Chapter Text
If I had thought I had a handle on the free world after being in Italy, I was sorely mistaken. Canada was a beast of its own. It wasn’t that its residents were unaware of the threat across the sea, but more-so that they lived largely unaffected by it. While free world citizens in Poland and Italy were likely to have known someone who had been lost to Scion, or to be a refuge of Scion themselves, Canadians knew Scion’s tyranny only through news reports and rumors. It was a threat, yes. But one that hadn’t yet touched their lives.
Away from Scion’s influence, culture had flourished. Not for the first time since entering the free world, I was overwhelmed by how much art, music, and religion still existed outside Nashira’s borders. In Canada, Zeke and Nadine took me to concerts and plays. We visited a shopping district called a mall, where Nadine helped me pick out more appropriate clothing for the weather. We ate at restaurants that served dishes I’d never heard of before, and drank coffee at shops with menus longer than some books I had read. One afternoon, we walked past a church that was holding a service. The sound of the choir and the organ that accompanied it made my heart ache. Arcturus would have loved to hear it.
Now that we had committed to one another in Orvieto, it seemed that Arcturus was constantly on my mind. When Nadine took me to the art museum, I was all too aware of how each piece would have sung to him. When Zeke and I snuck into a wine bar (apparently, there was a drinking age here, and I was, absurdly, below it), I sampled each cabernet with an eye for which one he might prefer. Sometimes, I would snap pictures of architecture with my phone — archways and colonnades that I thought would have caught his attention. Though he couldn’t receive any texts I might want to send him, I focused on the day when I would be able to show him the photos in person.
I tried to use the cord, too. In Paris, when I’d been inside Menard’s estate, I had thought that I might have managed to convey a message to him through it. Once or twice, I'd even imagined that I might have heard something back from him as well. His responses had only been intermittent words — thoughts, almost, more-so than meaning given sound. But they had been something, at least. Now, starved as I was of his presence, I would give anything for a single word. Each night, as I lay in my bed, I pushed at the connection that pulsed between us, sending my thoughts tumbling out into the aether.
I tried a hamburger today — it might have been more delicious than pizza.
Nadine bought me some sweatpants. They might be the most comfortable thing I’ve ever worn. I wonder if they make them in your size.
I miss you. So much. How on Earth did you convince me to come here?
I got flickers back sometimes. Gentle caresses. Soothing tones. But no words. It sometimes felt like I would give anything to have his counsel. And when I fell asleep each night, it was with everything I wished to share with him still swirling on the tip of my tongue.
My training was proving frustrating. Each time I lay myself down in the pool, the feeling of the water lapping at my sides seemed to wrench away my focus. Over the hours, the tide would creep up my arms, inching closer to my face. I would scrunch my eyes shut, hands fisting at my sides as I sent my spirit flinging out of my body. More than once, the water won the battle, and I gasped and spluttered to the surface, coughing moisture out of my battered lungs.
“Paige,” Nadine’s hands would haul me out of the pool whenever this happened. She had taken to joining me for much of my training, lounging on the patio in a pair of dark sunglasses while I tried to keep my body afloat. I had never expected to gain her allegiance, but ever since I’d rescued her from Versailles, I’d been surprisingly grateful for her loyalty. It was nice to have her company. And her prickliness, bracing as it could be, was refreshing. At least she spoke her mind.
I heaved as she tugged me out of the water, retching up air as I went.
“I’m alright.” The sun-bleached concrete beside the pool was warm along my limbs as I sprawled out upon it, doing my best to steady my breath. Nadine knelt beside me, frowning.
“I don’t think this is working,” she said.
“It was stupid of me to think it ever would,” I groaned.
Nadine’s lips pursed.
“Maybe it’s too much, too soon. You should keep practicing on land. I can catch you. Or we can use one of the spare mattresses in the garage.”
I shook my head. Little droplets of water splashed onto the pavement, flying free of my damp curls.
“If I can’t get over this…fear, of the water, then Cade will have an unfair advantage. All he’ll have to do is splash me a little and the war will be won. I’ll be too distracted to challenge him.”
