The Ends of the World

by Maggie Hall

  I should just ask. Get it out of the way. I was scared to.

  The tattoo artist wiped a rag over my wrist one more time. There it was: our family’s symbol.

  I couldn’t stop staring at it. Stellan took my wrist, ran a thumb around the edge of the tattoo. “I’m getting it,” he said. “If that’s okay with you.”

  “Yes,” I said, to whatever it meant. Just like I’d still be in love with him if he had to leave the Circle, I’d always feel like he was part of the thirteenth family. Same for Jack and Elodie.

  We repeated the ceremony, and Stellan pledged his fealty, too, to the Circle and to us, to the ends of the world.

  “To the ends of the world,” the rest of the group murmured.

  A few minutes later, Stellan and I were left alone in the room. He shrugged off his shirt and tossed it across the tattoo chair, then turned to me, spreading his arms in the low light. “Where do you want it?”

  I blinked. “You want me to choose?”

  He looked down at himself, holding his blond hair out of his face with one hand, gesturing across his body with the other. His skin glowed golden in the lamplight. “Back’s taken up already, but anywhere else is fair game. Unless you don’t want to decide.”

  “I want to decide.”

  My gaze flitted over him. Maybe I could put the tattoo on his arm. The bicep was classic. Jack’s tattoo was on his forearm—that was always a possibility, too. I looked over the chest I’d woken up on this morning, broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, hints of his ribs along his sides when he breathed in. On his rib cage, maybe. I felt a surge of possessiveness at his scars, since I now knew the story behind all of them. I was fairly certain that, as recently as we’d come into each other’s lives, I knew plenty of things about Stellan Korolev that no one else in the world did.

  And yet, we were still in this no-man’s-land between forever and just today. I touched my fingers lightly to his chest. I had to know. He could still get our tattoo if he was leaving—but I couldn’t stand it any longer. I started to open my mouth, but he cut me off.

  “Tokyo,” he said.

  Oh. I felt my shoulders droop.

  I tried to gear up my happy face. The one that said his going to the other side of the world was probably for the best. The one that said of course I was sad he was leaving, but I understood.

  He reached out for my hand. “I want to get you Tokyo. For your birthday.”

  A draft blew through the room and the candles flickered. “What?” I said.

  “I didn’t get you a birthday present last night, and I realized today it’s because I want to get you the whole world. Tokyo is the strangest, most amazing city. They have things called cat cafes—you literally pay a fee to pet cats. And I don’t think you’ll like sake—it’s rice liquor—but I want you to taste it.”

  I shook my head to stop him. “Wait. You’re not saying you’re leaving?”

  “Tokyo’s a long flight. If I left the Circle, I’d have to fly commercial, and who wants that?” he said, with feigned flippancy. When I just stared at him blankly, his face softened. “Avery, I’m saying I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to realize it, but it looks like we’re the official thirteenth family. If you’ll have me.”

  I realized then that as much as I’d hoped for this, I hadn’t expected it. I’d truly thought he’d leave. “But what about your family? Anya?”

  He ran his fingers over my knuckles. They’d healed. I hadn’t been getting up in the middle of the night to punch things lately. “I suppose you’re my family now, too. I never wanted to leave you.”

  “I know that, but—”

  “I don’t think I really even wanted to abandon the Circle. Well,” he continued with a smirk, “that’s not true. When I was a Keeper, I wanted out every day. But now, seeing how things could be . . .”

  “You want it,” I said, surprised. “The Circle. The power. The . . . world.”

  The golden ring around his pupils glowed in the low light. “It used to be that the only thing I wanted was to leave the Circle behind so Anya would be safe. Somewhere along the way, though, I realized I could have left—but instead, I’d been following some girl to the ends of the world. To save people I thought I hated, nonetheless.”

  I grinned up at him, but his face was still serious.

  “I really did almost leave after Jerusalem. But I couldn’t. I finally understood that you weren’t just some girl. And that Jack was right. This is who I am. And it turns out that matters to me.” He took my wrist, ran a finger around the edge of my tattoo. “Kuklachka, yes. I do want this. I want us to be part of the Circle. I want to make things better, and I want—the world, I suppose, yes. We’re being handed this life that could be more than I’ve ever dreamed of. I want to take it. With you.”

  There were voices outside the door, but I ignored them, the reality of what he was saying crashing over me, fizzing and popping in my veins. He wasn’t just agreeing to stay for me. He wanted it. Just like I did.

  “But Anya—”

  He nodded. “Yesterday, when you were talking about your mother, I started to think that if I left, I’d be doing the same thing. Living half a life, and forcing Anya to live half a life, all for the illusion of safety that could shatter at any time. This way, she’ll be with me. She’ll be as safe as she can be. She’ll grow up surrounded by people who care about her, in a way neither of us got to do. And . . .” He twisted his fingers around mine nervously. “She could use a big-sister type. If you’re okay with that. I know asking you to raise a child with me is not the normal topic of conversation on what’s essentially a second date—”

  I laughed past an unexpected tightness in my throat. “I am very much okay with it.” I was almost embarrassed at how quickly I’d said it, and at the catch in my voice that made it mean so much more. I cleared my throat. “You and I will never have the kind of relationship we would have had if we’d met in calculus class and had to make out in your car after school like normal people.”

