The Darkest Legacy

I smiled.

“No,” he said, groaning. “What’s the English phrase?”

“Your ears were burning,” I said, then thought better of it. “Actually…you know what? I don’t think there is an exact match.”

He let his head fall back, clearly frustrated. “I’ve been here for so long. How do I still mess these things up?”

“You’re not messing them up,” I said. “You’re expanding our idiom list with some fun new variations.”

Roman gave me a dubious look.

“Really,” I promised.

“When it happens, it makes me…” The sky flashed with the storm, capturing him for a heartbeat in perfect, gorgeous light. I could see the way his throat bobbed as he swallowed, how he angled his face away, as if to partly hide it. “It reminds me that I wasn’t supposed to ever be here.”

I watched him until he turned back to look at me. This time, neither of us looked away.

I finally had the courage to ask. “Priyanka seems to think that you’ll want to return home once we help Lana.”

Stay.

“I want so many things,” he said. “And most of them are impossible. They contradict each other. They change and shift, and I hate them for being so far out of reach. Going home, telling our mother that we’re alive and okay, is something I want to do, not something I have to do. Priya and Lana wanting to stay and ruin men like Mercer always made me feel selfish and foolish for dreaming about a place far away from here. Somewhere quiet and safe.”

“That’s not foolish or selfish,” I told him.

Stay.

Longing for security was as much a human instinct as wanting more or wanting to retaliate after being hurt or wanting to protect the people we love. If I could call down the lightning and burn out every last trace of darkness for my friends, I would. I would do it in an instant, even if it left me in ashes.

After everything they’d seen, after everything Roman had been made to do just to keep from being separated from his sister, he deserved quiet anonymity. Away from Mercer and Blue Star. Away from a government who’d take an interest in breaking his mind down for analysis.

Away from me.

Stay, I thought again. Please stay.

“Helping Lana, returning home…I thought that was what I wanted more than anything,” he said. “Now I’m not so sure.”

Roman was still looking at me as he said it, his eyes the blue of a new morning sky. Earlier, he’d showered and shaved the last few days off him, leaving his skin soft and smooth. He looked younger, and there was an almost unbearable tenderness to his small smile. Hope and warmth lifted through me.

“It’s okay to change your mind,” I said quietly. I couldn’t keep his gaze anymore, not with the painful, urgent squeeze of my heart. Instead, my eyes fixed on the small scar along his jaw. “About what you need. The things you want.”

Roman’s hand was only an inch from mine on the fence. I thought of the way he’d described the music he loved, those old songs. Simple. It would be so simple to just weave my fingers into the spaces between his.

“What do you want?” he asked.

His question brought me out of that small, sweet dream.

I turned. “If you had asked me that two weeks ago, I would have told you the only thing I wanted was to be able to stand beside my friends as an equal, and protect them the way they had protected me. I couldn’t accept that they’d left me. All of them, in their own way, had left me behind. My voice was never going to be loud enough to call them back. I was so sure the worst thing that could ever happen to us would be to lose one another. To break apart.”

He didn’t say anything, only watched.

“Of course, now I know breaking apart isn’t the worst thing—it’s failing each other,” I said. “I can’t stop thinking about Ruby, about what she’s going through. The fact that she’s alone. I know she was trying to protect us, but—did we disappoint her? Did she really not trust us to help her anymore? If she’d figured out that the government was somehow involved, or could be, and she’d lost faith in us…I don’t know. I’m so scared for her.”

“She didn’t lose faith in you,” Roman said. “I don’t know her the way you do, but everything you and the others have said makes me think she wanted to shield you from any blowback.”

It was the steadiness of his voice that I found reassuring, almost more than the reasoning itself.

“This whole time, she was with Leda…even before the explosion,” I said. “Weeks. And I refused to believe it was possible.”

It had been easier to swallow the idea of her choosing to leave Haven behind than it had been to consider the government might have her. But even if I’d known everything from the start, what could I have actually done to help her? I’d only ever had the illusion of power and influence.

