Fallen City by Adrienne Young - 45

Villa Matius was the home of the family line we’d erased.

I stood at the window, watching the thin clouds twist across the expanse of sky. In the distance, the birds flitted through the last bit of sunlight. For a moment, I could almost pretend that it was the Isara I remembered—dusk rippling over the rooftops, the dome of the Citadel gleaming, and the smell of the sea on the wind. But that world was gone.

Valshad had the city under siege, and every time I looked out to the walls, where their encampment dotted the hillside, I couldn’t help thinking that this was finally the end of our story. There was no Consul. No Forum. No seat of power. Isara was gone.

Ophelius’ words snaked through the streets below and drifted on the smoke in the air. Sometimes you must burn a field to save it.

But there was nothing left to burn.

Beams of fading light spotted the floor beside my feet and my eyes lifted across the hall to a small open room. Théo was still posted there, standing erect beside the threshold. He hadn’t left my side since Luca departed.

I took a step toward the doorway of Luca’s chamber, eyeing the strange shadow that danced on the opposite wall. Like a spinning star. I walked toward it, and as soon as I reached the doorway, a gust of cool wind poured into the room. The shadow swayed on the wall, rocking back and forth, and I reached up to touch the plaster before I turned to the window to see what it was. A small star folded from dried palm hung from a string, twirling in the breeze.

The chamber was simple and bare, missing the warm touches of having been lived in, but that single star was like a story in and of itself. I reached up, taking it down from where it hung, and I let my fingertips touch the points one by one as I sat on the ledge.

“It’s a tradition in the Lower City.”

A voice I knew as well as my own sounded behind me. Luca. He had one shoulder leaned into the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. I didn’t know how long he’d been standing there, watching me.

“Children make them for the Tenth Feast.”

His sharp features looked almost sinister in the low light, his eyes empty of any emotion. His cloak, breastplate, and scale armor had been removed and his dirt- and blood-smeared tunic had been replaced with a new one. The gold circle that hovered over his head was just barely visible, and I bit down on my bottom lip. He looked so much older. Like years had passed since we’d said our vows. It felt like that, too.

He waited a moment before he began to cross the room, eyes studying me as if he were unsure whether I would let him get close to me. But I didn’t move. I was hardly even breathing. As he stepped into the light, my gaze ran over him, catching all the things I hadn’t seen in the dark. All the ways he’d changed. All the wounds, physical and otherwise, that were visible on his body, in his face. My eyes dropped to the sword at his hip, wondering how many lives it had taken.

Behind him, Théo disappeared from view, his footsteps trailing up the hall. When Luca reached me, he stared down at the braided palm in my hand, his eyes tracing the bruises that covered my arm. Every inch of him seemed to turn to stone, his jaw clenching before he took the star between his fingertips.

“What happened?” I asked.

He exhaled. “The gates will open tomorrow at sunrise. Valshad is giving safe passage to anyone who leaves the city.”

Sunrise. That was just hours from now.

“Once they close the gates…” He didn’t finish.

“And my uncle?” I said, voice small.

Luca shook his head. “I checked the corpses in the Citadel. He wasn’t there.”

I didn’t know what feeling that knowledge woke in me. Had I hoped that he would be strung up with the others? Burned to ash in the catacombs like the Consul? Some part of me had known that he wouldn’t be. Nej had been chosen—gifted. There was no way to know if the gods were through with him yet.

Luca seemed to be asking himself the same question. I let myself take a careful look at him, gaze running from his head down his face and throat to the opening of his tunic. But my eyes stopped on the dark red staining a tied strip of cloth below his shoulder. I followed it down to the end of his sleeve, where fresh blood coated his skin, striping his hand.

“I’m okay,” he said, answering the question he could read on my face.

He didn’t look fine. He was pale, his voice rough and tired.

“Let me see,” I said, lifting the sleeve of his shirt, but Luca moved from my reach, taking a step backward. He was as afraid of me touching him as I was.

“I’m sorry for what I said before,” I whispered.

“Why? It was the truth.”

I didn’t like the way he was avoiding looking at me. The way he was keeping a stretch of distance between us. He didn’t look up as I took a step toward him, but his face turned back toward the shadows of the room, leaving only half of him in the light.

“No, it wasn’t,” I breathed.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, turning the star in his hands. “Why did you stay? Why didn’t you leave when I told you to?” There was a deep sadness in his voice. A brokenness that filled the room with a suffocating feeling.

“You told me you would only take vows with me if they were real ones. Remember?”

If I closed my eyes, I would still be able to see it. The glow of the fires in the temple. The glint of liquid gold and the press of Luca’s mouth on mine.

