They worked side by side, fingers moving through the strands. Cass’s hands remembered the patterns—twist, cross, tuck, repeat. He’d done this a thousand times with Honey, but it had never felt like this.
“Here.” Riot held out one of the blue flowers. “Show me where.”
Cass guided his hand, tucking the stem into the braid where it would hold. The blue was so bright, like a little piece of sky caught in his hair.
They finished at almost the same moment. Cass reached up and touched the thin braids gently—two of them, one on each side of his face, each with tiny blue flowers woven through as he moved over to the big mirror on the dresser.
“Now the—” He picked up the silver. His hands were shaking a little. “Now this.”
He lifted it to his head. It took a moment to figure out the angle, how to settle it so it sat right. The metal was cool against his forehead. He tucked the ends into his hair at the temples, felt it catch and hold.
The person looking back was a stranger.
Not the Elysian missionary. Not the heat-wrecked mess. Someone else. Someone with blue flowers bright in his hair and silver across his forehead and eyes that were...
Wet. His eyes were wet.
The scars were still there. He could see them in the mirror—the bite on his shoulder where Riot’s shirt had slipped, the circles on his skin from the release sessions. All the marksBrother Matthias had put on him. All the places he’d been opened up and not allowed to heal.
But the silver caught the light. And the flowers were so blue. And Riot was warm behind him, watching his reflection with an expression that made Cass’s whole body ache.
“I don’t understand.” His voice cracked. “It’s so pretty. Why am I crying? I’m not sad.”
“Because you’re beautiful.” Riot’s voice was quiet.. “And nobody ever told you.”
The tears spilled over. Cass didn’t try to stop them.
He turned away from the mirror and found Riot right there. Solid. Real. Looking at him like he was something precious, so he reached up, getting on his toes, and pulled Riot’s face down closer to his.
Cass kissed him.
Not like before. Not the desperate, heat-driven, couldn’t-stop-if-he-tried kisses. This was slow. Deliberate. Hechoseit. Chose the softness. Chose the tenderness. He felt Riot’s small sound of surprise against his lips and felt hands come up to cup his face, felt the kiss returned just as gently.
No urgency. No chase. Just this.
When they finally pulled apart, Riot was flushed all the way to his ears. He laughed—soft and startled—and touched his own lips like he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.
Cass reached up and traced the line of Riot’s jaw. The roughness of stubble. The warmth.
“I love—” The word caught.
Too big. Too much. Too scary.
He swallowed.
“I love it,” he said instead. “The—the silver thing. I love it.”
“Good,” Riot said quietly. “Looks perfect on you.”
Cass buried his face in Riot’s neck and thought about the car ride. Days ago, a lifetime ago. Riot explainingabout designations, about choice, about how the corporations manufactured everything and people used to decide for themselves what was real.
He thought about all the times Brother Matthias had told him he was choosing wrong. Wrong thoughts. Wrong feelings. Spiritually deficient. Broken in ways that maybe couldn’t be fixed.
But maybe, Cass thought, pressing closer into Riot’s warmth—maybe choosing wrong was just choosing different. Maybe broken didn’t mean bad. Maybedeficientwas just a word people used when they didn’t understand.
Maybe everything about Riot was right.
He didn’t say it out loud. Some things were too new. Too fragile. Too easy to shatter if they were held up to the light.
