CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
When I wake up, Everest is gone.
I’m not surprised. When consciousness first nudges me, I lie utterly still, letting the memories of last night undulate through my body.
There’s an amber glow behind my eyelids, so I know dawn has broken, and the sanctity of secrets fostered during long nights has been stolen by the sun.
My skin is still warm from where he held me all night, and I can feel the ghosts of his kisses all over my body, promises that I want branded to my skin.
But the heat in the sheets is only an impression, left behind by his solid weight which is no longer there.
When I turn onto my back, I’m greeted by nothing but a blanket that has carefully been placed to cushion my back.
I’m struck by a stark image of him arranging the bed for my comfort before slipping away.
He knew that I wouldn’t be ready to wake up next to him.
This morning feels like a broken fever; I’m studded with sweat and coated with the realization that I’ve woken from an untethered dream.
I sit up, savoring the sweet ache in my legs, the stiffness in my back from curling up next to him.
As I fold my knees, my skin grazes a parchment that’s folded into the sheets.
I’m sorry to leave so early. Meeting with Cyrus to finalize details for today. I’ll see you soon.
– Everest
That’s it. No mention of what happened or how he’s feeling, but I can see his turmoil in the slant of his handwriting, the curves of his letters jagged as if written by an unsteady hand.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry – I don’t know what I would have preferred.
I swing my legs off his bed when something else catches my eye.
A sprig of lavender, left on the nightstand, right next to a glass of water.
There’s a knot in my throat as I roll the sprig between my fingers, letting its scent slick over my skin. One last gift of lavender, to mark the last of many things today.
But you will see mom and Novalie, I remind myself. You will go home.
I knew this would be bittersweet, but right now I can’t see past the acidity.
Already, Everest has crept under my skin in the precise ways that I knew he would when I first met him all those years ago. He was a forbidden fruit, capable of making me lose my mind, and I knew that once I took a bite, I would have trouble walking away.
It’s a good thing he’s gone, I assure myself. Then I start getting ready.
When I arrive at the carousel, they’re already waiting for me.
“Are we all set?” I ask Valentin, who’s dressed in the same clothes she came in. It’s a little cold for her dress, but she didn’t want to risk taking anything back from here. Quill’s words ring in my head.
Did you not consider why we do not change much of the past in Tamperings?
I shake it off, try my hardest to put on a brave smile.
“Got everything I need,” Valentin says, patting the bag with her few belongings. I’m traveling light too, not wanting to push my luck beyond, well, staying behind.
“It’s really happening,” Ender says, first to draw close to me. “Is it wrong that I don’t want you to go?”
My ribs cave in. I stretch my arms out towards him, and he steps into the embrace.
For once, the cool touch of his apparition is the sweetest thing I’ve felt.
Through my blurred vision, I see Geneva, Keshav, and Beam step in, joining our cluster, and it’s ineffable, really, how much affection lies between us even though we only touch once a year.
Something cold rubs against my feet; Cillian.
I scratch his head, wiping away my own tears as I stand.
“Are you crying?” I ask Geneva.
She rubs furiously at her cheeks. “Yes. Tears of relief that you’re finally going.”
“You’ll have full run of this place,” I promise her. “Just how you like it.”
“She’ll miss her partner in crime,” Keshav says, ignoring Geneva’s angry nudge to his stomach. “We all will. But we’re happy for you, Ryka, we really are. It’s been an honor to watch you grow.”
“Save a dance for me at every eclipse,” I tell him.
He tips his head. “Always.”
I’ve never wished for another eclipse more than just now, when Beam throws herself at me. I’d do anything to be able to hold her and wipe away her tears.
“Why do people have to leave?” she wails.
“Hey, listen to me,” I tell her. “I love you, okay? Please, don’t cry.”
“Who do I go to when I’m scared?” she asks. “Who’s going to build me a fort?”
“Anyone here would do anything for you, Beam,” I tell her as gently as I can, all while holding myself together. “They’d build you a castle if you asked.”