I tried to focus on the feel of the sun on my face — the way it dried the remaining moisture beading my brow. Nadine threw me a towel, and I caught it against my chest.
“Besides, it should theoretically be easier in the water,” I said. “I can push myself further into the aether without worrying about falling. If I practice enough, I might even be able to last longer in another person’s dreamscape without oxygen.”
I sat up a little on the pavement, wringing some water out of my curls with the towel. Nadine didn’t look impressed.
“You should take a break,” she said. “You’ve been at it all day.”
“I don’t want to take a break,” I replied hotly. “I want to get better.”
Nadine rolled her eyes.
“Fine.” She pushed herself up from the pavement. “Stay here and drown yourself then. I’m getting a sandwich.”
I watched her walk back into the kitchen. I liked having Nadine around. She wasn’t intimidated by my anger, which had been creeping up on me more frequently. I wasn’t sure if it was my lack of progress in training or the injustice I sometimes felt at the freedom voyants had here when my fellow syndies were so oppressed back in Scion. Regardless of the cause, I constantly felt irked. Even Zeke had taken to avoiding me recently. I supposed that living with Nadine had taught him how to pick his battles.
I reached instinctively for the golden cord. It had become a habit, over the past couple weeks, to feel for it whenever I was unsettled. No matter how much I looked like a drowned rat, it was comforting to know Arcturus was still there. Safe, as far as I could tell, somewhere in the heart of Scion. Perhaps he had played a greater part in quelling the fire inside me than I realized. Nadine didn’t balk in the face of my ire, but she didn’t do much to calm it either.
It probably didn’t help that I hadn’t been sleeping. Since meeting Arcturus, I had become somewhat of a night owl, seeing myself to bed in the early hours of the morning and rising late into the afternoon. Part of this had been out of necessity. Rephs were nocturnal, and I’d become accustomed to fitting my day around as much of his as I could. Now that we were apart, there was no reason to keep these hours. But it was my strange way of staying connected to him, to remain awake late into the night. In the quiet of my room, I could more vividly recall the way his body had felt beside mine, warm against the contours of my skin. Of all the possible fallouts from giving him my heart, I hadn’t expected this one: that having a bed to myself would no longer be a treasure worth coveting.
A month into living at Zeke and Nadine’s, I finally felt something new echo down Arcturus’s end of the cord. I had been lying in bed for ages, poking in vain at our connection. The drowsier I became, the more uninhibited my thoughts became too. I started flinging all sorts of sentimentalities at him — too exhausted to be embarrassed. After an eternity of trying, with no response back, I finally fell asleep.
Hours later, I was jerked awake by the slightest tremor in the aether. I bolted upright, rubbing blearily at my eyes. Light flickered at me from my nightstand. Right. My phone. I reached for it, squinting against the brightness of the screen. I didn’t recognize the number, but that wasn’t so unusual. Unless it was Zeke or Nadine calling me, all other communications would be from anonymous numbers — especially those from Domino.
I flipped the phone open and held it to my ear.
“Hello?” I croaked.
“Paige.”
The voice at the other end of the line was deep and rumbling. I hadn’t heard it in weeks.
“Arcturus?” It came out soft, like a whisper.
There was a brief pause, as if Arcturus were taking a moment to digest the sound of my voice as well.
“I know it is late there,” he said finally. “My apologies. Did I wake you?”
I sat up in bed. Moonlight filtered through the window to my left. For a moment, I felt confused, unable to distinguish the room where I lay now, with his voice so close to my ear, from the one we had shared together in Paris.
“I-” My voice felt thick, like syrup stuck to the inside of my throat. “No. I was already up.”
It wasn’t strictly true, but it was absurd that he should ask. Sleep was something I could live without. Arcturus wasn’t.
“Is everything alright?” I rasped. “Where are you?”
I waited, heart pounding, for him to give me the bad news. Nick was dead. Or Maria had gone missing. Or he himself was calling me from prison, and this was his last chance to say goodbye.
