The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (41 page)

“Oh, I’m sure.”

With no effort at all,
he covers my body with his. A thrill goes through me when his mouth
meets mine and my hands, out of control, dip under his shirt. His
body is a warm weight pressing me into the mattress, his kisses
insistent and greedy, his every touch adoring. Humming under the
surface of this superficial lust is the knowledge that Yosiah loves
me, that I love him. It’s like all the other times we’ve kissed and
it’s like none of them. I realise with neither of us holding back
this time, we’re not going to stop.

I break away,
breathing hard. “My brother and sister,” I say.

He hovers over me, his
face so close I feel every breath. Frustration is written in his
lowered brows, his tense jaw. I know the exact feeling. I raise
myself on my elbows and kiss him without really meaning to. My
heart feels twice as full as it should.

“Damn you,” he growls,
pulling back.

“There’s a spare room
at the end,” I say, already pulling him off the bed. “Wait.” I put
both hands on his chest, jumping a little at how quick he’s
breathing. “Do you have anything?”

“Any what?”

I hiss, “Condoms,
Yosiah. I don’t exactly want another kid to look after.”

He looks completely
and utterly floored.

“Oh, fine, wait here.”
I find my jacket on the carpet and dig around in an inside pocket
until I find a foil square. I found it in a bowl of them in the
Guardians infirmary and pocketed a couple. I damn myself for not
taking the whole bowl.

“Wha—”

I lean onto my tiptoes
and kiss his bewildered mouth. “Stole it from the Guardians.”

“But. Were you
planning—?”

“Enough talking.” I
grab him by the hand and pull him into the hallway. We stumble to a
halt against a wall. His hands find my hips, my mouth finds
his.

“Wait.” His eyes
reflect my own anger at another delay but I have to ask this. “What
is this—to you? I need to know we want the same thing. I don’t want
to be a one night girl, Yosiah. I don’t want to lose you because of
this.”

“You’re not a one
night girl.” He kisses the bridge of my nose. “You know you’re more
than that to me. You’re my best friend, my Miya. My girl for every
day of the rest of my life, or until you’re bored of me.”

My stomach is swimming
with a sickly warmth. My cheeks are hot. “I won’t get bored of
you.”

“And you won’t lose
me. Not because of this. Not because of anything.”

Our next kiss is hot
and Goddamned heavenly.

“Are
you sure?” Yosiah stills me with hands on either side of my face.
“Are you
sure
,
Miya? About this? About me? You don’t have to, not just because I
love you. We can stop.”

If
my heart was full before, it just exploded into a hundred shards
of
Siah, Siah, Siah.
“I’m sure,” I say. I wind my arms around his neck, my fingers
in his hair. “I’m really sure. Are you?”

“I love you.” His
hands slide around my waist. “I’m sure.”

There’s still a trill
of fear in me at the thought of being fully, honestly open with
him. At being intimate. But my fears are drowned out by how much I
want this, how much I want to be with Yosiah. I urge him down the
corridor to the spare room and shut the door behind us.

***

Yosiah

11:29. 07.11.2040. The
Free Lands, Southlands, Plymouth.

There’s a lavish brick
construction at the side of the road with balconies of white stone,
columns holding up the upper tiers, and benches placed every now
and then. I’m not sure how effective it is as a building, since it
has no roof, walls, or obvious purpose, but I appreciate the
benches.

I sit on one of them,
hunched over, watching the sea dance in the distance. I need to sit
and think. To figure out a way to handle the fear of losing Miya at
every turn, of losing myself and becoming something I don’t want to
be.

I try to encase myself
in the heat and the surety of last night, with Miya above me, the
press of her skin on mine a fiery comfort, but it won’t stay. I
keep returning to that stranger, the one who said my name and
vanished. I can’t think of anything but that voice no matter how
badly I want to recall the precise feel of Miya’s mouth creating
possessive marks across my chest. I hear it even now, like a
ghost.

