Page 116 of The Mask Falling

We stayed in that position for a while. Slowly, I released a long-held breath.

“You learn fast.”

He lowered his hand from my face. “Was it right?”

“Perfect,” I said. A smile tempted my lips. “All right. As far as apologies go, that was impressive.” I patted his chest. “Forgiven.”

“Hm.”

Another silence, not quite the same as the last. Even when he took his forehead from mine, I kept my hand over his heart. After a moment, he covered it again, his palm warm over my chilled fingers.

“You once asked me why I kissed you in the Guildhall.”

He was rarely this direct. It disarmed me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Part of me feared, before that night. That I was a fool for wanting to know you. For seeing you in everything, everywhere I turned,” he said. “I thought it was a sentence. A haunting. Until I realized it was a gift to be haunted by you, Paige.”

“That was when you realized.” I looked into his eyes. “In the Guildhall.”

“Yes.”

The first touch of our lips behind the crimson drapes. The touch that should have been impossible. A collision of worlds, born of chaos and breaking, that had somehow been quiet as a moth taking flight.

“Perhaps I haunted you. But I’m not a ghost just yet,” I said softly. “You can touch me.”

My hand slid up his chest, until my fingertips brushed his collarbone. All I had to do was tilt my head up, and our lips would meet again.

I want you.

Words I had whispered when I was soft with drink. I willed myself to say them again now, with all the strength of a clear mind, but pride stopped me. Instead, I leaned into him.

Arcturus studied my face as if it were written in a long-extinct language. He traced the warm inside of my wrist, following the tendon—idle and intent, sure and soft. A touch that both explored and remembered. Our auras twined, like branches growing into one another.

A familiar dreamscape gleamed into range. I pulled away, and at once, Arcturus let go.

“Ducos,” was all I said, and left him to the keeping of the moon.

****

Ducos arrived in a raincoat, hair tightly bound in a chignon. She smelled of cigarettes and roses. As I led her into the parlor, I willed Ivy not to emerge. To Ducos, she would register as a rogue element—a living reminder of my old life.

“Flora,” Ducos said. “I understand Cordier carried out a pleural tap. How do you feel?”

“Sore,” I admitted, “but better than I did. Drink?”

She paused to consider. “I could use a coffee. But I will make it.”

In the kitchen, she set about preparing it. I leaned against the counter and waited until she handed me a cup. She took hers black and strong, with a thick cream of foam.

“Command has delivered your next instructions. First, however, I will keep my word.” She pulled out one of the chairs and sat. “Tell me about your insurgent militia, and I will consider how—if—we might be of use to one another.”

I gave her a brief rundown of our numbers, our finances, and our main victory against Scion—the destruction of Senshield. I told her about Glym and Eliza, who were ruling in my absence, extolling them as level-headed and decisive leaders who would be willing to liaise with other organizations that stood against Scion. Ducos listened without interrupting.

“Your numbers are impressive,” she said, once I was finished, “but the Mime Order has not yet attempted to confront Scion. It has only helped clairvoyants to elude it. So it is not, in point of fact, a militia.”

“We deactivated Senshield.”

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