by Lucy Smoke
I shake my head. “No,” I say. “It shouldn’t wait. You never know if you’ll miss this chance.” Because life can be snatched away so quickly. When you least expect it. Death waits for you to forget that he’s there—he’s always there—and then… I sniff hard and turn slightly, enough to still keep them in my sights, but hopefully they can’t see how hard I’m trying not to cry. “Please, just forget I said anything.”
Levi and Aaron cast each other a look filled with meaning, but I keep my mouth shut and don’t respond, choosing, instead, to head for the hallway. “I’m going to go lay down. Wake me up when we’re going back to the penthouse.” Hopefully, I’ll be able to get some rest here while I can, but considering my heart craves to know the true ending of their story—now that Aaron knows Levi’s feelings—I know very little sleep is in my future.
I open the door to the first room I come to. It’s not Thayer’s, that much is obvious—his room is the only room I would know since it’s the only one I’ve been in. I ignore the dark corners of the unknown room and move toward the outline of the bed before crawling under the sheets. My body shivers against the chill of material. I curl on my side and pray that at least Levi and Aaron can be happy even if I can never be.
My eyelids are heavy, but sleep doesn’t come for me. I drift in and out of consciousness as I lie in the unfamiliar bed. Every sound keeps me from letting go, so, when the door slowly creaks open, and two sets of heavy feet approach the bed—one on either side—I’m awake.
Aaron slides in on one side and Levi on the other, I look up into Levi’s sunset gaze—the brown hues swirling in a golden mixture. “What are you doing?” I ask.
Aaron pulls me against his chest, and for the first time in the hour since I crawled into this bed, I sag with true exhaustion, and sink into him. “Don’t worry about it, Rocket. It’s time to get some sleep. We go back in the morning.”
“Did you two talk?”
“We did,” he says. “Now, go to sleep.”
“But are you going to be okay? About…” I let my voice trail away into the darkness of the bedroom.
Aaron sighs heavily, and Levi shuffles against me. “I care about him. And I care about you. Let it be what it is.”
I nod and close my eyes, though I still feel Levi’s gaze on me as he moves closer to my front. His fingers find mine under the sheets and he entwines our hands. “It’s going to be okay, Cass,” he says. “We’ll figure the rest out together.” I don’t know if he means him and Aaron, or if he includes me in that ‘together’, but I’m almost hoping for the latter.
Grief, Fear, Love
When I wake up, the guys are gone. Well, not all of them, I realize when I walk out into the living room to see Thayer sitting on the couch with a bowl of something in his hand. He nods towards the mini kitchen when he spots me. “There’s food waiting on the counter if you’re hungry.”
I move into the kitchen to see what he’s made. A second bowl sits, covered with a plate, and when I lift it and peek beneath, I see it’s some type of granola with dried fruit mixed in. I set the plate aside and take the bowl into the living room where Thayer is, snagging a spoon on my way.
“Where is everyone?” I ask, scooping spoonful’s of the food into my mouth.
Thayer swallows and then stands to take his now empty bowl back to the kitchen. As I watch him go, my eyes are drawn to the tapering of his waist into a tight backside. When he turns around the counter, facing me once more, I jerk my eyes away and shove another spoonful into my mouth.
“They’re back in the training center,” Thayer says. “Don’t worry, Haze is on his way here and then we’ll go.”
“Why is Haze on his way here?” I ask between bites. “Shouldn’t he just meet us there?”
Thayer grimaces, his bowl slipping from his fingers and clattering into the sink. “Um… yeah, well, um… Vincent wants us to stick together as much as possible. So, he um…”
I lower my spoon and spear him with a look that when he finally lifts his gaze to mine only makes him more uncomfortable. “If Vincent wanted us to stick together as much as possible then Haze wouldn’t be on his own right now,” I point out. “He wants you guys to guard me, doesn’t he?”
Thayer sucks in a breath before releasing it as he closes his eyes for a moment and then reopens them. “I’m sorry, Firecracker. He’s just worried that–”
“He’s worried that I’ll be Kida all over again.” I stand up and when I pass by him into the kitchen I set my empty bowl on the counter. “I think he forgets,” I say, reaching for the front door, “I’m not Kida. No one wants me dead.” Because no one cares. I yank it open and sprint out into the hall as he calls after me.
