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The gentle humming of the Blackrun danced along my senses. While its constant whirring had lulled everyone else on board into an uneasy sleep, it only keeps me more awake as the electricity prickles my hair and tingles between my fingers. Many of the other Electricons hate flying – Ella said she’d rather spend months at sea than have to fly as much as I do. I’d laughed, but I know what she meant. One bad move – one bad thought – could fry so little as one of the billions of tiny impulses that keeps the jet thousands of miles in the air. I’ve fallen out of the sky before, I have no plans of doing so again.
Cameron, Kilorn, and Farley are asleep in the back, Clara tucked into a blanket and snoring softly next to her Mother. A few other newbloods and reds sleep with them, tired from the past few days of travel. If I squint, it almost looks the same as a few years ago, when we were travelling around Norta trying to save the newbloods before Maven got their first. I sigh. It’s not the same, though, and I’m glad of it. But that doesn’t mean the parts of my heart where the others had lived had healed – they never will. Scars are tricky like that.
Tired of watching the others sleep, I get up and make my way to the cockpit, to where I know the only other person awake on this jet is.
Pulling back the curtain, Cal only glanced at me for a moment before returning to the sky in front of him. “Everything okay?” he asks as I sit down into the empty chair beside him.
“Fine. The others aren’t much good company, even Clara is fast asleep.”
“That is impressive.” She was nearly three now, and never seems to be tired at the conventional times. Farley always brings her on missions these days. I think its because with every passing day, Clara looks more and more like Shade. “We’ll be back in Montford in three hours or so. The weather is clear, it shouldn’t take longer,” Cal says. I nod. I’m excited to finally be going back. I haven’t seen my family in months, stuck in Norta mostly trying to placate silvers, reds, and newbloods alike. Diplomacy is difficult when everyone hates everyone.
“I was thinking, maybe we could spend a few days in the cabin? I’m sure Gisa would want to come, your father too,” Cal says, looking over at me. I smile.
“I’m sure they’d love that. But-” I lift a foot to nudge at his leg. “I was thinking we might go just the two of us. I know we’ve technically been in Norta together but we-”
“Haven’t seen each other at all? I know.” He leans over and plants a light kiss on my lips. Soft, but he lingers just a moment longer than he should – enough that I understand his intentions. “We can celebrate, just the two of us. Before we tell the others,” Cal whispered into my ear as he pulled away, going back to staring at the dashboard and pretending to be busy. Instinctively, my hand reaches up to the new earring that now hangs from my right earlobe. The piercing is new, so it stings a little as I brush against it. It’s gold, a simple twisted loop.
“We can get rings later,” Cal had told me when he’d asked me to marry him. “They’ll just get in the way, for now. This won’t.” Underneath his silver flight suit, I know the matching earring hangs from a chain around his neck.
“I’d like that,” I say. Cal grins fiendishly, and I laugh, shuffling forward on my seat so that I can lean over and slap him. He deserves it for the thoughts I know are going through his head. He catches my wrist, and then he’s tugging me out of my chair and into his, so that I’m sitting on his lap.
“Cal!” I shriek, but he doesn’t let go of me. Instead, hands slide down arm until he’s got my by the waist and thigh. He’s hot to the touch. I lean in to kiss him, but he dodges, kissing the corner of my lips and then working his way along my jaw while scoffed in mock offense. He reaches my ear, where my newest earring hangs, and kisses just below it. I can feel him smiling against my skin. “You’re awful,” I say, because he is.
“You like it,” he replies. I take his face in my hands and hold him still so that I can finally kiss him properly, relishing in the slight groan that comes from him as I lick into his mouth. Cal’s hands on my body are growing firmer – and warmer – but I’m used to the heat of him.
We stay that way for a while, until the light in the cockpit above us begins to flicker. Pulling away, I smile at him, guilty. He just smiles crookedly. “In the mountains, there is no electricity,” Cal says. His words sound like a promise, and it sends a thrill running through me. The light flickers again. He chuckles, but doesn’t say anything more.
It’s a comfortable silence. The Blackrun’s engines drown out most of my thoughts as I lean against Cal, my head in the crook of his shoulder as his thumb draws circles on my thigh. This was the kind of thing I would have thrown rocks at, when I was younger. Sixteen year old Mare would have been disgusted, but she also thought she would marry Kilorn one day, so that probably had something to do with it. Now, I had probably never been more content.
Marriage. I had been engaged before, to Cal’s brother. Engaged to a man that still wakes me every night, even three years later, and Cal has to remind me that it was just a dream. Engaged to a man who’s initial is still branded on my chest, stark and white against my olive skin. But this time is different, obviously. It’s Cal.
He chose me. And I choose him. Everyday, until my last, I want it to be him. The war is far from over, I’ll probably die before it does, I’ll probably spend the rest of my life running between nations trying to out together some semblance of peace and equality even as it disrupts my own. So I choose Cal. Every time, I will choose him. And now – unlike before – I know he’ll choose me, too.
My fingers are playing with the zipper to his flight suit when I feel the small shape beneath his collar. I unzip a few inches to reveal the earring that matches mine, hooked on the chain around his neck. The gold shone, even as it was so delicate.
“They were Coriane’s, weren’t they?” Cal shifted beneath me.
“Yes. Julian gave them to me last time I was in Montford. ‘Said I could probably figure out what to do with them.” Sitting like this, I could feel the rumble of his voice through his chest.
I huff. “I suppose he was right, as usual.”
“As usual,” Cal repeats, chuckling. “I thought about giving them both to you, but I didn’t know what you’d do with the second one.”
“No, I like that you have it.” I roll the earring on a chain between my fingers. “But we should get a jeweller to properly attach it so that you don’t lose it.”
“I was going to have it done before, but then I asked you first, and-”
The curtain behind us pulled back roughly. “Eugh. That is disgusting.” Cameron’s voice cuts Cal off and I startle, whipping my head back to see her standing behind us. “Get a room.”
Before I even get the chance to defend myself, Farley comes through the curtain to glare at us. “You know the rules, Barrow. Not in the air. I’m not falling out of another jet because you and lover-boy over here couldn’t keep it in your pants.”
Cal’s cheeks are flushing a cool silver as I get to my feet. Because Cameron is still staring with a disgusted look painted over her face, I lean down to place another clean kiss to Cal’s lips. She storms off, huffing to Kilorn that its like seeing your parents kiss, but worse. Farley does her best to keep a stern face as I flop back down into my own chair, but I can see the amusement falling over her features. Then she frowns.
“Adding to the collection still, Barrow?” she asks, nodding towards my ear.
“This one’s a little different,” I say, nudging Cal with my foot. Farley’s eyes follow, landing on where his necklace laid on his chest, matching mine.
Cal grins crookedly as Farley’s mouth falls open ever so slightly. “Engaged?”
“Yes ma’am,” Cal answers. Her mouth slowly turns back to her usual frown, though I can still see the light in her eyes. It’s been easier to see, lately.
“Well, I’m happy for you,” Farley says. “Do the others know?”
“You’re the first to know,” I tell her. “Keep your mouth shut about it.”
She grins at me. “Engaged or not, still no fucking in the plane. I still don’t want to die,” she says, before turning back and closing the curtain behind her.
Cal looks over at me. “Well that wasn’t so bad.”
I sigh. “When you land this jet, we’re going straight to the cabin. We can deal with my family after.”
He chuckles, leaning back in his chair. “As you wish.”