. There are approximately eighteen hours till my assignment deadline. Eighteen hours until I either pretend to kill my girlfriend, or I do it for real.
There’s been so much on my mind.
This turmoil is the only reason I haven’t contended with this issue of Maria.
‘How’s everything with the Nagas?’ I ask Maria. Casual. Nonchalant. Nothing wrong here, obviously. ‘Just wanted to check in before tomorrow.’
‘Nothing much.’ I hear her shift in bed over the phone, her voice low with sleep. ‘You’ll be fine tomorrow.’
I try to figure out how to steer the conversation towards the Nagas, but my mind drifts naturally to the last week of sleepless nights.
I have spent every night staring into the ceiling, visualizing every route I’d need to take to keep Tia safe.
I think about how it can all go wrong. What if the Nagas seize her on the spot? What if Tia realizes what I must do, and ends up hating me for it? I’m lucky if I keep her alive, let alone keep her in love with me.
And am I hurting the clan? I’m going against my duties as a leader, and what if this hurts my family?
I’m making a decision for one girl I love, and I’m risking both the allegiance to the family in which I was born and going against the wish of my parents. It feels as if I’m burying bodies all over again.