Chapter Nineteen

The rumors were spreading.

Maricela had resisted telling him the extent of them. Neither of them liked anything that dragged harsh reality into the moments they stole together. But Ivan couldn’t afford to hide from this reality.

People were scared of him.

Like most Riders, Ivan frequently found himself at the sprawling temple complex situated on the edge of the Rios estate. Memorials were held there, as well as initiations for new Riders. The Rios family and other members of the estate gathered there to celebrate the saints on their holy days, or in quiet moments to pray in the smaller, more intimate alcoves.

And Riders visited Del there every time they took a life. They sat in her chair and contemplated the gravity of the blood they’d spilled while Del commemorated their extended damnation on their skin.

The wing of the temple that housed Del’s students usually buzzed with activity. The younger girls ran through the halls, chasing each other from one lesson to the next. The older ones gathered in groups, whispering and laughing over their projects. And whenever a Rider showed up, all the ones old enough to flirt invariably did--even with Ivan, who never flirted back.

He didn’t mind their flirting, but he never particularly wanted it, either. So he was surprised to discover he missed it as he waited for Maricela, who’d disappeared into Grace’s room.

None of the acolytes rushed to him with wide, worshipful eyes. No one practiced awkwardly adorable pickup lines or stared at him for too long before dissolving into giggles with their friends. The students who did see him averted their eyes and hurried their steps, and the whispers they traded sounded somber. Even fearful.

Too many of the girls would have attended the ball. God only knew what stories they’d brought back--or how much the stories had grown in the telling. He was only getting the barest taste of censure and suspicion, and the muscles in his neck were already tight with strain.

He wasn’t entirely sure how his mother had survived years of this.

“Ready!” Maricela emerged from Grace’s room with a wide smile that faltered when she noticed two acolytes whispering at the end of the hall. She pinned them with a pointed look until they rushed off, chastened.

He had something his mother hadn’t: a protective Rios hovering next to him. “It’s okay,” he told her softly as they started for the stairs.

“No, it isn’t.” A muscle in her clenched jaw jumped. “If they don’t have anything better to do, they can pray.” Her voice lowered. “Pray I don’t find out what they were saying.”

The fierceness of her response made his chest ache. Ivan had never doubted that his fellow Riders would drop everything to have his back in a fight, but no one fretted over inconsequential slights. Maricela looked fully capable of wheeling back around to deliver a blistering lecture defending his honor, and that wouldn’t do a damn thing to kill the rumors.

It’d probably start a few new ones, though. Rumors Ivan couldn’t afford. “Come on,” he said, steering her toward the exit. “If we want to get there before it’s too crowded, we have to leave soon.”

She followed him without argument. “I can’t believe we’re actually going.”

Neither could he. It had taken him three days to satisfy himself that his security precautions were sufficient, three days where he’d been careful to make his arrangements outside of Maricela’s presence. It would spoil her glee in their secret, spontaneous trip to find out it was neither a secret nor spontaneous, and Ivan intended to protect her joy as ruthlessly as he did her safety.

Even with his plans, he was still walking a line. The only Rider who knew what he was about to do was Ashwin. And while Gideon hadn’t expressly forbidden this...

Ivan was under no illusions. His leader would not be thrilled to find out that Maricela’s trusted bodyguard was about to take her into the heart of the city.

The car he’d taken from the Riders’ garage sat in the gravel parking area behind the temple. It was inconspicuous, black with four doors and subtly concealed solar panels to recharge its near silent engine. It would blend in with the other vehicles in Eden while looking too mundane to present a tempting target for thieves.

Thieves wouldn’t know Ivan had stocked the trunk with enough gear to hold off a small army and survive a siege.

He opened the door for Maricela, and she climbed into the back with the linen bag Grace had given her tucked tight against her chest. The moment he slid behind the wheel, she leaned up over the back of the seat. “I forgot. I don’t have any money.”

“Don’t worry.” He started the car by pressing his thumb to the biometric key, then reached for the envelope he’d tucked between the seats. “Eden’s citizens mostly use their bar codes to transfer money, but they have these credit sticks, too. A lot more people are using them now that trade’s open with the sectors.”