I hear Thayer fumbling to follow me, and I do feel bad, but I’m just so angry. Furious enough that I actually move towards the elevator—I hate the damn thing, but if it will get me away faster, I’ll suffer through it with my eyes closed. How long can I hold my breath? I wonder.
I don’t have to wonder long because I never make it.
The doors to the elevator open and Haze steps out. He sees me running full tilt towards him and without batting an eyelash, sweeps me up into his arms. I glare at him and fold my arms across my chest as he strides down the hall, past a surprised-looking Thayer, and deposits me back on the ground in the living room of the pod.
“What,” he begins looking from Thayer to me, “the hell did I step into?”
I glare up at him, without responding.
Thayer quietly ambles back into the pod and closes the front door. “She’s upset about guard duty,” he answers.
Haze sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Cass–” he starts.
“You’re treating me like a child,” I snap.
“Well, you’re fucking acting like one.” Haze drops his hand and we both continue to glare at each other.
Finally, I break the silence. “Why does Vincent want you to follow me around?” I demand.
“Just let it go,” Haze orders.
I drop my arms and clench my fists, stepping up—right against his chest, in his space. “No.”
“Listen, I know you–” Thayer says, reaching out.
I jerk away from him and back up, staring at the both of them through narrowed eyes. “You don’t know anything!” I yell. My chest contracts and even as my voice gets louder, it hurts to breathe.
“Cass–”
“Stop! Stop saying my name! I don’t want to hear it anymore.”
“Firecracker?” Thayer’s tone wavers as he glances to Haze for reassurance, as if he doesn’t know what to do, or how to approach me. He can’t. My throat squeezes.
“Not that either,” I say.
“Then what?” Thayer asks. “What do you want me—us—to call you? I’m trying here, can’t you fucking see that we’re trying? We get that you’re grieving,” he continues quietly. “I know it hurts. We’re just trying to give you time.”
Stop. I want them to stop. Stop giving me time to think. Stop giving me a second to remember all that I’ve lost. I’ll never get over it, I think. It’s going to be with me forever.
Haze disrupts my thoughts by stepping into my space this time. His hand lands on my cheek, soft and gentle. I flinch. “Vincent wanted you protected,” he says, “but we want to protect you.”
I fall into those sharp hazel eyes—past the flecks of brown, gold, and green. Deeper. Until I’m all the way in. Until I can feel his chest against mine and the fabric of his synthetic cotton shirt against the skin of my cheek. Until breathing is easier with him touching me. Until tears leak out of my eyes and onto his arm. And I’m shaking. Breaking. Falling the fuck apart.
“Shhh.” Haze holds me close to his chest and I feel Thayer as he moves in behind me, squishing me between the two of them—holding me close. At the very least, they are the glue that keeps me from physically shattering.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my voice cracking.
Warm lips touch my forehead. Thayer rests his c
hin on my shoulder. “We’ll take care of you, Cassie.”
That’s what I’m afraid of.
“Keep your legs off the ground,” Noaz says.
I’m not much for complaining anymore today. So, instead of dropping off the fucking torture device he’s got me on now—another set of railings set much lower than yesterday’s—and shoving my boot up his ass, I adjust and do as he says.
“Good,” he praises. “You’re doing much better today.”
I roll my eyes.
After several more seconds of holding my position as sweat drips down into my eyes, my slave driver finally relents and lets me rest. I drop down between the railings and stare up at the ceiling, breath pumping in and out of my chest so quickly that it burns in my throat.
A dark shadow appears over my face and I groan. “You said I could take a break,” I snap.
“You are on break,” Noaz says, propping himself against one of the railings and looking down at me.
“Then why are you watching me?”
“You’re not yourself today,” he says simply, glancing back across the room to where the rest of the guys are performing their own relatively easy looking exercises—though, I’m sure it just looks easy because they’re doing it.
