“I had to.” Cass’s voice was small against his shoulder. “She needed to see that Honey’s real.”
Yeah, Riot thought, looking at the photograph of two kids grinning at the camera, before the world decided their love was a problem to be solved.She is.
Chapter twenty-six
Spiritually Appropriate Hairstyles and Other Accoutrement
Cass
TheflannelsmelledlikeRiot.
Cass hadn’t meant to take it. Riot had told him to rest while he made food after Dante and Orion left, and Cass tried. He’d lain down on the bed and closed his eyes and waited for sleep to come. But the sheets were cold and the room was too quiet and his body kept reaching for something that wasn’t there.
The flannel had been on the chair. White and black checks, soft from years of washing, still warm from Riot’s shoulders.
He’d just meant to hold it.
Now he was curled around, his face pressed into the collar, breathing deep, his whole body wrapped around the fabric like it was the only thing keeping him from floating away. It felt necessary in a way he couldn’t explain.
The desperate burning from before had faded softer, humming under his skin without demanding anything. He knew it would come back. But for now he could think.
He could also notice that there was something hard in the inside pocket.
His fingers found it without meaning to. Something curved, pressing against his palm through the fabric. He shouldn’t look. It wasn’t his. But his hand was already pulling it free before the thought finished.
It was... metal. Silver, maybe. Curved in a wide arc, thin and delicate, with little details along the edge that caught the light. It was pretty. Really pretty, but he didn’t know what it was.
A bracelet? Too big. It would fall right off his wrist.
Some kind of tool? But there were no moving parts.
He turned it over in his hands, watching the way the silver gleamed. It looked expensive. It looked careful, like someone had made it to be beautiful on purpose, not just useful.
Why did Riot have something like this in his pocket?
The door opened.
Riot walked in with a plate piled high with food, bread and cheese and some kind of meat, and half of something already crammed in his mouth. He was chewing fast, like he’d forgotten what eating was supposed to feel like and was trying to remember all at once.
Then he saw what Cass was holding and he stopped so fast he almost dropped the plate.
“I found this. In your jacket.” Cass held up the silver thing as his face went hot. “I wasn’t trying to look through your things. I just—the jacket smelled like you, and I wanted—and then I felt—” He was doing it again, the talking-too-fast thing that happened when he was nervous. “What is it? I don’t know what it is.”
“It’s, uh...” Riot set the plate down very carefully on the dresser. His eyes were fixed on the silver arc in Cass’s hands, and his face was doing something strange. He wasn’t looking at Cass anymore. He was looking at the wall, the floor, his own hands. “It’s for your head. You wear it. Here.” He touched his own forehead, traced a line back toward his hair. “It sits across here and kind of... tucks in.”
Cass looked at the silver curve again. Oh.Oh. He could see it now—the way it would rest across his forehead, the way the ends would disappear into his hair. Like a crown, almost. But more delicate.
“Why do you have it?”
Riot’s face went red. Actually red, color climbing up his neck and spreading across his cheeks, disappearing into the copper of his hair. He ran a hand through that hair, making it stick up in every direction. His weight shifted back on his heels, then forward again.
“Because I bought it,” he said to the floor. “For you.”
Cass’s brain stopped working.
“I know it’s stupid,” Riot continued, still not looking at him. His fingers were twisting together, pulling apart, twisting again. “I was supposed to be—you were hurt, and I was taking care of you, and I knew I was already in too deep, and I should have just—but then I saw it at a vendor in the Neutral Zone and I thought—” He made a rough sound. “I thought it would look pretty on you. Like something a princess would wear. Which is insane, because we barely—I mean, you were—”
His hands flew up in a gesture of helplessness. “It’s a weird thing that I did. I wasn’t going to say anything. You can just—forget about it.”
