“Of course,” I said. “Whatever you want, Juliana.”
“I need you to explain what it is you want me to do,” Juliana said when we were alone in our room. Selene and I were sharing a bed; I’d given up mine to Juliana. “I know you didn’t help rescue me out of the goodness of your hearts.”
“That’s not fair,” Selene protested. “We care about you, Juliana. All we want is for you to be safe. You’re one of us.”
“Sasha doesn’t think so,” Juliana accused. “Right, Sasha?”
I sighed. “How can you expect me to trust you after what you did?”
Juliana twisted her hands in her lap. “I don’t. But I know you know that I’m sorry, about everything. You can feel it, can’t you? You can read it in my thoughts.”
“That’s not good enough,” I replied. The truth was, Juliana’s thoughts were a complete jumble. She wanted to stay with Callum, and she wanted to run from him, afraid of the strength of her feelings, worried he wouldn’t be able to forgive her old sins. She wanted to help her country, and she wanted to flee from her responsibilities, afraid that she would fail everyone and make herself miserable in the process. She couldn’t make up her mind about anything, so she was letting us make it up for her.
“Apparently not.” Juliana hung her head. “You know, all I ever wanted was to be normal. All the pressure of being a princess—and now a—a queen … it was just too much for me. I don’t think I was built right for it. I always felt I was meant for a different life.” She raised her eyes to look at me. “Your life.”
“So you decided to steal it. Totally understandable.”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t even know you were real until the Shep—Kit told me. He was my brother, you know. And now he’s dead. Just like Dad.” She took a deep breath and kept going. “But I saw you all the time in my dreams, and I wanted so badly to have what you had. A life without expectations. Freedom. You must know what I’m talking about, Selene.”
Selene shrugged, avoiding our eyes. “I’ve always taken great pride in my responsibilities,” she said softly. “I don’t even know what I would do with a ‘normal’ life.”
“Normality is way overrated,” I said. Once I’d had a taste of what an abnormal life might be like, I never could get used to being a regular person again. Still, I understood what she meant, probably far better than Selene ever could.
“Okay, well, anyway,” Juliana continued, “normal just isn’t an option for me. It’s way too late for that. Maybe it was too late the second I was born.”
“We were born,” Selene corrected her.
“Right. My point is, I want to help. I don’t want to feel like everyone in every world is braver than me. Callum, you know,” she said, “he believes in me, in himself. He thinks we matter, that we can still do good, even though the world is falling apart. I’d like to live up to that faith.” She stared at us. “So what is it you need me to do?”
“Sasha.” I opened my eyes. The room was still dark. Selene and Juliana were standing over me. I sat up and yawned.
“Did I fall asleep?”
Selene nodded. “A few hours ago. It’s time for us to leave. Thomas and Adele have gone to bed, but they’ll probably be awake again soon and we’ll have lost our chance.”
“How do you know they’re asleep?” Juliana asked.
“Listening,” Selene and I said in unison. She looked confused, but she didn’t press the point.
I turned to Selene. “Thomas
wants
us to go to Taiga. Don’t you think it’s smarter to have his help looking for the transit?”
“We don’t need help,” Selene said. “I know how to find the transit.” She pulled up her sleeve and showed us her tattoo. Juliana, who’d never seen it before, stared at it suspiciously.
“Is it just me, or is it glowing?” she asked. Selene’s tattoo, which used to be silver, had changed to a greenish color, sort of like the aurora. It was faint, but it did seem brighter than it should have, considering how dark it was in the room.
“That’s how it works,” Selene explained. “The ink is infused with a phosphorescent mineral compound called diastium that turns green in the presence of transits. We’re not that far away from one—that’s why it’s starting to light up. The closer we get, the brighter it will become. And I already know where to look for it.”
“I have to say goodbye to Thomas,” I insisted. “I can’t leave without telling him. Who knows when I’ll be back?” I gave Juliana a hard look. “Don’t you want to say goodbye to Callum?”
Juliana shook her head. “It’ll just make things harder.” She was struggling to be brave, and she thought that was what it meant: turning off your feelings and walking away. That struck me as cowardly, and not unlike what she’d done to get herself in trouble in the first place. But I was too tired to argue with her. I couldn’t control either of them. In some ways, we were still so separate, which was a relief.
