“You’re already making plans for every terrible scenario,” she told him. “I can see it in your face.”
“I can’t help it—I like to be prepared. Ineedto be prepared.” Even as he spoke, he made for the papers organized with tabs and clips all over his desk, like he could find his answers hidden in the numbers. “When I had problems before, I’d go to Reymond. And you know what Reymond would say if he were here?”
“That he was proud of you?” Enne guessed.
“That I’m in over my head.” He collapsed into the desk chair.
When Enne felt that way, she found an isolated corner of the finishing school and fired bullets into the wallpaper. But joking about that felt wrong after everything that had happened tonight.
“Do you ever feel like it’s all our fault?” Enne asked.
“The lockdown?”
“The street war. The Orphan Guild. All of it.” Enne swallowed down a painful lump in her throat. “Ever since the Shadow Game, since you killed—”
“Do you regret saving me?” Levi asked.
She gaped. “What? No, of course not—”
“Do you wish I hadn’t killed Semper?”
Enne remembered thethumphis body had made when it hit the table, how the blood had seeped across the cards. Lourdes had died at that same table, at his hand.
“Never,” Enne whispered. “Do you?”
“I should, but I don’t.” Levi looked to the window as a crack of lightning flashed across the sky. “Even after the worst does happen, I can’t bring myself to stop, and I don’t want to. I want to be legendary. I want my mark on this world to stain.”
Enne looked out at the storm and thought of all the night remaining between now and morning. If a violent end awaited them at sunrise, then she wanted the hours until then to be infinite.
She walked until she stood in front of him. It was hard to think of their kiss earlier without also remembering the whiteboot she’d killed, but she hadn’t survived this night only to fill it with regrets.
Levi watched her, his breath hitched and silent, as Enne lowered herself onto his lap. No sooner had she slipped her arms behind his neck did his mouth find hers.
Even with the sirens fading miles away, kissing Levi still felt like waiting for the axe to fall. She couldn’t touch him without remembering the bruises that had once painted his skin. She couldn’t taste him without recalling the blood as it mixed with summer rain. They both understood what each kiss was worth in secrets and volts and sins, and so they did not spend them carelessly. They were slow and savored, like the last meal of those condemned.
Her wet hair had dampened both their shirts, and the coldness left chills across her neck. Levi’s hand slid beneath the fabric and up her spine, burning against her bare skin, pulling her closer to him until her chest and stomach felt crushed against his. His other hand crept up her thigh, teasing the hem of her skirt higher. She shuddered, and he smiled against her lips.
When his fingers reached her hips, when there was no more space to close between them, Levi stood up, her legs wrapped around his waist, and carried her to the bed.
After laying her down, he took a step back, as though simply to admire the image of her there. A flush crept up her face, and a memory stirred in her of the vision from the Lovers card during the Shadow Game, of her and Levi in a position much like this one. How many doors in that hallway led to this night? Or did all of them, eventually, even if they’d tried to avoid it?
As he climbed onto the bed, his lips trailed the slopes of her until they returned to hers. Enne’s hands roamed over him, finding the places and doors left unexplored, and she drew her name from him like a dying breath.
“We should stop,” he whispered, even as his arm snaked beneath her back and raised her toward him. She protested, lifting her head to resume their kiss. “This isn’t our last night.”
“You don’t know that,” she murmured.
He pulled away. “I’ve been thinking like that for too long. I don’t want that here, with us.” He lay back, and Enne rested her head against his shoulder.
She interlaced his fingers with hers. “But it will always feel that way,” she said softly. “Even if we pretend otherwise.”
Levi sighed. “I know.”
The sirens outside had faded out. Every few moments, thunder rumbled overhead, the only reminder that this night was not infinite. The storm would pass, and dawn would come.
And a different North Side would await them when it did.
JAC
