Page 28 of This Cruel Fate

Xolia waited outside her apartment building for Adonis. He pulled up in a glittering black sports car, different to the one he had driven her home in. She raised an eyebrow at the superfluous show of wealth.

Adonis stepped out. Dressed in all black, except for the red embroidered Persion snakes on his left breast pocket, he cut an intimidating figure compared to her sweater and dark jeans.

“Afternoon.” He opened the door for her. Xolia narrowed her eyes slightly. Another aberration from the irreverent boy so emblazoned in her memories.

Still, she got into the passenger side. The interior was blood red with the dashboard matching the ebony exterior. Adonis got into the driver’s seat, and the engine purred as they joined the lunch-hour rush.

The silence stretched out a beat too long before Adonis spoke. “I was glad you texted me.”

He didn’t need to say finally for Xolia to pick up on it. “I lost my phone. It took a few days to get another one.”

Adonis didn’t respond. For the first time since they had reconnected, all the awkwardness of the lost years separated them. She felt it was too soon to ask him about clothes for the VC announcement, seeing as she hadn’t even formally accepted yet.

She snuck a glance at him, his dark eyes were focused on the road, and he was gripping the steering wheel tight enough to turn his knuckles white. “You know,” she said, “I haven’t driven since the war ended.”

“Seriously?” He side-eyed her, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “You taught me how to drive.”

“Because you were unteachable,” Xolia said, smiling. They had been fourteen, Silas had taught her how to drive, and Adonis had burned through all available tutors. It was up to her and the barracks’ oldest van in the dead of night to teach him. The night he had successfully driven them through the abandoned roads at the edge of the complex without hitting a post or a rock, he had kissed her for the first time. It had been an innocent thing, full of joy in a time when Xolia had had little. Her heart fluttered at the memory— at how beautiful and unsullied it still was.

Adonis was smiling, too, a real smile and not some sly smirk. She wondered if he was thinking about that night, if it was as memorable for him as it was for her. “Maybe I just didn’t care about impressing any of the other instructors.”

“Really? Not even Irina?” Xolia shot at him.

He rolled his eyes. Irina had been old, almost three hundred, when they were in the barracks. There were none alive today as old as she had been. The oldest variant alive was 189. Irina hadn’t been good for much else other than terrorizing the younger generations, rehashing the stories of her great-grandparents, who had lived during the days of the variant monarchy, and teaching the youngsters how to drive. In essence, she was everything Xolia and the rest of her generation had been terrified of in those early days when the rebellion was just whispers in the wind.

“I mean, she was my first choice. You were just the rebound,” Adonis said. They made eye contact, and it was like no time had passed between them. Xolia parted her lips, whether to speak or not, she couldn’t say. They couldn’t stay in the moment, though. Adonis pulled his attention back to the road, where they drove closer to Juthian Heights.

Xolia looked down at the tops of her thighs. What am I doing? This is crossing a line.

“Well”—Adonis’s voice pulled her from her own thoughts—“you can drive on the way back to your apartment.”

“I can’t do that,” she said.

“Why not?” Adonis turned right down a street filled with high-end shops, and the traffic thinned out to reveal well-dressed people walking up and down the clean sidewalks.

“Your car has to cost more than my annual salary,” Xolia said, exasperated. “I don’t think I even remember how to drive.”

Adonis waved off her concerns but didn’t say anything more. Instead, he focused on pulling up to a restaurant, where the valet waited outside of the front door.

The restaurant was dark and intimate, with each table in its own alcove, creating a maze of rows and tables. The host sat them in a particularly secluded spot in the back of the restaurant, away from the other patrons and the kitchens. After he handed them menus, he left them to their own devices.

Xolia couldn’t stop herself from glancing around, trying to find a hint of another person. Soft music drowned out the low conversation. The effect was isolating in the best way; they were utterly alone. They could let their guards down. Not even that niggling voice of reason had much to say. No one could see them, and it wasn’t like she was planning on doing anything wrong.

“So, we’re at lunch now.” Adonis crossed his arms and rested them on the table.

“We are.”

“What does the indomitable Xolia need me for?” he asked.

Xolia hesitated. Maybe the whole thing was stupid. She hadn’t even said yes to Peter yet. But you want to say yes. Was it smart to say yes when she was still so uninformed? She settled on, “You told me that Atalia is in a bubble. I want you to show me the truth.”

“Why now?”

I didn’t realize how much I was lying to myself. I woke up one day and realized how unhappy with my life I am. I can’t pretend anymore. “The only reason I went to that fight was because my life. . .” Could she actually say the words she thought all day, every day? “It isn’t what I want all the time.”

“Xo.”

She made eye contact with him, relishing the way he said her nickname. He was, after all, the person who had given it to her and the only person with permission to call her by it. They didn’t break eye contact with each other, even as the server poured two glasses of wine.

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