Flesh to flesh, bone to bone, blood to blood.

My gaze followed the line of red streaking down his arm to the end of his sleeve again. When I saw what encircled his wrist, my eyes narrowed. I reached for his hand, ignoring the way he tried to pull away from me, and my fingers touched the bracelet. It was a braid of dark hair. The one he’d taken from me that night in the catacombs.

It wouldn’t be a strange sight on anyone else. Most people in Isara had objects of superstition. But Luca didn’t put his faith in such things.

“What is this?” I asked. “A talisman?”

The way he looked at me then was like he was looking into the past. “You’re the only god I believe in.”

I swallowed hard before I silently took the star from his hand and set it down on the table. When I turned back to him, he was watching me with a wary expression. The muscle in his jaw twitched again when the skirt of my chiton brushed his knuckles.

Nerves danced beneath my skin as I reached out and took his hand, guiding it to my face. I pressed his palm against my throat where my pulse was racing and turned my cheek into it, breathing him in.

He went still as I lifted the length of my chiton and climbed onto his lap. I tucked my legs on either side of his hips so that I could look down into his face. His eyes changed, searching mine, and I could see that he was looking for something to hold on to. Something to keep him from disappearing. So, I folded his arms around my waist and drew him into me until our bodies were sewn together.

He pulled in deep, steady breaths against my throat, and the more the corners of him melted into the shape of me, the tighter I held him.

He pressed his face against my skin. “I love you.”

“I know,” I said.

“I’m sorry.” His voice splintered. “I’m so sorry.”

“I should have come with you.”

It was true. I could see now that he’d needed me. That when I’d let him cross the river, I’d left him alone.

He let me go, looking up, and his eyes bored into mine, as if he were trying to pry each of my thoughts from one another. Like he was waiting.

“If you’re going to ask me to go, Luca—”

“I am.” He cut me off.

“I told you I’m not leaving without you,” I said.

“I know. So we’ll go together.”

My lips parted, my mind turning the words over to be sure I’d understood them. “What?”

“We’ll go together,” he said again.

My hands were shaking now, my heart racing. “What about Isara? What about Vale?”

“He’ll understand. It’s what we should have done a long time ago. I think we’re the only thing left to save, Maris. You and me.”

He looked at me a long time, and when a hot tear slid from the corner of my eye, I took his face in my hands so I could find his lips with mine. When they parted, the warmth of his mouth spilled inside me until my chest felt like it was caving in. I kissed him deeply, the way I’d dreamed of doing a hundred times since the night he left me.

Luca’s arms unwound from me and his touch found my legs, sliding beneath my chiton so his fingers could travel up my thighs. There, his grip tightened almost painfully, making my stomach clench so that I couldn’t breathe.

I gave in to the rush of it, breaking the kiss long enough to unwind the cords of my chiton. It fell over my shoulders, puddling at my waist. He stilled when he saw the cuff that circled my arm, drawing in a breath. Before he could speak, I pulled at his tunic, tugging it over his head.

His chest rose and fell as my hands traced over rivers of scars I didn’t recognize. Beneath my palm, I could feel his heartbeat, steady and strong.

He was staring at the shimmering gold, and I could see that he wanted to ask. But I could also tell that he was afraid to. He pressed a kiss below my ear before his lips moved down my throat, and when his mouth opened against my breast, I groaned at the feeling it sent through me. Every place that his skin touched mine was a resurrection. We were the dead summoned back to life.

His fingers brushed over my stomach, trailing down until they were between my legs, and I let him touch me, pressing myself against the hardness of him.

His mouth found mine again. “I need you.” The words were lost in an anguished breath. “Can I have you? Please .”

I answered him with a slower kiss, and he pulled my leg up and over his hip, groaning when he pushed the length of himself inside me. A long, uneven breath escaped his lips, and with it, a stillness fell over the world. He thrust into me slow and deep until a sharp-edged, painful pleasure moved through me. It was just me and Luca. Not the young fools who’d thought they could change their world. Now we were wounded and ruined. Healing all wrong.

He made love to me slowly, like he wanted to make time stop. And I did, too. I wanted the gods to keep the planets from spinning, the sun from setting. I wanted to stop my heart from beating. Despite what he thought, the soul of Luca Casperia wasn’t dead. And as long as that was true, then mine wasn’t dead, either.

I moved with him, every inch of my skin singing until we were knit back together, into one—flesh to flesh, bone to bone, blood to blood.

I’d bound my heart to this man. Then I’d bound my name. What I hadn’t really believed, not until now, was that I’d bound my fate, too.