by Kit Rocha
It was starting to feel alive.
There weren’t many booths set up in the small square that formed the main marketplace. Folding tables were more common, the kind that could be broken down and moved at a moment’s notice. They spilled out down the streets leading to and from the square, lining the sidewalks so thickly that you could only walk on the street itself.
Maricela hesitated by a table laden with tech, mostly tablets with flaws like dinged edges or cracked screens, then moved on to a booth stocked with little pies baked in disposable tins. She covered one whole side of the square that way, studying each table with a frown of concentration, as if understanding the goods for sale was the key to understanding Eden itself.
She wasn’t entirely wrong. The markets in Sector One overflowed with handmade goods and crafts. Gideon might not frown on tech the way his grandfather had, but only a few dealers had sprung up over the past decade, and almost no one sold used or refurbished junk. There might as well have not been a world before the Flares.
Eden’s markets were the opposite. Every table sagged with reminders of the world that had been. Bright digital signs flashed words like antique and vintage and authentic over displays cluttered with the trash of a forgotten world, buffed and polished until the memories shone.
When Maricela finally stopped, it was at a cluttered table on the north side of the square. But instead of choosing something on display, she bent to retrieve a large book from a box beside the table. It was bound with leather, worn but not scratched or torn.
When she opened it, four metal rings inside held pages and pages of old photographs, warped with age. She flipped through them slowly, lingering over snapshots of smiling faces and sleeping animals, thick forests and tall, glittering buildings. There was a small inscription beneath each picture, faded and often hopelessly cryptic.
Aria & Skylar
NYC summer trip
Big Bear - 30th birthday
“Oh, you don’t want that.” The older woman behind the table waved a hand at her. “That’s junk, brought in by one of the scavengers. Haven’t had time to pull out the old pictures yet.” She picked up a thin rectangle the size of her palm and activated the digital screen with a flick of her fingers. “This’ll hold ten thousand pictures, and I have ‘em loaded with foreign places you have to see to believe. Huge mountains, vast oceans, trees so big three people couldn’t put their arms around them...”
Maricela barely glanced up. “How much?”
“A hundred credits. A real steal, if you ask me. How else can you see the world?”
“I’ll take it.” Maricela closed the book and ran her hand over the cover. “If you throw in the album.”
“Done,” the woman said so quickly that Ivan assumed she’d been prepared to be haggled far down from the asking price. She brought out a little bar-code reader with a slot for a cred stick and typed in the total. “Here you go.”
Maricela pulled one of the credit sticks he’d given her out of her pocket. She fumbled a little with fitting it into the reader, but after a moment, the machine beeped, and the vendor smiled widely as she tucked it back under her table. She came back up with a crinkled brown bag and held it open so Maricela could deposit the album inside. Then she slipped the digital photo in on top. “Come back if you want another set!”
Maricela took the bag, and Ivan guided her away from the table. They found a free spot in the middle of the square to stand, and for a moment she just stared, her wide eyes taking in the bustle of people, the colorful displays, the sunlight glinting off the glass windows of the nearby buildings.
It was probably the first time she’d been anonymous in a crowd. His lingering pangs of longing transformed into a fierce joy that he’d been able to give her this. “What do you want to do next?”
“I think...” She clutched the bag to her chest, the brown paper crinkling in her grip. “I want to see the City Center.”
Even the words seemed to leach warmth from the sun. The City Center was where the final battle between the sectors and Eden had culminated. The place where dozens of Riders had given their lives to cut a path through the corrupt councilman’s defenders.
Judging by the sudden seriousness in her eyes, Maricela knew that. She wanted, maybe needed, to see the place where the men she had known had sacrificed themselves to build a better world. Their memorials would always live on in the pictures painted in the quiet sanctum in the heart of the Rios family temple, but the City Center was still hallowed ground.
He found her free hand with his and twined their fingers together again, needing the warmth and contact more than he wanted to admit. “Okay.”
