“I wanted it to be different,” she said matter-of-factly, as though she were talking about someone else. It almost felt like it. “I wanted it so much.”
“So did I. If only the cataclysm had come that first night of Winter. I would’ve made the sacrifice then. It would’ve been easy.”
“I would’ve done it, too. It’s a simple equation, isn’t it? Just us, so that everyone else can be safe. Only us.”
“So you’re ready, then?”
The question hung dreadfully between them.
At last, Ellery reached for Iskarius. She felt Domenic instantly, a warm caress across her cheek, her neck, as though he’d joined her on the couch. The lamps throughout the room brightened. The snow-clogged fireplace sputtered to life.
It was a lovely ache to feel his presence, so familiar and comforting. But it melted her eerie calm along with the frost.
“I-I don’t want to die,” she admitted. “And I know how selfish it is, how pathetic, but—”
“It’s not any of those things,” he cut in. “It’s not… it’s notfair.”
She wished Domenic was truly beside her, so they could touch each other, hold each other. Maybe that would be enough to ease the pain of every opportunity they’d wasted, to mourn their useless dreams of a future that would never come to pass.
“If this is all we’ll ever get, then I’m done caring about being noble,” she said. “Do we have to be heroes tonight?”
“No,” Domenic murmured. “We don’t.”
Ellery brushed spare snow off her lap and fixed her hair, as if this was just another of their late-night calls, commiserating about the paparazzi sleeping outside their doors or Sharpe referring to the fifty-one-year-old Prime Minister as a “girl.”
“I almost forgot how it feels to talk to you like this,” he said playfully. “With your magic this close, it’s like you’re right here, lying next to me.”
Ellery flushed. “So you’re in bed, huh?”
“I might be. Where are you?”
“I fell asleep on the couch.” She fiddled with her necklace. “You know, for all the time we’ve spent together, you’ve never actually visited my apartment.”
“I imagine it as Gallamere’s finest. A penthouse. Huge windows.Posters of Kent Sinclair all over the walls.” She was impressed—finally Domenic had remembered a movie star’s name.
“So you’ve been imagining it, then.”
“More times than I care to confess. I’m almost jealous. You, a Chosen One, living it up in the best accommodations the Order can buy. Then there’s me, a Chosen One, sleeping in the same bed as when I was thirteen.”
“Well, it seems only right after you gave me a grand tour that I return the favor.” Ellery enchanted her phone cord until it elongated and piled on the floor. Then she wandered through the apartment, her footsteps muffled on the plush carpet. “There’s a fireplace I don’t use, a kitchen I don’t cook in. A study filled with books I’ve never read. The dining room, for all the entertaining I do. And the walk-in closet.”
“Your favorite part, I’m sure.”
“It certainly gets the most use.” Ellery strolled inside it, admiring the racks of designer clothes, the jewelry drawers, the shoes lined in neat perfect pairs along the floor. It was more than anyone could reasonably wear in a lifetime. Not that Ellery had much of a lifetime remaining.
“Now I’m thinking about you in that dress from the Solstice Gala,” Domenic drawled. “I remember the color of it, that bluish-purple. You look quite striking in Valmordion’s filter, you know.”
Though he couldn’t see her, she felt suddenly, tantalizingly exposed in her lace-trimmed slip. His warmth kissed her bare shoulders, and a heat kindled in her center that had nothing to do with Summer’s magic.
“Sorry,” he said, sounding anything but. “Did I fluster you?”
“How can you tell?”
“I don’t feel the cold of you breathing.” His words had an oddly serious weight. “Do I look different to you when you hold Iskarius?”
She pondered that while she wistfully dragged her hand down the clothing rack, relishing the softness of cashmeres and wools and satins. “You’re… vivid.”
“Oh?”