Roman closed his eyes. The first drop of rain struck his cheek, curving down the exact path my fingers wanted to take. The cool water splattered against my hair, my bare arms, but it did nothing to dull the heat growing there.

“The irony is that these people destroyed my life, but in the process they freed me,” I said. “They brought me to a place where I felt weaker and more afraid than I had in years, but it only forced me to recognize the strength I already possessed. They made me out to be a traitor and gave me the opportunity to discover all the right reasons to rebel. The way forward isn’t to choose the best of two bad choices, it’s finding a way to navigate between them. To create our own path. One that provides Chubs and the Council with the kind of material they need to expose the people working against us and make a case for stronger, more permanent protections for us. One that helps Psi in need find people like Liam and Ruby and give them a chance at living free. One that takes back our story from people like Moore, and shows the world who we really are.”

The lightning tore up the sky, illuminating the admiration on his face. “I’m not powerful, and I might be more trouble than I’m worth most of the time,” he said, “but…maybe I could help you with that?”

Stay.

“You are powerful,” I told him. “In this whole world, there’s no one like you.”

“Thank God for that,” he said wryly, letting his clean shirt darken with the rain.

“I mean you, as in you,” I told him, gently elbowing him. My heart was beating hard in my chest, about to burst. “I’m no more or less powerful than you. We both channel power.”

“You’re wrong,” he said. “You don’t channel it, you become it. Touching your power was like—I’m not sure I know the words to describe it.”

“Generally speaking, it is pretty indescribable,” I said. “I’m not sure I could even do a good job of it.”

“It’s connection,” he said, looking back up at the storm clouds. “I know it was a lie, but…I liked that you thought I was the same as you at the beginning. I’m the only one like me, but you and the others, you’re part of something bigger. Brighter. You’re never alone.”

“I liked it, too,” I told him.

When I met Roman’s eyes again, they were burning. A deep heat flowed through me again, burning away those last traces of uncertainty. My chest was so tight I could barely breathe. I saw what I was feeling reflected in the softest shade of blue.

“What did it feel like,” he asked, “to hold a storm in your hands?”

I didn’t even have to think about it. “Limit

less.”

“Will you let me feel that, just this once?” he whispered. “Just once.”

My heart lurched inside of my chest, knowing what he was asking and how it would twist his mind into agony. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Some pain is good,” he said. “It’s necessary. I’d rather feel it than nothing at all.”

You say that, I thought. But then I’m the one who has to watch you suffer.

This time, when I drew the crackling charge from the sky, I pictured myself covered in stardust—as something shining and luminous enough to push back against anything, even the night. The feeling of power was exhilarating, and the confidence it gave me invincible. I never wanted to wake up from this feeling.

Simple, I thought. So simple.

Roman was glowing with my light. He lifted his hand from the fence railing, turning the palm up toward me. I didn’t take it. Instead, I put both of my hands on his cheeks, and when he didn’t pull away, when he leaned into the touch and shut his eyes, I kissed him.

The electricity streamed around us, wild and crackling. I was careful not to bleed too much from the air, or let it get close enough to burn, but static snapped at my fingers as they brushed his skin, and bit at my tongue. As his lips moved against mine, I couldn’t separate the rush of sparkling power from the heady sensation of finding him there, feeling him.

Distantly, I recognized that the storm was dangerously close now, the lightning strikes near enough that they could be drawn to the power between us and kill us in an instant. I recognized that, but I still had to force myself to pull back.

Roman’s face was stunned as we broke apart. The smell of the singed wooden fence and ozone filled my lungs, and my limbs were buzzing with the last traces of the charge between us, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his face. Not as he laughed in pure, unbridled amazement, until tears came to his eyes. Roman’s gaze found mine again, his throat working as if he wanted to explain.

I know, I thought. I know.

Neither of us spoke as we rose and raced back up to the house. Roman took my hand, ignoring the hard sting of the static that jumped between our palms. Cool rain struck the top of my head, then my face and shoulders, erasing the charge’s warmth from my skin.