»»» § «««
If you didn’t already know, it would be hard to tell from the City Center that war had ravaged Eden.
There were subtle signs, telltale things like patched spots in walls where the fresh brick still gleamed and the mortar hadn’t had time to darken with exposure. Maricela even caught sight of a few tiny craters in the buildings that could only have been left by bullets. But the vast majority of the damage had been repaired. Erased.
Then there was the memorial. It looked almost like a gazebo, an octagon with a large roof hanging over stone walls that didn’t quite meet each other. The spaces between them served as the only entrances to the heart of the memorial.
Inside was dark, cool, the heavy stone blocking out the midday summer sun. Each wall was dedicated to a sector, fitted with a flat screen that scrolled the names of their people who had died in the war. In the center of the room stood a fountain with a ninth screen affixed to its base. The walls and the fountain were covered and surrounded by pictures, bundles of flowers, and messages. Desperate attempts to personalize the losses, or perhaps even to do the impossible--to reach out to the dead one last time.
The only exception was the wall dedicated to Sector One. Its screen didn’t scroll with names, and no one had left bouquets of wilting lilies or goodbye letters. Instead, the screen bore one static sentence--In honor of Gideon’s fallen Riders--and the wall had been painted.
Maricela recognized Del’s work instantly. Skillful brushstrokes covered the entire wall with the skull and tree that comprised the Riders’ tattoo, only instead of having ravens circling, there were dozens of brightly colored leaves drifting down from the stark, bare branches.
“One for each.” Ivan reached out to touch a leaf. “So many of us died that day.”
And Ivan could so easily have been one of them--unnamed, memorialized here only with a single leaf smaller than her hand. Her stomach twisted, and she had to take a moment to focus on her breathing to quell a sob. “What was it like?”
It took Ivan forever to answer. “Bad. It was just...bad. Our job was to break through the Special Tasks forces who were protecting the building where Peterson had holed up. It was a lot of chaos. A lot of noise.”
Maricela had begged to come along that day. Not to the front lines, of course--she’d only have gotten in the way--but the allied sector forces had set up an aid station just outside the city, a place to treat mild injuries and stabilize more critical patients. She could have helped there, but Gideon had been implacable in his denials.
So she’d stayed behind, secreted away in the bunker beneath the palace with Isabela’s family, while Gideon and Mad and the rest of the Riders rode out to fight. She tried to imagine doing that now--sitting in tense silence, waiting for her loved ones to return.
For Ivan to return.
The memorial was suddenly claustrophobically close. With the eight stone slabs blocking out most of the sun and air, it felt like a mausoleum. A tomb. She turned and half-stumbled outside, where she could breathe again.
She still had to lean against the outer wall for support. “Were you scared?”
Ivan leaned against the wall beside her. “Not for most of it,” he said finally. “But there was one moment...” His fingers started to curl into a fist, and he slowly flexed them. “A Special Tasks soldier had his gun trained o
n your cousin’s back. I didn’t think I’d get to Mad in time.”
Maricela blinked. “But he was fine. What happened?”
“I tackled him.” Ivan exhaled roughly. “Half a second slower, and we both probably would have been dead. But somehow I got there.”
No one had told her about it, no doubt to save her from worrying. But Ivan’s grudging admission had a deeper import, one he didn’t even seem to realize. “You saved his life.”
“No. I mean, yes, but not... It wasn’t like my father or anything. I didn’t take a bullet for him.”
He had such a narrow view of what it meant to protect the Rios family, and it did more than frighten her. It broke her heart. “You don’t have to die to save someone, Ivan.”
He looked away. His gaze drifted across the open square in front of the towering City Center building, and she couldn’t tell if he was seeing the people hurrying about their business, or the battle he’d fought. “I know. In my head, I know. But my mother...”
She reached for his hand and waited.
“It wasn’t her fault.” The words held the forceful edge of repetition, of something he’d said too many times. “Everything she went through was bad enough. She lost my dad when I was a baby. And then her brothers turned traitor. The sector shunned her.”