“You thought of everything.”

“That’s my job.”

“Uh-huh. Hang on a second--” Her voice grew muffled, and he glanced in the rearview mirror just in time to see a flash of white as she pulled her dress over her head.

Ivan tightened his fingers around the steering wheel and forced his eyes to the winding road that led away from the estate. The tinted windows would keep anyone from seeing inside the car, but nothing protected Ivan from the soft brush of fabric over skin and the temptation to let his gaze drift back to the mirror as she stripped in the back seat.

“What’s it like?”

Her words were still muffled. He snuck another look at the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of her breasts hugged by her bra before her borrowed dress dropped down her body. “What, the market?”

“Eden.” She climbed over the seat, her skirt riding up to bare one thigh only inches from his face. “The city.”

Focus. He had to focus on the narrow road lined with sprawling apple trees, not the fact that he could smell the floral soap on her skin. “Like nothing you’ve ever experienced. You can see the skyscrapers from outside the walls, but it’s not the same as standing at the base of one. They’re massive.”

She settled in the passenger seat and smoothed her dress. It was dark, dark blue, with a high neck and sleeves banded with black lace. She looked like a prim and proper Eden housewife--except for her hair. No demure, modest woman in Eden would have shiny brown hair tumbling wildly around her shoulders. “What about the people? I’ve only met refugees.”

“They’re reserved. Controlled.” They reached the end of the long driveway, and Ivan turned onto the road that would take them to where the north gate had once stood. “Some of that’s changing now, though. You should know that better than anyone.”

“A lot of people are converting to the Prophet’s religion,” she agreed. “I suppose, after everything that’s happened, they need to believe in something.” Her hands curled into fists on the leather seats. “It makes me want to tell them the truth.”

“The truth?”

“That the Prophet was a hypocrite. An opportunist. A con man, when you get right down to it. Everything that came out of his mouth was garbage.” She turned toward him on the seat, drawing one leg beneath her. “I believe in what they teach at the temples--most of it, anyway. But only because Gideon and Isabela have tried to fix it.”

It was casual blasphemy of the highest order, the kinds of words that could still get a person shunned by their neighbors and all but exiled from the sector.

And Ivan had thought the same damn thing in his darkest moments. When he’d come home to find his mother curled in on herself again, too guilty and tired and numb to force herself into her daily routine.

He’d challenged her once, when he was thirteen and angry and starting to feel the bite of being a social pariah. He’d shouted at her that the Prophet was to blame for his daughter’s death. Ivan’s uncles may have kidnapped her, but the Prophet was the one who’d decided to sacrifice her, who’d thrown away his own blood because it wasn’t convenient to save her.

It was the only time in his life his mother had struck him. She’d slapped him across the face, the shock of it doing more damage than the blow itself. And then she’d grabbed him by the collar and told him to never, ever speak ill of the Prophet again.

He never had.

Maricela worried her lower lip with her teeth. “I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say out loud, even for me.”

“No,” he said slowly. “No, it’s just...I never expected to hear anyone say it.”

“I guess not.” She slid closer and laid her head on his shoulder. “But silence doesn’t change reality. The Prophet wasn’t a good man. Not like you.”

That, he couldn’t let stand. “I’m not a good man, Maricela.”

“Yes, you are.”

I kill people. I’m good at it. It’s all I’m good at.

The words stuck in his throat. He’d worked so hard to give her this--the illusion of freedom, a few moments where she didn’t have to be a Rios, where she wasn’t responsible for any souls or lives but her own. He couldn’t ruin it for her with his guilty confession.

He wished he had Zeke’s wit or Reyes’s clever charisma. His attempt to change the subject was awkward and obvious. “Well, one thing I’m definitely good at is bartering. People are scared of me. Zeke says I have resting murder face.”

Maricela laughed. “He’s just jealous.”