  A smile ghosted across his face, but more than a smile. Relief. “And I know the Circle does not love that I’m one half of this couple,” he said. “It’ll make it harder, and I’m sure there are many people who would be a better partner for you in this than I will. But I’ll learn, and we’ll have Luc to teach us, and Jack and Elodie to help—”

  I threaded my fingers with his. “Stop,” I said. Had he really been worrying that I would reject him for any of these reasons? “You know how to lead so people want to follow you, and you know the Circle from the inside. You care about people more than you care about politics. You’re exactly what the Circle needs.”

  His eyes went soft, surprised in a way I’d never seen them. Was it possible that no one had ever told him that? People told him how good-looking he was. They told him he was talented at being a Keeper—but his ruthless, trained-killer side was his least favorite part of himself. I remembered him talking about how Jack was such a good person. Could it really be that he didn’t believe the same things about himself? I promised myself right then that I’d appreciate all those other parts of him, and I’d let him know it.

  “The Circle would be so lucky to have you,” I said again. “They don’t deserve you, really. But I hope I—I hope we do. Us. Me and Jack and Elodie and . . . our family.”

  The warmth of the candles around the room flickered over his face, and he gazed down at me like he had on the plane after we’d rescued Anya, like he couldn’t quite believe I was real. “I’ve been waiting for something for so long,” he said. “I didn’t know what it was, but it . . .”

  “Hurts,” I whispered.

  He nodded. “I kept noticing that I felt different, but it took me a long time to realize what it was. When I’m with you, I don’t ache like something is missing anymore. I think maybe that’s what it feels like to love someone. When being with them makes that ache go
away.”

  He was right. For the first time I could remember, I didn’t feel empty. I’d always felt so much more alive around him. That was exactly what this feeling was. “I love you,” I said. We’d said it last night, and last night had been amazing. But something in me had been holding back, still guarding my heart. Now that I didn’t have to, it was like a hundred doors inside me had blown open at once, and I couldn’t hold back if I tried. “I should have realized it so much earlier than I did. I think I’ve been accidentally falling in love with you since . . .”

  “The train,” he said.

  “Train?”

  “For me it was earlier than that—in the water in Greece, I think. It made me feel like when you were attacked at Prada. When even though I barely knew you, I lost it at the thought of something happening to you.” He shivered. “But the first time I thought you might feel something, too, was that morning on the train to Cannes. Do you remember that? I woke up with my arms around you. It only happened because I let my guard down, and I was ready to write it off, but the way you looked at me—like it was a mistake, but not like you were upset. Like—”

  “Like it was a mistake because I liked it,” I whispered.

  His free hand came to my hip, pulling me against him. “I want to sleep with you on lots of trains in the future.”

  I raised my eyebrows, and his grin turned sheepish. “I did not mean it like that. Although . . .”

  I giggled, my other hand cupping his neck, gently over his scars. I love you, I thought. I love that you make inappropriate jokes without even meaning to, and I love that it always makes me laugh even if it shouldn’t.

  “Little doll, I want to see the whole world with you. I want us to jump off a cliff into the ocean in Thailand. I want to know whether you’ll scream or laugh.”

  “Scream,” I whispered, and the smile on his face grew.

  “And Sweden. We used to visit where my mother grew up, and in the summer, it stays light there until after midnight. I want to show you. I want to do all of that and so much more while we’re not running for our lives.”

  I stroked one fingertip over his chest, watched goose bumps rise there.

  He was beautiful. He was a cocky pain in the ass and the most broken person I’d ever met, and also one of the strongest.

  I love you, I thought again. But now, the words felt so much fuller, thrumming through me like a heartbeat. I love you.

  I flattened my palm in the center of his chest. “I love you,” I whispered again.

  He exhaled softly. “Kuklachka,” he said, and my own heart sped up to the rhythm of his, fluttering under my hand.

  I’d been wrong before. I did want him to need me. I wanted us to need each other.

  My eyes were drawn back down to my hand on his chest.

  “Here,” I said. “Get the tattoo here.”

  The door cracked open and the tattoo artist stuck her head inside. She stopped short just inside the door, and said in French something I was sure had to be “Am I interrupting?”

  Stellan ducked his head to plant one firm kiss on my lips, then turned to the tattoo chair, plucking his shirt off it and sitting in its place, balling the shirt in his lap. “Ready,” he said.

  I sat in another chair a few feet away, and we didn’t say another word, but I watched the whole time.

  When his tattoo was done, he shrugged his shirt back on but left it open so the tattoo peeked out, dark and slightly irritated on his skin. Beautiful. Right in the place where part of it would peek through a shirt with a deep V neckline, but otherwise, it’d be secret. Earlier, I couldn’t stop staring at my tattoo. Now I couldn’t stop staring at his.

  “We match,” I whispered, holding my tattoo up next to his. Stellan took my wrist and stared at my tattoo in the candlelight, the black of the symbol and the tiny blue veins underneath. He brought my wrist to his lips. And when he pulled me into his lap in the tattoo chair, it was really, really hard to remember that there were people right outside this room waiting on us.