He gripped her hand harder and closed his eyes--but only for a moment. Even now, he couldn’t stop scanning their surroundings, watching for danger. “Kora was the one who saw it. She called it major depressive disorder. Some sort of chemical imbalance in the brain. She ran a bunch of tests and had the guys in Five fabricate a custom implant.”
“Is it working?”
“Like magic. Like she’s a totally different person.” His sudden laugh was edged with pain. “All those years, I thought I was taking care of her. Covering for her when it got bad, making sure no one ever found out. In my teens, I resented her for it. And she just needed help. Real help. I’m the reason she never got it.”
The lump in her throat made it hard to speak. “Ivan, that’s not true. You were a child. What could you have done?”
“Maybe nothing. I don’t know.” He finally looked at her. “But it makes it harder, do you understand? All the stuff she told me when she was in the dark places. She ground it into my head over and over that the only way to be good was to be like my father. To die for the family her brothers had betrayed. And it wasn’t her fault, but it still...”
It still hurt. She could hear it in his voice, see it on his face--along with a simmering frustration, maybe even a hint of anger. But he couldn’t be angry with his mother, a woman who’d only wanted the best for him, whose only crime was being sick.
Maricela stepped closer. “You did the best you could. So did she. She thought she was telling you the truth. She just...happened to be wrong, because she wasn’t well.”
A breeze caught her hair and tugged it across her face. When he reached up to smooth it back, his warm fingertips lingered on her cheek. “I saved Mad’s life,” he said, as if testing out how the words felt.
“Yes. Your father saved Adriana, and you saved her son.” It was the kind of irresistibly poetic parallel that people wrote songs and plays about. “They’re going to make you a saint.”
He stared at her, unblinking. “What?”
“Sainthood, Ivan. There must be plans in place already.”
The realization swept over him slowly. His furrowed brow gave way to widening eyes. Clear. Bright. Joyous. But she only had seconds to savor it before something dark intruded, sinking over him until the light of the moment vanished.
Glimpsing that light made the darkness even worse. “What is it?”
He shook his head and pushed away from the wall, tugging her after him. “Nothing. It’s a lot to take in. I need to think about it.”
She dug in her heels. He was already overwhelmed, and there had to be a better time and place for grand declarations, but she couldn’t hold it in any longer. “None of it changes anything, not for me. Whether you’re a saint or a Rider or just Ivan, I like you anyway.” She swallowed hard. “I love you.”
He turned to her slowly, his expression unreadable. “Maricela...”
Don’t. She bit back the word. She’d begged him to talk to her, and she couldn’t stop him now.
They were standing in the shadow of the memorial. He cupped her cheek, tilting her head back so she stared up into his eyes. “I still can’t give you forever. I’m a Rider. I took oaths. I have a duty.”
It should have sounded like he was letting her down easy. Instead, all she could hear was what he hadn’t said yet. “But?”
“All my life, I’ve only had one mission. One goal. I’ve been numb for years.” His thumb ghosted across her lower lip. “You’re the first thing I’ve ever...felt.”
Heartbreak and elation, all rolled into one quiet confession. “If that means you want to keep feeling me, I’ll take it.”
He smiled. “I wouldn’t know how to stop.”
“You don’t have to.” She wound her arms around his neck. “I’m right here.”
Ivan kissed her there beside the memorial. It was a bittersweet thing, to be so happy in a place that had seen so much death, but wasn’t that what the Riders fought and died for all the time? They gave their lives so that other people could carry on, keep living. Find their joy whenever and wherever they could.
Maybe one moment of pure, blissful peace wasn’t just the best way to commemorate the friends they’d lost.
Maybe it was the only way.
Chapter Twenty
Ivan’s emotions were still roiling when Ana arrived to let him know Kora was waiting for him in Gideon’s office.
He wasn’t in any condition to face his leader. He could still taste Maricela on his lips, and it didn’t even feel like blasphemy anymore. It felt necessary, like she’d taken her place alongside all the other things he needed. Air. Water. Food.