Ivan wasn’t sure jealousy was a concept Zeke comprehended. He was perpetually impressed with himself in an easy way that felt alien to Ivan. He wouldn’t have just accepted Maricela’s compliment. He would have shot back that he was a great man, and he would have meant it.

Maybe he was jealous of Zeke.

The first signs of civilization appeared ahead of them, the newest constructions on the edge of the inner sector. The border was creeping out faster than Ivan could ever remember, devouring the scrubby hills and empty expanses. Soon, it would be encroaching on the borders of the smaller family estates, and Gideon would have some hard choices to make.

Ivan couldn’t blame the people who wanted to flee the confines of the city. The closer they got to Eden, the narrower the roads became, and the taller the buildings climbed. It was claustrophobic here, this close to the city. And it only got worse as they drove onward.

For the first time in his life, he used words to distract himself. Not for the sound of his own voice, though--he craved the sound of hers. “Have you figured out what you’re going to buy yet?”

“Maybe nothing.” She shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t really need more stuff.”

His lips twitched. “Maybe wait until you see what kind of stuff they have to sell. Our markets don’t have anything like it.”

Her brows drew together and her nose wrinkled, as if the very suggestion that Sector One didn’t have anything and everything a person might want or need was offensive.

The tickling urge to smile only grew. “Sometimes it’s interesting. They have a lot of pre-Flare antiques. I’m hoping to find a new book for my mother.”

“Really? What does she like to read?”

“Old cookbooks. That’s what she does at the temple. She cooks.”

“Then we have to find some. I’ll help you look.”

This time, the sensation in his chest was too sharp to be an ache, and he finally recognized it. Years of numbness stretched between now and the last time he’d felt this, as a young boy in a cold, dark street, his face and hands pressed to the baker’s display window as his empty stomach rumbled.

Longing.

He ruthlessly forced it down as they rode through the open gates and past the empty checkpoint. He didn’t have time to brood. Until they were back on the estate, his total focus had to be on keeping Maricela safe.

Navigating the slow-moving traffic in the crowded Eden streets took plenty of focus on its own. He’d mapped out the route in advance, but maps failed to capture the sheer cluttered chaos of Eden. Glass buildings shot dozens of stories straight up, blocking the sun one moment and reflecting a thousand painfully bright rays of it in the next.

And the people. They seethed on the sidewalks and bolted across the street, and Ivan nearly ran four of them over by the time he maneuvered his way to the market’s parking deck.

Maricela stared silently out the windows, her eyes wide as she struggled to take it all in. Even once they were parked in the dark solitude of the deck, she twisted her hands in her borrowed skirt and said nothing.

Ivan slid his hand over hers. “If it’s too much, we can go right back out the gate.”

She shook her head. “I’m not scared, just a little nervous. But that’s silly, isn’t it?”

Eden had been the scary monster that sector parents used to frighten their children for generations. Sometimes he was surprised any of them managed to venture there. “No, not silly at all. But you’ll be with me, and I won’t let anything happen to you, okay?”

“It’s not that. It’s just...” She laid her hand on his cheek. “I’m realizing lately how very small my world has been.”

Her fingers were soft. Her skin smelled like her lotion, something vague and floral he couldn’t place and would never forget. He turned into her touch and brushed a kiss to her palm. “Let’s go make it bigger.”

Her eyes got even wider when they stepped out into the sunlight again, with no glass and steel between them and the rest of the city. Maricela clung to his arm, then slowly slid her hand down to twine her fingers with his.

No one stared. No one gave them a second glance except for one prim-looking matron dressed in silk and dripping jewels, who looked at their joined hands and loudly sniffed her disdain. She did the same thing when she passed a couple sitting on a nearby bench, fingers linked and knees touching.

Physical affection was still scorned by the upper classes of Eden, but a gentler sort of morality had trickled down to the middle class. Ivan could hold Maricela’s hand and attract nothing worse than passing disapproval--disapproval no one would have dared to show if they knew who Maricela was.

He tugged on her hand to guide her down the sidewalk. “How does it feel to have rich ladies snubbing you?”

She laughed, delighted. “Better than I dreamed.”