“You can’t tell Thomas we’re leaving, Sasha,” Selene said. “He might try to stop us.”
“He said he wouldn’t,” I reminded her. “You were there!”
“Just because he said it doesn’t mean he meant it. The only
people I trust are the two of you.” Selene smiled at me. “Besides, I think he’ll understand. He has his own battles to fight. It’s important that none of us get in the way of that.”
I hesitated, turning over my options in my head. In a million years, I never thought I would end up having to choose between my analogs and Thomas. How easy such a choice would’ve been only a few days ago. Now it seemed impossible.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go before I change my mind.”
I probably should’ve guessed we’d end up at Oak Street Beach. Everything kept leading back to that stretch of sand, as if there were a magnet buried deep underneath it that constantly pulled at me. The three of us stood side by side at the water’s edge, staring out at the gentle waves as they rode in to the shore. Selene’s tattoo shone like a beacon. She pointed out to where the water was high enough to reach our knees.
“There it is,” she said, her voice soft with reverence. “Do you see it?”
“Not really,” I said, squinting. “What’s it supposed to look like?”
“It’s hard to describe,” Selene said.
“I don’t see it, either,” Juliana piped up. “Are you sure it’s there?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Selene told us. “The traveler’s mark doesn’t lie.”
“Maybe you just need to get a little closer,” came a voice from behind us. We turned with identical expressions of surprise. Thomas took a step back, as if we’d startled him instead of the other way around.
“Whoa,” said Callum, who was standing beside him. “That was really creepy.”
“What are you doing here?” we demanded all at once.
“Just when you thought it couldn’t get creepier,” Thomas muttered.
Juliana glanced at Selene and me. “We’ve really got to work on not saying the same thing at the exact same time.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I followed you,” Thomas said.
“And I followed him,” Callum said.
“I think she meant why are you here?” Selene replied, but the boys didn’t answer that question. Thomas reached for my hand and dragged me far enough away from the others that no one could overhear our conversation. Well, nobody except for the two girls with whom I shared a consciousness.
“You know that if they want to, they can listen to everything we say, right?”
“I don’t care,” Thomas said. “I didn’t want everybody staring at us while we talked.”
“Okay.”
“Why did you leave like that?” he asked. I held his hands and forced myself to look him in the eyes, even though the pain I saw in his face made me want to run away. “You were just going to go off without saying goodbye?”
“I thought it would be easier,” I admitted. “I’m not always as brave as you think I am.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “Neither am I. I wouldn’t have stopped you. I hope you know that. I meant what I said before. It’s your choice what to do with your life. I’m not going to get in your way any more than you’re going to get in mine.”
“That’s the thing, though. I was afraid that if I said goodbye, I would
choose
to stay,” I told him. “Leaving you doesn’t feel right. But letting them go to Taiga without me …” My eyes flickered over to Juliana, who was having an intense conversation with Callum, and Selene, who was standing by
herself, gazing out at the lake with a homesick look on her face. “That doesn’t feel right, either. Is it possible for someone to have two fates?”
“I don’t know. I’m not the expert. Maybe you should ask Nostradamus over there.” He smiled. “There’s one thing I do know, though. You and I—it’s not going to end here, on this beach, not like this. I’m not ready to give up, are you?”
“No,” I said. “But I’m not really sure what the future is going to look like, or when it’s going to come.”
“Me neither,” Thomas said. “I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen, to this world, or to us, or to everybody we know. But I believe there’s something between us worth trying to save. I know we can’t be together today, or tomorrow. Maybe not for a while, even. But someday we’ll be together again, just like this, except then
we
will get to decide, and neither fate nor duty will have a damn thing to do with it. Even if we decide it’s not worth it, we deserve a better ending than this.”
“It’s worth it, Thomas,” I said. “To me it is. When we’re done on Taiga and the tether is finally broken, I’m coming back to Aurora. To you.”
“Then I guess I’d better clean up this mess while you’re gone, huh?”
“Yeah, you’d better,” I said, wrapping my arms around his waist and laying my head on his chest. “I love you, Thomas.” I looked up at him and watched as a grin spread across his face.