Maricela.
But a Rider didn’t disobey a summons. He walked into Gideon’s office and found both Gideon and Kora seated at the round table in front of one of the huge windows overlooking the orchard. Bright sunlight filtered through the panes, gilding Kora’s golden hair and catching the colored glass of the huge chandelier above them.
“Sit,” Gideon said by way of greeting, nudging a third chair back from the table. When Ivan obeyed, Gideon tilted his head. “Kora?”
She opened the thin white folder sitting in front of her. “You didn’t kill Javier Montero.”
Ivan wasn’t prepared for the relief that washed over him. Though he’d never enjoyed death, he’d never regretted a life he’d been forced to take, either. But the people he killed were usually scum--killers and bullies, those who preyed on the weak.
Javier Montero had been an asshole, but asshole was a far cry from evil. “Do you know what did?”
She nodded, her expression grave. “He had an astronomical amount of alcohol in his bloodstream. The highest level I’ve ever seen, well into lethal range. My first thought was that someone forced him to drink it--poisoned him, essentially. But then I remembered what Gabe said...” She glanced at Gideon uncertainly.
Gideon inclined his head. “The Riders should know.”
“Right. I remembered that he said Javier could drink anyone under the table. So I checked his liver enzymes.” She took a deep breath. “Javier was an alcoholic. The night of the ball, he drank himself to death.”
Ivan had been prepared for poison, for an enemy. No, not just any enemy. In those dark places he couldn’t even acknowledge, he’d been waiting for it to be Lucas, the Prophet’s lost heir. His ultimate proof that bad blood always won out, that betrayal was hereditary.
Maybe it really wasn’t.
“There’s something else,” Gideon said quietly. “I know you’ve heard the rumors by now.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gideon’s expression turned sympathetic. “If I could wave my hand and make them go away, I would. But this...is not the sort
of thing you announce. It’s a private matter of grief for the Monteros, and even if I did make it public...”
He didn’t have to finish. None of the devout would dare defy Gideon to his face, but unthinking devotion left ample room for quiet hypocrisy. People had always found ways to justify their mistreatment of Ivan’s mother. If they wanted to believe in Ivan’s guilt, they’d rationalize it somehow.
Ivan didn’t care, as long as Gideon still believed in him.
And Maricela.
Her words came back to him. Those tempting, beautiful, terrifying words. They’re going to make you a saint. She’d sparked a reckless hope in him, one he’d done his best to quell before it grew so strong that the disappointment of having it dashed would crush him.
Because there weren’t any plans in place to make him a saint. There couldn’t be. The final battle had been a chaotic nightmare. In its aftermath, Mad had been busy with his O’Kane family in Sector Four. He might not even remember that moment, one near miss among dozens. He certainly hadn’t announced it to Gideon.
And Ivan hadn’t told anyone, not until Maricela.
What was he supposed to do now, nine months after the fact? Blurt it out? Brag? It would sound like he was grasping for something flattering to counter the rumors. Like he was seeking glory.
“Ivan?” Gideon’s brow furrowed with concern. “Is there something you need to say?”
Of course he knew. The hair on the back of Ivan’s neck stirred as Gideon’s gaze focused on him, intense and knowing and maybe just a touch otherworldly.
The thought of Gideon seeing deep enough into his soul to find Maricela there was so terrifying that Ivan blurted out the truth. “I saved Mad. During the battle inside Eden. I saved his life.”
Something very close to surprise flashed across Gideon’s face before he schooled his expression. “Really? Ivan, why didn’t you--?”
“It was nothing,” Ivan interrupted, already self-conscious. “It was just my job. I knocked him out of the way of a bullet and didn’t even get a scratch. I didn’t want to make a big deal about it, but Maricela found out. And now she thinks... She thinks I’m going to be...” He couldn’t say the word, but it hung there between them, so loud it filled the room.