“Good.”

Eden had changed in the nine months since the revolution. Not that Ivan had been inside the walls more than a handful of times before they’d fallen, but all the surviving Riders had been there in the aftermath. People had scurried about their business, their faces wary and suspicious. Those who weren’t wary had been dazed by the sudden freedom.

A lifetime of repression wasn’t fixed overnight. But he and Maricela passed a park where children chased each other and laughed, and when they reached the edge of the market, he was struck by the sound of it, a low rumble of people shouting greetings and luring customers and bartering.

It was starting to feel alive.

There weren’t many booths set up in the small square that formed the main marketplace. Folding tables were more common, the kind that could be broken down and moved at a moment’s notice. They spilled out down the streets leading to and from the square, lining the sidewalks so thickly that you could only walk on the street itself.

Maricela hesitated by a table laden with tech, mostly tablets with flaws like dinged edges or cracked screens, then moved on to a booth stocked with little pies baked in disposable tins. She covered one whole side of the square that way, studying each table with a frown of concentration, as if understanding the goods for sale was the key to understanding Eden itself.

She wasn’t entirely wrong. The markets in Sector One overflowed with handmade goods and crafts. Gideon might not frown on tech the way his grandfather had, but only a few dealers had sprung up over the past decade, and almost no one sold used or refurbished junk. There might as well have not been a world before the Flares.

Eden’s markets were the opposite. Every table sagged with reminders of the world that had been. Bright digital signs flashed words like antique and vintage and authentic over displays cluttered with the trash of a forgotten world, buffed and polished until the memories shone.

When Maricela finally stopped, it was at a cluttered table on the north side of the square. But instead of choosing something on display, she bent to retrieve a large book from a box beside the table. It was bound with leather, worn but not scratched or torn.

When she opened it, four metal rings inside held pages and pages of old photographs, warped with age. She flipped through them slowly, lingering over snapshots of smiling faces and sleeping animals, thick forests and tall, glittering buildings. There was a small inscription beneath each picture, faded and often hopelessly cryptic.

Aria & Skylar

NYC summer trip

Big Bear - 30th birthday

“Oh, you don’t want that.” The older woman behind the table waved a hand at her. “That’s junk, brought in by one of the scavengers. Haven’t had time to pull out the old pictures yet.” She picked up a thin rectangle the size of her palm and activated the digital screen with a flick of her fingers. “This’ll hold ten thousand pictures, and I have ‘em loaded with foreign places you have to see to believe. Huge mountains, vast oceans, trees so big three people couldn’t put their arms around them...”

Maricela barely glanced up. “How much?”

“A hundred credits. A real steal, if you ask me. How else can you see the world?”

“I’ll take it.” Maricela closed the book and ran her hand over the cover. “If you throw in the album.”

“Done,” the woman said so quickly that Ivan assumed she’d been prepared to be haggled far down from the asking price. She brought out a little bar-code reader with a slot for a cred stick and typed in the total. “Here you go.”

Maricela pulled one of the credit sticks he’d given her out of her pocket. She fumbled a little with fitting it into the reader, but after a moment, the machine beeped, and the vendor smiled widely as she tucked it back under her table. She came back up with a crinkled brown bag and held it open so Maricela could deposit the album inside. Then she slipped the digital photo in on top. “Come back if you want another set!”

Maricela took the bag, and Ivan guided her away from the table. They found a free spot in the middle of the square to stand, and for a moment she just stared, her wide eyes taking in the bustle of people, the colorful displays, the sunlight glinting off the glass windows of the nearby buildings.

It was probably the first time she’d been anonymous in a crowd. His lingering pangs of longing transformed into a fierce joy that he’d been able to give her this. “What do you want to do next?”

“I think...” She clutched the bag to her chest, the brown paper crinkling in her grip. “I want to see the City Center.”

Even the words seemed to leach warmth from the sun. The City Center was where the final battle between the sectors and Eden had culminated. The place where dozens of Riders had given their lives to cut a path through the corrupt councilman’s defenders.