“But I want you,” Beam says, and it’s astonishing how easily that comes from her lips, how earnest and honest and vulnerable. We spend so long caging our emotions, afraid to be wounded, when they’re our most potent weapons.
“Beam, come along,” Geneva says, placing a hand on her shoulder. She can see that I’m rapidly crumbling inside, on the verge of telling Beam that it’ll be okay, because she won’t remember me long enough to mourn me.
I fixate on her wobbling lip, in part because I hate that this is how I’ll remember her last, in part because it means that Everest is next.
Warm, brown eyes find me. He’s golden, backlit by dawn, but somehow it feels like it would be easier to stare into the sun than to look at him.
The space between us is starved of air, and I’m starved of any thought.
All these years spent orbiting each other, but it’s now, when reading the questions on his face, that I realize how central he is to my universe.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there this morning,” he says. It’s nearly imperceptible, but the ghosts back away, giving us our privacy. He looks at my hand, where I’m clutching the lavender he left by the bedside.
“Goodbyes are hard,” I say.
Everest gives me a tight smile. “The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
Such a grave mistake to allow myself one drop of him only to walk away.
A part of me always knew that Everest could undo me with a single glance, and it’s been that part that’s worked hard to keep the rest of me willfully ignorant to the power he holds.
One night with him and I’m desperate for more.
It’s debilitating, this ravenous need to see another future, one where I’ve surrendered to him over and over again.
What breaks my heart is how easy it is to envision.
All I want is to memorize the way his eyes shrink when he laughs at me, how his mouth parts when he says my name, how his freckles look like they’re dancing across his skin when he spins me under the aurora.
Ask me to stay.
The thought is intrusive, unbidden, formed at the tip of my tongue. It can’t end like this. I let out a strangled sound. “I’m going to miss you.”
It feels entirely insufficient, hollow of everything that I mean.
I’m going to miss him in the way I’d grieve the loss of a sense.
It’s not just the years of friendship and adventure, not just what he’s done for me.
It’s his contagious joy, his relentless curiosity, the way he makes the world more beautiful just by existing in it.
Every color will dull a shade in his absence, every melody will sound less sweet.
How do you tell someone something like that?
“I know.” Despite the way his gaze softens, I don’t know if he does.
Because if he did, he wouldn’t let me go.
“Time is meaningless when you have as much of it as I do,” he says, brushing a thumb against my cheek, sweeping away a tear.
“But I’ve had a wonderful four hundred and eighty-seven years with you. ”
The words he says to me on every anniversary echo with heart-wrenching finality.
I’ve never pictured this part. Going home, yes, seeing my mother, falling into her arms, hugging Novalie, strolling through the farmer’s market, even the lonely nights spent missing the fair and the people that inhabit it.
But I’ve never envisioned this, and I’m grossly underprepared.
“Is that all?” I ask.
His hand stills on my skin, flame held to paper. Under the brightening sun, his eyes darken, and I wonder if the years we’ve spent together are playing in his mind as well. I wonder if I’ll be easy to forget. “Is there more that you want to hear?
Yes. No. I don’t know. I want whatever soothes this ache in my heart, whatever will stop this from feeling like my soul is being shredded into irreconcilable pieces. Everest takes another step towards me, reaches for my hand.
“Because I can give you more,” he says, his voice ragged as the edge of a saw blade. “If you tell me you want to hear it.”
Tell me, I want to scream, but I remain tongue-tied, watching him search my face for something I don’t know how to give.
Selfish, that’s what I am, to demand something I’m not brave enough to share.
And that’s when I know that he won’t do it, because despite everything I once believed about him, Everest is not a selfish man.
And this is already an impossible farewell.
I can’t bear to look at the devastation in his face. This is it, my last chance, and there are a thousand voices telling me what to do, but it’s only his that I hear. The look on his face when he drops my hand ruins me. My silence is answer enough.
“Goodbye, Ryka,” he says.
I can’t say it back. I take Valentin’s hand and step into the carousel.