BRON VAREK
paired with
TILDA ROBERTSON
For a moment all I can do is stare.
The letters gleam white against deep midnight blue. My name. Her name. Joined by a pulsing silver symbol so aggressively romantic I want to punch the technology.
All the noise in the hall rushes back at once.
“Ohhhh.”
“Damn.”
“Wait, those two?”
“Aren’t they the ones from earlier?”
Cameras pivot. Heads turn. Attention swings like a floodlight.
And somewhere under the shock—under the dread, the absurdity, the immediate understanding that my life has just become a broadcast hazard—something wild and disbelieving breaks loose in me.
Because of course it’s her.
Of course the universe looked at my debt, my desperation, my half-buried photograph, my first sight of her across that room, and saidLet’s make it operatic.
I laugh again, louder this time, helpless with disbelief. “You cannot be serious.”
Captain Photonic points directly at our screen. “Now there is a pairing with history!”
The crowd reacts like they’ve been handed a loaded weapon and permission.
Tilda finally turns her head toward me.
Her expression is magnificent.
Not in a comfortable way. Not in any way that suggests my continued survival is guaranteed. But magnificent. She looks like somebody carved rage out of moonlight and gave it a sponsor tag.
This is a terrible moment to notice that she’s beautiful.
Unfortunately, terrible moments have never stopped me before.
Everything in me is firing at once—shock, adrenaline, old want, black humor, the sudden absurd lift of being seen by the room and by her and by the monstrous machinery of the Challenge all at the same time.
So naturally, I make a bad decision.
I start toward her.
“Bron,” Dax hisses, scandalized. “No.”
“Bron,” Sonya says, voice half warning, half fascinated. “Do not.”
I grin at both of them, because if I stop to think, I may collapse into a pile of nerves and expensive tailoring.
“This,” I declare, “is either destiny or a felony.”
Then I cross the floor.