Judging by the sudden seriousness in her eyes, Maricela knew that. She wanted, maybe needed, to see the place where the men she had known had sacrificed themselves to build a better world. Their memorials would always live on in the pictures painted in the quiet sanctum in the heart of the Rios family temple, but the City Center was still hallowed ground.

He found her free hand with his and twined their fingers together again, needing the warmth and contact more than he wanted to admit. “Okay.”

»»» § «««

If you didn’t already know, it would be hard to tell from the City Center that war had ravaged Eden.

There were subtle signs, telltale things like patched spots in walls where the fresh brick still gleamed and the mortar hadn’t had time to darken with exposure. Maricela even caught sight of a few tiny craters in the buildings that could only have been left by bullets. But the vast majority of the damage had been repaired. Erased.

Then there was the memorial. It looked almost like a gazebo, an octagon with a large roof hanging over stone walls that didn’t quite meet each other. The spaces between them served as the only entrances to the heart of the memorial.

Inside was dark, cool, the heavy stone blocking out the midday summer sun. Each wall was dedicated to a sector, fitted with a flat screen that scrolled the names of their people who had died in the war. In the center of the room stood a fountain with a ninth screen affixed to its base. The walls and the fountain were covered and surrounded by pictures, bundles of flowers, and messages. Desperate attempts to personalize the losses, or perhaps even to do the impossible--to reach out to the dead one last time.

The only exception was the wall dedicated to Sector One. Its screen didn’t scroll with names, and no one had left bouquets of wilting lilies or goodbye letters. Instead, the screen bore one static sentence--In honor of Gideon’s fallen Riders--and the wall had been painted.

Maricela recognized Del’s work instantly. Skillful brushstrokes covered the entire wall with the skull and tree that comprised the Riders’ tattoo, only instead of having ravens circling, there were dozens of brightly colored leaves drifting down from the stark, bare branches.

“One for each.” Ivan reached out to touch a leaf. “So many of us died that day.”

And Ivan could so easily have been one of them--unnamed, memorialized here only with a single leaf smaller than her hand. Her stomach twisted, and she had to take a moment to focus on her breathing to quell a sob. “What was it like?”

It took Ivan forever to answer. “Bad. It was just...bad. Our job was to break through the Special Tasks forces who were protecting the building where Peterson had holed up. It was a lot of chaos. A lot of noise.”

Maricela had begged to come along that day. Not to the front lines, of course--she’d only have gotten in the way--but the allied sector forces had set up an aid station just outside the city, a place to treat mild injuries and stabilize more critical patients. She could have helped there, but Gideon had been implacable in his denials.

So she’d stayed behind, secreted away in the bunker beneath the palace with Isabela’s family, while Gideon and Mad and the rest of the Riders rode out to fight. She tried to imagine doing that now--sitting in tense silence, waiting for her loved ones to return.

For Ivan to return.

The memorial was suddenly claustrophobically close. With the eight stone slabs blocking out most of the sun and air, it felt like a mausoleum. A tomb. She turned and half-stumbled outside, where she could breathe again.

She still had to lean against the outer wall for support. “Were you scared?”

Ivan leaned against the wall beside her. “Not for most of it,” he said finally. “But there was one moment...” His fingers started to curl into a fist, and he slowly flexed them. “A Special Tasks soldier had his gun trained on your cousin’s back. I didn’t think I’d get to Mad in time.”

Maricela blinked. “But he was fine. What happened?”

“I tackled him.” Ivan exhaled roughly. “Half a second slower, and we both probably would have been dead. But somehow I got there.”

No one had told her about it, no doubt to save her from worrying. But Ivan’s grudging admission had a deeper import, one he didn’t even seem to realize. “You saved his life.”

“No. I mean, yes, but not... It wasn’t like my father or anything. I didn’t take a bullet for him.”

He had such a narrow view of what it meant to protect the Rios family, and it did more than frighten her. It broke her heart. “You don’t have to die to save someone, Ivan.”