I don’t know what to tell him. He’s not wrong. And it wasn’t a question. So, I remain quiet.
Noaz stays silent as well for several more minutes. Then he looks down at me again. His eyes, usually so serious, hold a glimmer. I sit up, wanting to get closer. Fire crackles between us as he rests a hand on my shoulder. It’s a simple gesture. Nothing romantic, nothing sensual, and yet… I can feel the heat of his palm radiating through my sweat soaked shirt.
He smiles at me and I blink… have I ever actually seen him smile at me like that before? He’s beautiful when he smiles—even if this one is a bit wan, a bit sad.
“Grief is the price we pay for love,” he says. “It’s okay to love her, to miss her, but it’s not okay to suffer forever, to punish yourself for living.”
“I don’t–” my voice breaks and I have to swallow around the lump in the back of my throat. “I don’t want to forget her.” It comes out, barely a whisper, and Noaz leans down. He presses a gentle kiss to my forehead, and I have to fight back the stinging in my eyes. I hate that I cry so much now. I hate that I get so angry. I hate that I can’t fucking sleep alone anymore. I hate that I’ve become this angsty little shit of a person and that’s not who I am. I hate that grief feels exactly like a fear that permeates my skin—something I can never get away from.
“You will never forget her,” he promises.
“How can you know that?”
Noaz pulls away. “Because,” he answers, “she’s too much a part of you to ever forget and, if you only ask us, we’ll make sure of it.”
My knees are weak, so when Noaz stands up fully and moves to grab his clipboard again, I don’t reach for the railings. Even if I tried right now, I know I wouldn’t be able to stand. Noaz doesn’t scold me, he simply nods to the obstacle course of death and looks back at me. “That’s next,” he says.
The obstacle course of death. I feel like I’ve been running it for years now. Maybe this time, I’ll actually get out of it without losing anyone.
Grief is fear. Grief is the price we pay for love. Fear is the price we pay for love?
The words circle in my head as I lie in bed. Thayer’s warm body is curled around me. It reminds me of safety, it reminds me of belonging. I touch his arm, but don’t wake him. I just want to feel him there, and to understand Noaz’s words.
Am I afraid? Is that why I can’t sleep alone anymore?
Slowly, I glance over my shoulder and shuffle Thayer’s arm from around my waist, easing off the side of the bed until my feet touch the floor. I creep to the door and crack it open, looking back. When he doesn’t move, and continues to sleep, I sigh in relief and move out into the hallway, closing the door behind me.
I let my feet lead me where they may, and I find myself out past the lobby of the penthouse. The wall of windows greets me as the moon shines bright through the glass. My eyes are drawn out towards the city. The columns of dusky smoke billowing up from the depths of Steamer Town. The engineers and maintenance staff are probably working twice as hard as the staff that first boarded Tartarus hundreds of years ago.
And all for what? Only for Tartarus to fall? Only for all six cities to fall?
Tartarus. Basra. Corvallis. Bath. Dendera. Arawn.
We are what is left of a ravaged world. Funny. It never seemed ravaged until this very moment. I stand, looking across the darkened sky, mesmerized by the sight—by the understanding of what I know—and don’t hear the footsteps in the hallway as they approach. So, when he speaks, I jump. “I often come here to look at it, myself, when I can’t sleep well.”
I turn swiftly, nearly stumbling into one of the nearby console tables set against the wall. Vincent is tall, foreboding. Despite the small appearance of gray in his goatee, his face is younger—young enough that time hasn’t worn him down yet. He moves to stand against the glass wall alongside me and gazes out across the floating city. No, something else has worn him down—responsibility, maybe. I get that. Lately, it seems, the whole world is sitting on my shoulders, too.
Once his eyes are off me—those dark, intense eyes—I feel comfortable enough to reply. “It feels like I can’t ever sleep well anymore.”
“We both have things that weigh heavily on our minds.” Vincent sighs, leaning against one of the metal structures that break up the wall of glass, but keeps his head turned toward the view. “I used to come here and look out and wonder where she was, you know? She always had a way of sneaking off as a child. Then, she never grew out of it. It was just her nature to want what she wanted and accept nothing less.”