My heart jumps into my
throat at a dark figure in my peripheral vision.

“Vian,” says my
sister. “It’s only me.”

I let out my breath.
If I had lost control—

“Don’t,” she says.
“Don’t think about things that never happened.”

I scowl at her. “How
did you know what I was thinking?”

“You’re my brother. I
always know what you’re thinking.” She touches the back of my head
with a gloved hand, looking at me with an expression I thought I
would never see again, because I thought I would never see her
again. It presses down on me again, forcing me breathless with the
realisation that Kari is alive. That she’s been out here all this
time. Looking for me.

I become younger
again. I’m not twenty anymore. I’m the fourteen year old boy thrown
out by his parents because he wasn’t acting the way they wanted him
to. The fourteen year old boy who loved and lost his sister less
than a week after that. The fourteen year old boy alone in the
world, with no conceivable idea of living without her.

My
eyes are pricking, my throat swelling with the tears I will
not
let myself
cry.

“Control it,” Kari says, low. “You can control your emotions,
Vian.
Nothing has the power to break you
unless you let it.”

I
exhale, floored by another emotion, the one that keeps me fighting.
I remember saying those exact words to Miya what feels like a
lifetime ago, when I watched all the strength in her be replaced by
a smaller, timid emotion. She looked lost. So lost—God, what could
make her look like that? Miya. Unbreakable, untameable
Miya—
my
Miya—lost? Unconceivable. But I saw it, I watched it take
over her, and it was the worst thing to happen to me since the
Fall.

I
would love—a vicious, avenging sort of love, different to the
warmth and devotion I feel for Miya—to hunt down whatever villain
made her look that way, and I would love to tear them limb from
limb until they were nothing but a burst of atoms strewn across the
air, until they were
nothing
.

“Enough.” Kari’s touch
becomes a sharp grip of my hair. “Find control.”

She’s right. This isn’t me. My emotions are out of hand. I
don’t
really
want
to hunt down a monster from Miya’s past and tear them apart. Well,
I do, but this is different. I would usually
think
about killing them but this is
intense conviction. This is meaning it.

I breathe out,
shutting my eyes, and I find control. That one blinding spark that
gives me clarity. Justice, I’m sure some people would call it.
Others might call it kindness or necessity. For me it’s remembering
my past, remembering what I don’t want to. It’s promising to make
everything right.

Revenge.

10:18. 08.11.2040. The
Free Lands, Southlands, Plymouth.

This is our last day
in Plymouth and I can’t say I’m sad to leave it. I never formed any
attachment to the guest house or the people—though they’re coming
with us to Bharat so it wouldn’t matter if I had. The only person
from this town I care about is my brother, Wes, and he’s really
from Forgotten London.

I stand with him at
the side of the road, watching the planes fly over the sea and
inland. Bharat’s aircrafts have arrived. We’re getting off this
wretched island. Finally.

“Ready to leave?” Wes
asks, noticing my expression.

“You have no
idea.”

He watches the silver
aircrafts, amusement wrinkling his brow. “She’d have hated this.”
He clarifies, “My Lia,” though I knew exactly who he was talking
about. “All this moving about from place to place, the new people,
the strange transport. It’s better she died when she did.” He
shoves his hands in his pockets. “She loved that town. I know she’d
have hated what happened to it.”

Thalia did love
Forgotten London. She might have moaned and whined about
everything, but she loved it more than any of us did. I think she
was the only one of us who was genuinely happy there.

“It’s better she
didn’t have to watch it Fall.”

I
think about that—
really
think about it. I decide he’s right. The people
that died in the Fall of Forgotten London should still be alive,
but is this a life worth living? Maybe it will be if the Guardians
wrestle control from States. But that’s a pretty small
maybe.

I start to think a
little differently about the dead. Thalia should be here with us,
Marrin should be here, Alba should be here, but they’re probably
better off where they are. At least there’s no pain, no certain
failure, no excruciating grief.

“Thanks,” I say.

