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“Not very much,” he says. “I remember an ocean. Running along a rocky beach and cutting my foot. My father carrying me home while I cry.”
“Do you think they’re still out there somewhere?”
“I don’t know. If they are, then where have they been? If they’re gone, then they’re gone. Maybe that’s easier. I just want an answer; that’s all I’m looking for.”
I hold his face in my hands and look into his eyes. I want him to see how I feel. “I know you feel like you’re alone. But you’re not. I’m going to help you get your answers, however I can.”
“I can’t expect you to stay here just for me, Tyler. Part of my promise is to get you home.”
“What if I don’t want to go home?” I touch my belly. “They belong here. You think I can just go back to my world pregnant? Hell no. When this baby comes,youbetter be there.”
He smiles and places his hand over mine. I can’t tell if he understands how serious I am. I’m not going back.
16
KALISTRATOS
Iwake when I feel Tyler getting up from the bed. Sunlight is pouring through the window into a pool on the floor. I quickly sit up.
“Tyler?” I say.
“Good morning,” he replies, to my relief. I sink back onto the bed.
“I slept like the dead,” I murmur.
He opens the door, letting in a warm breeze from the courtyard. The light rims his body as he stretches, and the miracle that is the swell of his belly is the most wondrous thing I’ve ever seen. He comes back to me and kisses me, and I place my palm on the side of his belly. I can feel the warmth of it through the tunic.
“I was half expecting you to be comatose, with how long you held the clock for,” he says.
“Clock,” I repeat. “Cock?”
Tyler laughs. “That too.”
Ah, it’s one of his strange words. “Mm. Right. It’s the longest I’ve ever grasped the clock. It’s only because you gave me your energy.”
He laughs again. “I wonder… You think we could do it for a full day?”
“Are you trying to kill me?” I say as I don my tunic.
Together, we leave the room and go into the courtyard to find the others. Alyx is sitting up on the roof, his eyes fixed on the distance.
“What do you see?” I call.
“Nothing,” he replies and leaps his way down to the ground. “And that makes me nervous. Airos’s shroud should be keeping any prying eyes off us, but that means…”
“They might come looking,” says Tyler. “I don’t get it. If someone did get into my dream, what were they trying to accomplish?”
“Send an announcement, perhaps,” I say.
Airos appears with several scrolls tucked under his arm. “Not likely. No, I doubt they expected us to notice. I think they were trying to take Tyler from us. They just didn’t expect him to be sharing a bed with Kalistratos.”
I feel my face flush with unexpected embarrassment.
“Well, it’s a good thing I came to tuck you in, huh?” Tyler says, nudging me. “So we just hunker down here. We can chill out and stay hidden until you figure out the map.”
“I have no complaints,” Alyx says, stretching.
I would like to be on the road again—but without direction, there isn’t much that can be done. I just don’t like the idea of staying still.
