Coming to Earth had been a mistake. For so long, she’d tried not to think of Luc at all, but she’d remembered him anyway. Whenever she felt like throwing herself into the Void, she’d play her favorite memories of him over and over. She’d pick out tiny details and fixate on them. The tick of his jaw. The curve of his mouth. The sound of her name on his tongue.
She could endure her lot in Heaven, but she couldn’t stand to be here, in the place they’d built together, and not be beside him.
She wanted to go back. Shehadto go back.
Lila fled the way she’d come till she could no longer view the clearing. She found Eva weaving a daisy wreath into her hair.
“I want to go back,” she announced.
“Huh? But we just got here.” Eva’s face fell; so did her flower crown.
“I know, but…let’s just go. I don’t like this place.”
“But you said?—”
“I know what Isaid,Eva. But I’mgoing.Are you coming or not?”
Eva glanced around the Garden, crestfallen, as though the reason for Lila’s sudden ire might burst out of the trees.
“Well…okay,” she answered. “So much for a fun outing.”
Eva pouted as they headed back to the meadow, and Lila could have kicked herself. Her friend had been so down lately; she deserved to have fun. And Lila was being irrational again. She had no claim to this Garden anymore than she had a claim to Luc, but Luc made her irrational. And selfish. Around him, she bubbled over with desire and duplicity.
“You know what? Wait!”
Lila glanced behind her. Eva had plopped down on a rock, her back against a willow at the edge of the grove.
“No one will tell me anything!” Eva accused, crossing her arms. “Well, I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s bothering you. Why does no onethink they can trust me?! Why am I always left out?! I can be serious and boring, too, you know! I can bemysteriousandbrooding!” She kicked at the ground. “I just wanted to pick flowers,” she mumbled. “I’msorryif that’ssilly.”
“It’s not silly. I just…” Eva glanced up, and Lila hesitated, but she was already keeping Adrianna’s secret from Eva. At least this secret was hers to tell.
The wind whipped at Lila’s skirts; she felt exposed in the wide, open field, under the glare of the sun and the wounded look Eva shot her. She wasn’t sure if she was flushing from shame or from the heat, but maybe she’d kept her secret long enough.
Taking a deep, bracing breath, Lila approached the rock.
“All right, I’ll tell you. But you can’t tell anyone. Not Adrianna. Not anyone. Ever. Do you understand?”
Eva squinted, her face brightened by the sunlight.
“What is it?” she asked.
Lila shuffled her feet.
“Promise you won’t make a big deal out of it?”
“I make a big deal out of everything. You know that. So spit it out, or I’ll never forgive you.”
One and a Quarter Aeons Pre-Great War
Luc opened his eyes.
At the flash of cool silver, Lila withdrew her hand, but he caught her fingers and guided them back to his hair. He shut his eyes, and she was left alone with her thoughts again. Her terrible decisions.
Lila hesitated, her hand hovering over his forehead. She hadn’t meant to touch his hair, but he’d laid his head down on her lap after a long session of teaching her how to mark her architecture sketches in the appropriate shorthand. And she’d let him because, well, that was part of their deal, she supposed. It had started with kisses but had progressed into a confusing mixture of lustful touches and tender ones.
Usually, Luc was the one initiating, though. Lila touching him unprompted was new, despite that first kiss. She held back partly out of guilt and partly out of fear, but at the moment, she was weak, and so was her conscience, and she felt only peace as she swept his blond hair away from his forehead. His hair was soft and delicate. She liked feeling it slip through her hands. She never wanted to touch Castor just to touch him, but she wouldn’t have minded staying there for a few hundred aeons, twisting Luc’s hair and twining it around her fingers.
She imagined them in their garden, lying on the soft, sweet grass, surrounded by the birds and flowers they’d drawn. The air wouldbe scented with jasmine and honeysuckle, and nearby, the pitter-patter of water trickling over stone would lull them to sleep.
