Jesus Christ. Just throw me in my casket.
“Hey,” I urge in a soft voice. “We’re almost at the drop-off.”
Taylor grumbles, licking her lips as she blinks herself awake. Acutely aware of our proximity, I stay stone-still as she orients herself again. Two big eyes focus on my face, then widen in silent alarm. Everything is suddenly too much and desperately not enough. Those stupidly beautiful eyes meet mine, and my brain turns beautifully stupid. Not even a sentence could fit in the air between our lips.
Please, kiss me again and I could die right here.
Then the car abruptly stops.
And Taylor pops away from me, breathless.
And I’m pretty sure I could kill the driver with only my glare, but my bare hands would do. Taylor can’t escape me, pinned between our gear and myself, but she cannot look me in the eyes.
Ekaterina smiles at us in the rearview mirror. “Home sweet home,” she says with a cheeriness unbowed by my intense scowl. “For me, anyway.”
We’re near the border of Salt Lake City. It’s a beautiful city, all purple mountains’ majesty and waves of grain, or however it went. Ekaterina escorts us into a makeshift OrPro headquarters they jammed into the husk of a sports equipment store. Zealous soldiers swarm Taylor as she tries to eat a sandwich, eager to bask in the glow of her proximity to power and volley questions about Theia and Detroit and Dunn. Visibly uncomfortable but untouchable through the crowd of soldiers, she fields their inquiries with the kind of regal calm you’d expect from someone better bred. It’s a combination of Theia’s guiding hand and a power that is her own, an imperious accessibility in which she comes off as ordinary despite being anything but.
Picking at my dinner ration, I keep my distance but also keep my attention on her. She peers over her shoulder at me, apologetic and flustered. My heart skips as I wave away her worry, smiling dopily at the adoration of her peers. It’s this casual interaction that hits me like a cold slap.
I am in love with her. And it is going to kill me. And I am going to let it.
17
The sky takes on the palette of Arizona itself—beige, yellow, and orange—bleeding together like watercolors. It is unimpeded by tall skyscrapers; the structures here remain low to the ground to escape the relentless heat. Here, suburbs bustle in a way many outer cities do not in most places, not with the majority of wealth in the cities proper. Like their native lizards and snakes, wealth here slithered out from the city centers and back into the population. Stores are open, roads cheerfully crowded with traffic, and far less military than I’ve seen anywhere this populated. You can’t turn a block in Manhattan without bumping into a Force member, but all I’ve seen since we crossed the border are tanned, affable citizens.
Miles stretch like a lazy garden cat, sleepy and sprawling. We enter and exit the only city in the state worth noting, quickly losing ourselves in lonelier desert. As the sun settles in for its nightly slumber, Taylor slows down as we approach an unimpressive neighborhood of gray buildings.
“This is it?” No attempt on my part is made to disguise the snobbishness in my voice. Wolfshield fancies herself atechnological messiah and, so far, this place hasn’t lived up to that expectation. It’s normal, bordering on mediocre.
“Yeah, this is it,” Taylor says, voice far away again. We arm ourselves lightly and start down a long road toward another rectangular, gray building. About halfway between our car and our destination, three people emerge from a windowed checkpoint hut in the center of the road. With a frustrated sigh, Taylor lifts her arms and nods for me to do the same.
“Who’s that?” a man calls, strangely informal.
“Eos, lieutenant general from the Order of Prometheus,” Taylor replies. “Leader Wolfshield is expecting us.”
“And you?” A woman points a gun at me. Rude.
“Luciana Piccolo. I’m…with them too, I guess.”
The third of them laughs. “No shit? They said Piccolo’s daughter was coming but I thought they were kidding.”
“Would that be considered a funny joke here?” I inquire flatly.
The trio lowers their weapons. “We’ll take you inside. Welcome to the Den.”
As we get closer, I can’t help but chuckle under my breath. Their uniforms are a shimmering gray with triangular white patches on their chest plates. Leader Wolfshield’s dressed her soldiers like wolves. She is committed to a brand, I’ll give her that.
“So, this is the famous Eos,” the woman says. “I thought you’d be bigger.”
“The way Hunter talks about you, I expected you to be six feet tall and come flying in here with a cape,” another adds on.
Taylor perks up. “You talked to her?”
“Well, yeah.” They chuckle at her surprise. “What did you think, Leader Wolfshield locked her in a dungeon?”
“I don’t know. She did abduct her from our home.”
Their chuckles die out, and one of them shrugs. “Guess that’s true. But you don’t need to be worried. We aren’t like the other regions.”