Page 103 of A Slipper in the Smoke
I didn’t pretend anything.
I wanted to tell you from the start.
I’m so sorry for all of this.
I hate that you’re angry with me.
I love you. I love you. I love you—
Light blossomed at the end of the tunnel, blistering, so sharp and sudden that both Pip and Elena raised their arms to shield themselves from it. A few seconds later, it had flooded the entire train.
Elena’s eyes adjusted quickly. They were outside of the city, skirting through the golden sands under the glass tunnel that had brought her here all those years ago. The cold desert stretched for miles, but in the distance mountains glimmered, grey and brilliant and surrounded by a sea of green. Dawn lit up the skies, a moving canvas of ochre and lavender.
“It’s beautiful,” Pip whispered.
Elena sat beside him, their hands only inches apart. “Yes,” she said, “it is.”
And they were free.
DrAsamiThornestareddown at her notes, tapping her pen against them absent-mindedly, and found—quite ludicrously—that she couldn’t understand a single thing she’d written the day before.
Outside, birds were singing in the branches that held up her bedroom. Real sunlight pooled across the wooden floors. For three months, this had been her home. She was still struggling to get used to all the light, to the lack of constant rumbling, and to the sweet, smoky smell of warm cedar.
She liked it almost as much as the scent of Beau’s skin, warmed by the sun.
“Stop worrying,” said Beau from the bed, as her tapping increased.
Asami looked up. Beau was lying on the bed, his good arm tucked under his head. His other—larger and slightly lumpy—lay across his stomach. She liked it just as much as the rest of him.
“I said nothing!” she said.
“Your silence did.”
Asami sighed. “How are you so good at reading me?”
“Months living in close quarters and staring at you adoringly from a distance. You’re very cute when you work. Makes it easier.”
“Stop flirting with me. I’m trying to concentrate.”
“You’ve just read the same page three times. You’refailingto concentrate. You might as well give up and do something that you never, ever fail at…”
Asami put down her book and peered at him over the rim of her glasses. “I cannot imagine what you mean.”
“I am willing to draw you a diagram. I know you like those.”
Asami laughed. She gave up on her work and came and sat on the bed beside him, stroking his loose curls from his face. Her fingers brushed against the ragged skin that covered most of his left side—the welts and contusions caused by experiments that had been done to him years ago when he was a soldier. When they’d first met, he’d hated them. He never let her touch them, had gone to drastic lengths to fix himself and—
Well. That didn’t matter right now. What mattered was that he was still here, and that he was finally able to let her touch him wherever.
And whenever.
Andoften.
Beau smiled, though only half of his mouth completed the action. He leant up and cupped her face. “Were you worrying about me again?”
“Actually, your latest test results were quite promising. No, I’m worried about Snowdrop and the others.”
“They aren’t late yet.”