“Finally,” he said. “I was wondering if you’d ever say it back. I was kind of starting to feel like an idiot.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was scared, I guess. Of what saying it would mean, especially if I was going to have to leave you. But it’s not the saying it that matters. It’s the feeling it. The words just put it on the record.”
“Well, I’m happy to have it on the record,” Thomas said. He glanced to his right, where Juliana and Callum had gone from arguing to kissing. Poor Selene was sitting in the sand now, staring sullenly at her traveler’s mark. The tether whipped back and forth with her impatience to get home, but she knew that dragging us away from Thomas and Callum prematurely would only make things more difficult for her later on.
“So what are your next steps?” I asked. “After we’re gone.”
He took a deep breath and lowered his voice before speaking. “Dryden gave me a piece of intelligence Dr. Moss stole from the classified archives at the Tower. It proves that the General ordered the murder of the king.” He seemed to want to say something else but then thought better of it. I bit my tongue to keep from pressing it. Our time together was growing short.
“Are you serious?” He nodded. “What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going to turn it over to a reporter I know at the
Columbia City Eagle,
” Thomas said. “And the president of the Congress, Nathaniel Whitehall. You remember him. Hopefully, this will be the key to toppling the General and putting Juliana on the throne.”
“Wow, Thomas,” I said. “That’s big-time whistle-blower stuff. Espionage, even. If the General survives this information leaking out, he could have you executed.”
“He won’t survive it,” Thomas said. “The people are ready for change. Libertas wouldn’t be as strong as it is if they weren’t. This is the end of the General. And I’m going to make damn sure it happens.” Thomas caught my expression and narrowed his eyes. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’re a hero, you know that, right?” He shrugged and
looked away from me. I put my hand on his cheek and turned his face back toward mine. “A real-deal, actual hero.”
“Stop saying
hero,
” he said. “It makes me sound like a cartoon.”
“Hey.” I grabbed him and brought him so close our lips were almost touching. “You’re not a cartoon. Cartoons don’t bleed.” I touched the cut on his forehead. He winced, but he didn’t pull away. His eyes were locked on my face. “And they don’t cry.” I traced my thumb over the dried tears in the indigo-colored hollows beneath his eyes. “And they don’t tremble when they’re afraid.” His hand was shaking. “You do. And you helped save us all. Some of us more than once.”
“Lucas is dead,” Thomas confessed. Though I’d just been through the slaughter and carnage in the club and catacombs, I was surprised. In all the chaos, I’d forgotten that Lucas was even there and hadn’t thought about what might’ve become of him. “I couldn’t save
him.
”
“Did you …?” From the expression on Thomas’s face, it seemed like a possibility that it’d been Thomas who killed Lucas.
“No,” he said, nearly choking on the word. “But I would have. If I had to.”
If it meant saving you,
the look on his face told me. But knowing that I was the only person he’d sacrifice his brother for wasn’t heartwarming or comforting; it was just sad. He shouldn’t ever have to make a choice like that. “I found him down there. He was helping Juliana escape, and they shot him in the back.” I nestled closer to him, sensing his need for physical comfort. He curled his body around me.
“He told me the code for the door,” Thomas said. “He helped me, in the end. Helped us. He wasn’t all bad, you know. He was just lost.”
“I know,” I said. Lucas had done some awful things, but he
was dead now, and he’d given Thomas his last breath. It didn’t erase what he’d done, but it did lessen the debt a little.
Thomas checked his watch. “You’d better go, and so had we. Callum and I have to get back to the safe house before Adele and the others realize that we’re gone.”
“Too late,” Adele said. I caught a glimpse of her over Thomas’s shoulder and saw that she’d brought Rocko with her. “What’s going on here?”
“Adele,” Thomas said. “Selene is going to take Sasha and Juliana to her universe. It’s the perfect place to hide Juliana until we can bring down the General.”
“Nobody’s going anywhere.” Adele and Rocko pulled out their guns and trained them on us. Everyone took an involuntary step back. Thomas reached for his own weapon, but Rocko pulled his trigger and sent a bullet flying over Thomas’s shoulder. It never would’ve hit him, but it was a warning:
Don’t you dare move.