Wes looks at me with a
lopsided frown. “For what?”

“That doesn’t matter.
Just thanks.”

“Well.” He rumples his
sandy hair. “You’re welcome.”

I can’t see the
aircrafts anymore. They must have landed.

“At least we’re all
back together now,” Wes says, carrying on a conversation he began
in his head.

“Except for John,” I
point out.

“He’s a madman.” Wes
catches my arm. “Has he told you what he’s trying to do?”

“Yeah.”

“And you believe him?
About the President jumping through time?”

I scratch the back of
my neck. “I wouldn’t have before but—I have this … friend. He’s not
from this time.”

Wes shakes his head,
laughing. “I love how casually you say that. You have a friend from
the future?”

“The past, actually.
He’s from the 1800s. We’re not sure how he ended up here but it has
something to do with a bracelet.”

“A bracelet? That’s
anticlimactic.”

I give him a confused
look.

“John thought the
President had a building where a whole room jumped. He couldn’t
think of another way. He said it was probably armoured, impossible
to enter, and controlled by a team of States scientists. But if
your friend got here with just a bracelet, John has it all wrong.
That’s what he’s doing now. He hasn’t told me that, of course—he’s
being cryptic—but I’m sure he’s looking for the building.”

“Does the President
have a bracelet? I haven’t paid any attention.”

“No.” Wes scratches
his chin—a familiar habit that makes my heart hurt. “It would be
something he’d carry at all times. He wouldn’t want to risk being
without it if he needed to jump. I think he’s a very paranoid man,
the President.”

“Paranoid’s not
exactly the word I’d use,” I spit, “for a man who beat his own son,
sentences whole towns to death, and let loose sixteen diseases to
kill everyone but himself.”

Wes frowns, appraising
me. “You have a lot of animosity for him. More than John.”

“So?”

“Don’t harbour it,
Honour,” he says urgently. “Don’t hold on to hate. It’s not good
for you. You love your sister and your friends and us. Hold on to
that. It’s healthier.”

“I don’t know how to
let go of hate.”

Wes squeezes my arm.
“Promise me you’ll try.”

“I’ll try,” I say.
“Stop worrying about me. I’m gonna be fine.”

He gives me a smile
for my words even though they’re weightless.

***

Horatia

13:01. 08.11.2040. The
Free Lands, Southlands, Plymouth.

There’s a traitor
amongst the Guardians. I’ve been silently watching everyone for
weeks now and nobody notices me. I should have seen the betrayal in
their eyes, the intention in their fake smiles. But instead I’ve
been too wrapped up in my haze of loss and grief and guilt.

I should have known
Marrin would stay behind.

I
should have
known
.

I might have only had
a few precious weeks with him but I spent every minute of every day
by his side, and I know each expression that crosses his face. I
should have seen and known that he would turn his Official trick on
me, make me sleep, while he stayed behind in a falling building in
a falling world. It was suicidal and heroic and one hundred percent
Marrin.

I should have stopped
him. But I didn’t. And now he’s dead. It suffocates me every time
that thought strikes through my mind, so severe I can’t focus on
anything else. That was how my silence started—I couldn’t think of
anything but the pain in my heart, couldn’t string together words
that made sense, so I kept quiet. And it helped, for a time. But I
think the time for silences and secret pains is over.

Honour’s hand seeks
mine, clutching hard, echoing my own fear. I can feel my pulse
spiking in my wrist, a muscle in my leg twitching from how tense
I’m holding myself. There’s no hint of remorse in the traitor’s
expression, no suggestion that she feels even the slightest guilt
for bringing down a swarm of Officials on us.

“Where are they
attacking the town?” Timofei demands, rolling up the sleeves of his
white shirt, making sure they’re straight and even and meticulous.
He’s a perfectionist in everything else; he’ll be a perfectionist
in dealing with this traitor.

We should leave but my
feet are planted to the floor.

“What’s he doing?” Wes
asks. His face is red and splotchy and afraid.