He looked away. His gaze drifted across the open square in front of the towering City Center building, and she couldn’t tell if he was seeing the people hurrying about their business, or the battle he’d fought. “I know. In my head, I know. But my mother...”

She reached for his hand and waited.

“It wasn’t her fault.” The words held the forceful edge of repetition, of something he’d said too many times. “Everything she went through was bad enough. She lost my dad when I was a baby. And then her brothers turned traitor. The sector shunned her.”

He gripped her hand harder and closed his eyes--but only for a moment. Even now, he couldn’t stop scanning their surroundings, watching for danger. “Kora was the one who saw it. She called it major depressive disorder. Some sort of chemical imbalance in the brain. She ran a bunch of tests and had the guys in Five fabricate a custom implant.”

“Is it working?”

“Like magic. Like she’s a totally different person.” His sudden laugh was edged with pain. “All those years, I thought I was taking care of her. Covering for her when it got bad, making sure no one ever found out. In my teens, I resented her for it. And she just needed help. Real help. I’m the reason she never got it.”

The lump in her throat made it hard to speak. “Ivan, that’s not true. You were a child. What could you have done?”

“Maybe nothing. I don’t know.” He finally looked at her. “But it makes it harder, do you understand? All the stuff she told me when she was in the dark places. She ground it into my head over and over that the only way to be good was to be like my father. To die for the family her brothers had betrayed. And it wasn’t her fault, but it still...”

It still hurt. She could hear it in his voice, see it on his face--along with a simmering frustration, maybe even a hint of anger. But he couldn’t be angry with his mother, a woman who’d only wanted the best for him, whose only crime was being sick.

Maricela stepped closer. “You did the best you could. So did she. She thought she was telling you the truth. She just...happened to be wrong, because she wasn’t well.”

A breeze caught her hair and tugged it across her face. When he reached up to smooth it back, his warm fingertips lingered on her cheek. “I saved Mad’s life,” he said, as if testing out how the words felt.

“Yes. Your father saved Adriana, and you saved her son.” It was the kind of irresistibly poetic parallel that people wrote songs and plays about. “They’re going to make you a saint.”

He stared at her, unblinking. “What?”

“Sainthood, Ivan. There must be plans in place already.”

The realization swept over him slowly. His furrowed brow gave way to widening eyes. Clear. Bright. Joyous. But she only had seconds to savor it before something dark intruded, sinking over him until the light of the moment vanished.

Glimpsing that light made the darkness even worse. “What is it?”

He shook his head and pushed away from the wall, tugging her after him. “Nothing. It’s a lot to take in. I need to think about it.”

She dug in her heels. He was already overwhelmed, and there had to be a better time and place for grand declarations, but she couldn’t hold it in any longer. “None of it changes anything, not for me. Whether you’re a saint or a Rider or just Ivan, I like you anyway.” She swallowed hard. “I love you.”

He turned to her slowly, his expression unreadable. “Maricela...”

Don’t. She bit back the word. She’d begged him to talk to her, and she couldn’t stop him now.

They were standing in the shadow of the memorial. He cupped her cheek, tilting her head back so she stared up into his eyes. “I still can’t give you forever. I’m a Rider. I took oaths. I have a duty.”

It should have sounded like he was letting her down easy. Instead, all she could hear was what he hadn’t said yet. “But?”

“All my life, I’ve only had one mission. One goal. I’ve been numb for years.” His thumb ghosted across her lower lip. “You’re the first thing I’ve ever...felt.”

Heartbreak and elation, all rolled into one quiet confession. “If that means you want to keep feeling me, I’ll take it.”

He smiled. “I wouldn’t know how to stop.”

“You don’t have to.” She wound her arms around his neck. “I’m right here.”

Ivan kissed her there beside the memorial. It was a bittersweet thing, to be so happy in a place that had seen so much death, but wasn’t that what the Riders fought and died for all the time? They gave their lives so that other people could carry on, keep living. Find their joy whenever and wherever they could.

Maybe one moment of pure, blissful peace wasn’t just the best way to commemorate the friends they’d lost.

Maybe it was the only way.