My legs finally obey orders, and I begin to scramble down the other side of the pile of broken marble we’d been sheltering behind, Sofia’s hand still in mine.
Lilac, her arms still tangled around Jubilee, lifts her head and looks our way. She sees me first, and I recognize the flicker that crosses her face—it’s the ghost of Simon that she sees in me, and her smile softens. “Thank you,” she whispers.
Her eyes meet Sofia’s, and something passes between the two of them—recognition, memory, understanding, forgiveness, all in an instant.
But still she hasn’t looked at Tarver, who’s motionless, rooted to the spot where he stood as Lilac came back through the dimensional portal. Her eyes fix somewhere past Jubilee’s shoulder, every line of her body tense, as if fighting some invisible force trying to drag her face toward him.
Jubilee glances toward her old captain, then gives Lilac’s arm a squeeze and she and Flynn release her, stepping back.
“Lilac—” Tarver doesn’t get any further, and if I hadn’t seen his lips move, I wouldn’t have recognized the hoarse, heartsick voice as his. He takes a few stumbling steps toward her, but halts a pace or two away.
Lilac crumples at the sound of his voice—her eyes are wet, lips trembling, hands twisting in the grimy fabric of her dress. She shuts her eyes and sends tears streaking down her cheek, turning toward Tarver in a rush. “I’m so sorry,” she blurts, voice rising with emotion, words running together and spilling out in a torrent. “I couldn’t stop her—stop it—I could see it all, hear every word, and I couldn’t…it was like the things I said to you on the Icarus, only a thousand times worse, a million times worse, because I could feel it too, her hatred. God, Tarver—none of it was—”
“You think I care about any of that?” Tarver cuts through the torrent, and if her voice is bright and rich and throbbing with emotion and anguish, his is low and quiet. Only the hoarseness of it, the visible effort in the lines of his shoulders, his legs, as he holds himself still, shows what’s going on below it all.
Lilac’s left breathing hard, the flood of words stemmed for now, and though I can only see her profile, I can see the rest of what she’s left unsaid written plainly across her face—so plainly I feel my own cheeks heating, and Sofia’s fingers tighten through mine as she draws in against me.
“I held on.” Lilac swallows, her eyes on Tarver’s. Her voice is very quiet now, barely more than a whisper. “So I could come back to you.”
I can’t tell which one of them breaks first—but suddenly she’s moving forward, and Tarver’s striding toward her, and then he’s holding her so tightly her feet leave the ground, and her arms go around his neck, and their lips meet and stay there. The longing and desperation and healing in that kiss keeps spreading, like the warm glow of the rift behind them and the creatures just beyond the portal sending their fractured light cascading through the ruined ballroom, bathing all of us in gold.
It’s sometime later that Jubilee clears her throat. “Well, I don’t know about any of you, but I’m starving. I think there’s some crackers and peanut butter left, if our gear didn’t get pulverized.”
“Uh…” I glance back toward the rift, and toward the single silhouetted shape that is Tarver and Lilac, still locked together. “What about them?”
Jubilee snorts, her voice dry as she replies, “I’m pretty sure we’re just distant blurry shapes to them now.”
We get no retort from the couple, and for a moment I think maybe they didn’t even hear her—and then Tarver unwinds one arm from the small of Lilac’s back so he can lift his hand in a particularly rude gesture at Jubilee that makes her break into laughter.
As Flynn and Jubilee climb across the rubble to pull their packs out from underneath a chunk of debris, Sofia and I draw slowly together. The silence between us is different, now, filled with all the things that passed wordlessly between us in the instant before we jumped into the rift.
The choice she made, to leave the gun at her feet and trust hope instead, has left her flushed and breathless. Slowly, hesitantly, her lips curve into the smile I love so much—the lop-sided, one-dimpled smile that tells me she’s not wearing any mask, not playing any game. This smile is just her, and it’s for me.
“I feel different,” she whispers, still glowing gold in the rift’s light.
“You’re not,” I whisper in reply. “You’re exactly the girl I always knew you were.”
She softens in reply, reaching up to curl her arms around my neck, and just as I’m thinking Tarver and Lilac picked exactly the best way to celebrate, the moment’s broken by a shout from Jubilee.
All four of us whirl around, but there’s no danger here—Kumiko Mori’s there, embracing Jubilee, and Mae and Sanjana are climbing past her into the ruined ballroom. All three of them are filthy, showing signs of the fight outside, but they all wear exhausted smiles.
“The husks are down,” Sanjana says. “They collapsed, and now some of them are starting to wake up. We knew you must have…” She trails off, staring at the new rift, uncaged and golden.
I look past her to meet Mae’s gaze, and drink in her smile. Even after I brought danger to her door, to her family, she came to help me. I never knew the Knave had anyone who’d do that for him. Then again, I don’t think she did it for the Knave. I think she did it for me.
A noise from the edge of the room makes us pause, and we exchange confused glances—then a faint moan echoes through the sudden silence. Lilac breaks away from Tarver, her gaze suddenly anguished—and it’s not until she’s running toward the source of the sound that I even remember that there was a seventh person with us before the rift exploded.
Monsieur LaRoux.
By the time the rest of us reach Lilac’s side, she’s crouched on the dusty, cracked floor, one hand half-out toward the man curled a meter away. His white hair is gray with dust from the explosion, the grime on his lined face cut through with swaths left by tears on his cheeks. He’s got his arms wrapped around himself, wedged into a corner of debris, watery blue eyes fixed some distance past his daughter’s face.
“Daddy?” Lilac whispers, voice shaking, tentative. “Daddy…it’s me. It’s Lilac.”
But the LaRoux Industries titan doesn’t even seem to hear her, his eyes never wavering. He’s murmuring under his breath, and only as he exhales and the words rise in volume for an instant can I make out what he’s saying. “…and we’ll all be happy again…”
I glance at Sofia, whose face is grim. She has every bit as much reason to hate this man as I do, and yet I see my own heart mirrored there in her expression. When I look at the tiny shadow of a man huddled on the floor, it’s hard to find that hatred anymore, the bitter-edged determination that’s driven me on since Simon’s death. I look down at him and feel nothing—I look down at him and feel…pity.
Flynn draws my attention with a soft intake of breath, and when I lift my head, he’s pointing at the rift behind me. I twist, heart rate spiking as my exhausted body tries to ready itself for…something. There’s a gold mist, silken and ethereal, slowly creeping out from the rift in strands that grow stronger and brighter by the moment.