Despite the familiar clench in my throat and chest at the reminder of Kida, my lips begin to twitch. “She was stubborn,” I admit.
He scoffs. “She was more than stubborn,” he says. “She was hard-headed, often reckless, and impossibly… brilliant.”
Silence reigns once again between us. Small lights flicker in the windows of the shop workers, street criminals, and day maintenance staff alike as people begin to rise early for the day. The barest glow of sunlight can be seen glinting off the very tip of a distant chrome building.
Soon, I’ll be in Corvallis. I’ll be leaving Tartarus for the first time—with the way things are going, perhaps the last time as well. It’s what I’ve always wanted. Always dreamed of. And yet, now… it feels like my dream has been crushed to a pulp. No juice left to salvage. Because that dream was one I’d shared with Kida. Now that she’s gone, it feels wrong to want it anymore. Or perhaps it feels wrong because I don’t want it anymore, even though I know she would have.
“They’re worried about you, you know?” Vincent’s low baritone is soothing. “The boys—they’re rather easy to read when you’ve known them as long as I have.”
“And how long is that?” I counter.
He chuckles. “Noaz much longer than the rest, but a few years at the least.”
I find a spot on the glass and stare at it. Reaching out with the nail of my pinky finger, I try to scratch it off only to realize it’s on the other side. “I feel like I only knew Kida for a blink of a second,” I admit.
“Sometimes that’s all you need,” he says, “to fall in love, to lose, but to live a lifetime.” Vincent shifts, and I can feel his gaze move from the windows back to me. “But you know, I believe we were talking about the boys.”
“Shouldn’t Penelope be the one giving me dating advice?”
“Are you falling for any of them?” he asks.
I freeze. All of me. My chest. My muscles. My bones. Hell, my very fucking molecules freeze over as I choke out the word, “No.”
Vincent doesn’t take his eyes away from me. “Hmmm.”
“Why do you ask that?”
He tilts his head at me. “Why indeed?” is all he says.
<
br /> Hover vehicles and rovers begin to make their way out into the streets of Tartarus as the hint of light on that distant building becomes more pronounced, sliding down the metal like a golden ray of destruction on a city named for the Greek Underworld. And if Vincent Diamond is Hades, who am I? A lost soul that managed to get his goddaughter killed. If it wasn’t for Kida, I wouldn’t even know half the shit I do—all the stories, the legends, the only education I ever received was all because of her.
“Kida confided in me, you know,” Vincent says, breaking the silence. “Of course, she talked more to Penny than she ever did to me, especially once she got to know my wife. You should have seen them when they first met. Kida grilled Penny about her intentions towards me. I’d ask if you would believe that, but I’m sure, knowing Kida as you did, it’s easy to imagine it.”
He’s right. Kida was fiercely protective and loyal to those she loved—beyond a shadow of a doubt. And yet, somehow, I know that she would approve of the guys. All of them—even Noaz.
“There’s no time limit,” Vincent says with a sigh. When he doesn’t elaborate, I finally allow myself to look up and meet his gaze. The furrow of lines creasing his dark forehead pulls the skin taut across the top of his head. I almost smile. Almost. The way the sunlight glints off the dark skin of his scalp as it starts to pour in through the windows is so normal… it makes me feel like the events of weeks ago were all just a bad dream. If that was true though, all I seem to have are bad dreams.
“No time limit to what?” I finally ask.
After a beat, he answers. “Grief.”
I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything at all. I let the quiet fill the space as the sun rises higher and higher. When the others begin to stir, Vincent straightens, pushing off the wall, and moves over to me, cupping his wide, strong palm around my shoulder. “Let them help you,” he says quietly. “If you do, it’ll be easier to heal.” With that, he walks away.
I don’t stop him to tell him that I’m not even sure I want to heal. I just let him go, and I stay behind—watching the sun. Up here, in the sky, it’s probably closer than ever. Like one giant eye watching the world below us, spinning on its axis, while we hover over the decay of our ancestors. Man, I’ve become morbid.
