“No, I…I love you too. I mean, I think…” She screws up her face. “I love all of you. Maybe. Is that possible? I’m so…” She flops on her back and flings an arm over her eyes. “What does that evenmean?”
I reach over and give her head a little scratch. “Means whatever you want,” I say. “I think we’re kind of past the point of…conventional definitions, here.”
She keeps her eyes closed, but relaxes a little. “What’s your definition, then?”
“Hmm?”
“What’s it mean when Kai Pendragon saysI love you?”
I’m silent a moment. Just stroking her head. Looking at her: closed eyes and long lashes, dark hair and a few stray freckles. That nice little mouth that can do and say so much.
“It means I’ll do whatever would make you happy,” I say at last. “No matter how stupid. Or small. Or dangerous. And it means…it means if anyone ever tries to hurt you again”—I hesitate only a second—“I’ll fucking kill them.”
THIRTY-SIX
GWENNA
And suddenly,we’re on our way.
First leg: business class, Boston Logan to London Heathrow. Seven hours in the soft beige twilight of the air above a dark Atlantic ocean, the nicest airplane I’ve ever been on: lie-flat seats, five-course meal, champagne and hot towels and a zip-up case of tiny amenities. I’m seated next to Kai, across from Kingston, Cal and Lanz behind us, Luther somewhere apart from us all. Kingston turns on his reading light and buries himself in something; Kai sleeps, curled on his side, headphones on, fingers wrapped through mine like he’ll never let go.
I stare out the window.
Then: wheels down, London. Bright and loud, already midmorning, lots of joking and jostling for bags as Lanz and Callahan jockey over who’ll carry my little black suitcase into the terminal while Kai yawns loudly and slips his arm around my waist under my massive parka; Kingston jogs to catch up as we descend the jetbridge and makes sure to ask if I had a good flight.
There’s customs, passport control, an extra-long wait in a featureless gray room to ensure the gear bags have all beensecurely checked through for the next flight. A walk across a crowded terminal. Everyone a little bleary-eyed over white china cups of Nespresso in the airport lounge, all of them getting up constantly the moment I seem to need something, until it turns into a kind of competition, a scavenger hunt to see who can bring me the best little present: a packet of Haribo gummi bears, a crisp copy of the Financial Times, an array of vegetable slices swirled to look like flowers.
They’re nervous, I realize. That combination of travel fatigue and too much energy.
Finally, the 11:25 a.m. to Helsinki. A smaller plane, no business class: Lanz and Callahan offer me window or aisle—I choose window, always—and the next thing I know I’m waking up with an ache in my neck and Lanz’s coat over me like a blanket.
Finland. A country I’ve barely even considered, if I’m being honest, and a language I’m wholly unfamiliar with, I realize as signs sweep over and past me: aas in every other word, diacritics decorating vowels, very little I can parse on sight. It feels colder here, even indoors, and the joking is gone now, replaced by all-but-wordless movements: for suitcases, passports, finding the way to the customs hall where we’re reviewed and stamped and then escorted to a small, auxiliary corridor—not towards the counter for Erikoismatkatavarat / Specialbagage, where I can see the hard-shell cases marked CALIBURN UNIVERSITY—ATHLETICS waiting diligently, but in another direction, around the bend of a featureless hallway to a door that readsTerveystarkastus / Hälsokontroll – Health Inspection.
I look to whoever’s nearest to me—Lanz. “What are we doing?”
“Medical screening, I think?” He squints. “TB, HIV…I forget what all it is.”
I frown. “Blood test?”
“Yeah.” Kai’s shrugging off his coat. “You know, in case we chop off a hand and bleed all over some innocent Finn.”
Kingston gives him a look.
“We’re foreign athletes in a contact sport,” he explains to me, taking off his own coat. “Bloodborne transmission isn’t likely, but it’s possible. It’s just part of our visa requirements in order to compete.”
“Oh.” I suppose that makes sense. I glance past him, at a window in the wall that looks into a tiled room of chairs, rolling carts, paper-covered exam tables, partitioned with mint-green curtains.
“Miss?” A round-faced man in a dark, collared uniform stops me. “Are you a competitor?” he asks in clear, almost tuneful English.
I shake my head. “I’m a…”
There’s absolutely no simple way to complete that sentence, is there?
“Tourist,” comes a deep voice from behind me. “Same as I am.” Luther Pendragon hands him a small dossier. “Affiliated, but not competing.”
The official nods, darts his eyes from Luther to me, and gestures for my passport, which I relinquish. Then he turns to Luther.
“The forms, please?”