  Finally I stood up and straightened my clothes. “We have responsibilities,” I said, with as harsh a frown as I could muster. “Stop distracting me.”

  Jack and Elodie’s voices murmured in the hallway outside, and it sobered me. “What about Jack?” I said. “Will that be weird if we’re actually together and he’s our Keeper?”

  Even if Jack was fine with us being together, the three of us would always be something—something that wasn’t Stellan and me, or Jack and me, or Jack and Stellan. Another thing, together, the three of us, that ached a little when I prodded it, but not in a bad way. In a way that somehow made each of the individual relationships stranger, and richer. Like the unfinished Rebellious Slave. The messiness of it made it not less, but more. At least that was how I felt. I didn’t know how Jack felt, and that was the problem. “I don’t want to hurt him,” I said.

  “I don’t either. Trust me, I’ve thought about it a lot. But I think he’d be offended if we gave him a full bank account and a mansion and told him to go have fun. Being a Keeper is his life. So I’d say it’s his choice. What do you think? And what about Elodie, for that matter?”

  Shadows passed the sliver of light under the door. “I think it feels really strange to be discussing the lives of our friends like they’re chess pieces.”

  “Welcome to the Circle.”

  He was right. We were a Circle family now. This was only the first of many situations that weren’t likely to come naturally to me.

  “I say we tell both of them we’d like them to get our tattoo and be part of our family if they want. And if they ever change their mind and no longer want to work for us, that’s fine, too,” I said.

  “I completely agree.”

  • • •

  In the end, we needn’t have worried. We did the ceremony twice more, and while the two of them were getting their tattoos done—Elodie’s on her wrist, matching mine, and Jack’s on the forearm opposite his compass—Luc, Rocco on his heels, came in with news.

  The meeting was to be held in Rome. At the Vatican. And, because everyone had known it would be somewhere in Europe and so all twelve families were close by, it would be in just a few hours.

  Stellan and I followed Luc and Rocco down the hall to a room with one whole wall covered by TV monitors to talk strategy. Rocco was falling easily into a Keeper role here in the Dauphin household. I had a feeling a lot of lines the Circle didn’t like blurred would be blurring for all of us.

  The news on the TV showed a car on fire in one of Paris’s ritzy shopping districts, and footage cut to a police officer tackling a guy into a closed storefront, shattering glass all over a display of high-fashion boots.

  Luc was studying the screens. He turned to Stellan. “I’m sure you thought I was just ignoring all that. My father would not have allowed it to happen. He would have sent troops out to crush any rioting immediately.”

  “Iron fist,” Stellan agreed.

  Luc nodded. He looked only slightly self-conscious when he looked at Rocco, and then at Stellan, both as head of another family and as past Keeper of his, who probably knew strategy better than he did. “I didn’t do that, but it was on purpose. I understand why they’re rioting. It’s not unreasonable. The world is a frightening place right now. Feeling like their leadership is unsympathetic toward them might not help matters. I had our troops contain and protect, and do what they could to minimize damage. We’ll address the rest once it’s over.”

  Stellan looked surprised. I had a feeling peace and compassion were not generally recognized Circle tactics. “Rome looks like this, too. What’s the strategy for getting to the Vatican safely?” he said.

  As we talked, it hit me how terrifying it was for us to be entirely in charge of our own fates like this. We’d been playing at it for so long, but this was real. I used to think all I’d be to the Circle was a symb
ol. A pawn. But we were a lot more than that. This was quieter and less glamorous and a million times more important than the tabloids and the parties. When we’d first met up with Fitz again, part of me had wanted to let him tell us what to do. But we didn’t need that. Throughout history people our age had done this, learning as they went. And we could, too.

  Maybe this was how the world worked. You weren’t ready for something, but you did it anyway, because you had to.

  When Jack and Elodie appeared, their tattoos freshly finished, and Colette followed, the conversation shifted to refining the plan for once we got into the room where the Circle would be signing the treaty.

  I sat back in my chair and looked around at them. Luc and Rocco, a newly crowned young king and the person he trusted before the rest of us did. Colette, our fierce mother hen, who embodied everything we were trying to save in the Circle. Jack and Elodie, our two warriors, each so loyal in their own ways. And me and Stellan. I thought it was weakness how we kept needing each other more and more. But no matter how many times we put each other back together, we weren’t broken, neither of us. Any of us.

  That was strength.

  I’d been so soft and afraid when I’d come here. I’d melted and reformed into glass, hard and brittle. But now? I felt like steel. I sat down, and all seven of us decided together how best to save ourselves, and the Circle, and the world.

  CHAPTER 28

  Jack, Stellan, Elodie, and I were in a car in Rome a few hours later. We’d flown with Luc and Colette on the Dauphins’ plane, but we’d parted ways on the tarmac as they took a helicopter the rest of the way. We wanted to keep our presence here a secret until the whole Circle was assembled. If any of the families was prepared to shoot us on sight, or lock us up, they weren’t going to have the opportunity to do it until the rest of the Circle was watching and could remind them of their code.