Page 55 of Night Shift

“Everyone I have ever cared about has vanished, and I am left to remember them. Civilizations disappear. People disappear. Even the stars eventually die, but I remain.” I look at her. “When I realized I loved you, I understood that one day you would disappear, too.”

Her eyes shine.

“I thought if I could stop morning, I could stop losing you.”

“Oh, Erebus.”

“I know now that it was foolish.”

“It was more than foolish.”

“Yes.”

“And incredibly controlling.”

“Yes.”

“Also a little insane.”

“I accept that.”

That almost gets a smile.

Almost.

She comes closer.

“You don’t keep people by locking them up. You keep them by letting them leave and trusting they’ll come back.”

“Not in my experience.”

“No.” Her voice softens. “Probably not.”

I look at her.

“But this is new,” she continues. “You’ve never had this before. Neither have we. You don’t know how our story ends because we haven’t lived it yet.”

The uncertainty of that frightens me more than I want to admit.

“So now what?” she asks. “You keep this up forever?”

“No.”

It is the first answer I have given her without hesitation.

Calliope searches my face. “Then you know what you have to do.”

“Yes.”

“Can you?”

That is the question.

I have surrendered Night more times than there are numbers to count them. I have never feared Dawn. I have never resented her arrival or considered the act of stepping aside to be a sacrifice.

But I have never relinquished the sky while believing something of mine might disappear with it.

“I do not know,” I admit.