“Yes, love?”

I try to say more but my mouth won’t listen.

“Are you asleep now?” he asks.

Yes, I think. I don’t know. Yes.

I nod.

“That’s good,” he says quietly. He lifts my head, pulls my hair away from my neck so my face falls more easily onto the pillow. He shifts so he’s beside me on the bed. “You need to sleep more,” he says.

I nod again, curling onto my side. He pulls the blankets up around my arms.

He kisses the curve of my shoulder. My shoulder blade. Five kisses down my spine, one softer than the next. “I will be here every night,” he whispers, his words so soft, so tortured, “to keep you warm. I will kiss you until I can’t keep my eyes open.”

My head is caught in a cloud.

Can you hear my heart? I want to ask him.

I want you to make a list of all of your favorite things, and I want to be on it.

But I’m falling asleep so fast I’ve lost my grasp on reality, and I don’t know how to move my mouth. Time has fallen all around me, wrapped me in this moment.

And Warner is still talking. So quietly, so softly. He thinks I’m asleep now. He thinks I can’t hear him.

“Did you know,” he’s whispering, “that I wake up, every morning, convinced you’ll be gone?”

Wake up, I keep telling myself. Wake up. Pay attention.

“That all of this,” he says, “these moments, will be confirmed as some kind of extraordinary dream? But then I hear you speak to me,” he says. “I see the way you look at me and I can feel how real it is. I can feel the truth in your emotions, and in the way you touch me,” he whispers, the back of his hand brushing my cheek.

My eyes flicker open. I blink once, twice.

His lips are set in a soft smile.

“Aaron,” I whisper.

“I love you,” he says.

My heart no longer fits in my chest.

“Everything looks so different to me now,” he says. “It feels different. It tastes different. You brought me back to life.” He’s quiet a moment. “I have never known this kind of peace. Never known this kind of comfort. And sometimes I am afraid,” he says, dropping his eyes, “that my love will terrify you.”

He looks up, so slowly, gold lashes lifting to reveal more sadness and beauty than I’ve ever seen in the same moment. I didn’t know a person could convey so much with just one look. There’s extraordinary pain in him. Extraordinary passion.

It takes my breath away.

I take his face in my hands and kiss him, so slowly.

His eyes fall closed. His mouth responds to mine. His hands reach up to pull me closer and I stop him.

“No,” I whisper. “Don’t move.”

He drops his hands.

“Lie back,” I whisper.

He does.

I kiss him everywhere. His cheeks. His chin. The tip of his nose and the space between his eyebrows. All across his forehead and along his jawline. Every inch of his face. Small, soft kisses that say so much more than I ever could. I want him to know how I feel. I want him to know it the way only he can, the way he can sense the depth of emotion behind my movements. I want him to know and never doubt.

And I want to take my time.

My mouth moves down to his neck and he gasps, and I breathe in the scent of his skin, take in the taste of him and I run my hands down his chest, kissing my way across and down the line of his torso. He keeps trying to reach for me, keeps trying to touch me, and I have to tell him to stop.

“Please,” he says, “I want to feel you—”

I gentle his arms back down. “Not yet. Not now.”

My hands move to his pants. His eyes fly open.

“Close your eyes,” I have to tell him.

“No.” He can hardly speak.

“Close your eyes.”

He shakes his head.

“Fine.”

I unbutton his pants. Unzip.

“Juliette,” he breathes. “What—”

I’m pulling off his pants.

He sits up.

“Lie down. Please.”

He’s staring at me, eyes wide.

He finally falls back.

I tug his pants off all the way. Toss them to the floor.

He’s in his underwear.

I trace the stitching on the soft cotton, following the lines on the overlapping pieces of his boxer-briefs as they intersect in the middle. He’s breathing so fast I can hear him, can see his chest moving. His eyes are squeezed shut. His head tilted back. His lips parted.

I touch him again, so gently.

He stifles a moan, turns his face into the pillows. His whole body is trembling, his hands clutching at the sheets. I run my hands down his legs, gripping them just above his knees and inching them apart to make room for the kisses I trail up the insides of his thighs. My nose skims his skin.

He looks like he’s in pain. So much pain.

I find the elastic waist of his underwear. Tug it down.

Slowly.

Slowly.

The tattoo is sitting just below his hip bone.

h e l l  i s  e m p t y

a n d  a l l  t h e  d e v i l s  a r e  h e r e

I kiss my way across the words.

Kissing away the devils.

Kissing away the pain.

FIFTY-NINE

I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows propped up on my knees, face dropped into my hands.

“Are you ready?” he asks me.

I look up. Stand up. Shake my head.

“Breathe, sweetheart.” He stands in front of me, slips his hands around my face. His eyes are bright, intense, steady, and so full of confidence. In me. “You are magnificent. You are extraordinary.”

I try to laugh and it comes out all wrong.

Warner leans his forehead against mine. “There is nothing to fear. Nothing to worry about. Grieve nothing in this transitory world,” he says softly.

I tilt back, a question in my eyes.

“It’s the only way I know how to exist,” he says. “In a world where there is so much to grieve and so little good to take? I grieve nothing. I take everything.”

I stare into his eyes for what feels like forever.

He leans into my ear. Lowers his voice. “Ignite, my love. Ignite.”

Warner has called for an assembly.

He says it’s a fairly routine procedure, one wherein the soldiers are required to wear a standard black uniform. “And they will be unarmed,” Warner said to me.

Kenji and Castle and everyone else are coming to watch, care of Kenji’s invisibility, but I’m the only one who’s going to speak today. I told them I wanted to lead. I told them I’d be willing to take the first risk.