“It is not yet three in the morning there,” he said. “You should have been sleeping.”
I blinked. As far as I knew, the world was crashing down around us, and here he was…worried about my sleep? I almost laughed at his admonishment. He was still such a mother hen.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, waving away his concern. “What’s going on? Did something happen?”
I hadn’t felt any disquiet from his side of the cord, but I’d been distracted today, training with Nadine.
“All is well,” Arcturus replied. “It is only that I left Scion this afternoon, to visit Rome. Kassandra requested a meeting with a member of the Ranthen.”
“What?” That was surprising. The last time I’d dealt with Kassandra, they hadn’t exactly been the Ranthen’s biggest fans. “Why? What did they want?”
“They seem newly open to negotiating.” I imagined his eyes flashing in the dark, the way they would flicker in thought. “Nashira’s reveal must have encouraged them to take action. The benefit of collaborating with us may now be more apparent to them.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about this news. Though Kassandra’s vision for the future was admirable, their collaboration with Jaxon had made me wary of their oversight. After all he had done, after all I’d revealed to them about his past, they had still decided to back him as co-leader of the Mime Order. I’d never forgive them for that. And for them to have asked Arcturus to return, when they knew he had been injured…
What if they had detained him? What if it had all been a trick, and they’d never intended to be civil, but instead meant to turn him over to Nashira as a bargaining chip?
“You shouldn’t have gone alone,” I blurted.
“Lucida accompanied me.”
“You shouldn’t have gone at all.” I was suddenly angry at him for taking the risk. “You’re supposed to be resting. What possessed you to leave Scion so soon? It could have been a trap.”
Arcturus was quiet. I caught the faintest hint of surprise and uncertainty flicker down the cord. Shame flooded through me. How could I be angry with him when I had never treated my own life with the same respect? Even when it had hurt him, so obviously, back in Paris, I had acted rashly, without half a thought for those in my life who might care for my well-being.
“Kassandra knows my face,” Arcturus said, carefully. “I discussed things beforehand with the Ranthen. We agreed that I would be the best candidate for the visit. And my condition has improved, since your departure. I did not think there was much risk.”
“There is always a risk,” I said, my voice tense. “And you shouldn’t be taking any.”
I wasn’t sure how this had turned into an argument, when each second that we’d been speaking, my heart sang only with happiness to hear his voice.
Without my expression to go by, I could tell that Arcturus was struggling to decipher my thoughts. Eventually, there was a yielding of sorts, from his end of the cord, and when his voice finally reached my ear again, it was with the plain openness of love and affection that I was still unused to hearing from him.
“You asked me to call you, should I leave Scion at any point,” he said, softly. “I would not miss an opportunity to hear your voice, Little Dreamer.”
All at once, the fight went out of me. Even through the phone, it was as if I were softening under his touch. What was wrong with me? Here he was again, doing all that he could to reach me, and I was yelling at him for it. I was a fool to be wasting whatever brief moment of connection the aether had granted us.
“I missed hearing you call me that,” I said finally, hoping he could hear the apology in my voice. I had told him something similar, when I had thought he was dead. I wondered again whether he had been able to hear me. I was glad he could hear me now.
“You have proved it an inappropriate title, as of late,” Arcturus replied. “I have sensed you, through the cord, at odd hours. You have not been sleeping, Paige.”
“You’ve been spying on me then, have you?”
“You know as well as I do that it is difficult not to pry.”
I did. There wasn’t a moment of the day that went by where I wasn’t poking nosily at the cord, wondering what he was thinking. How he was doing.
“The cord seems a fair bit stronger than when we were separated the last time,” I said. I ran my fingers over the mattress beside me, imagining how warm it would be if he were there. “When you first came to London, after Oxford, it took some time to warm up again, after being apart for so long. I thought…well, I thought the ocean might be an obstacle.”
There was a thoughtful pause from his end of the line.
“I did say it might become more apparent to you over time. Perhaps our sojourn in Italy has further solidified it. In allowing me to be your partner, you’ve allowed it a permanent place in your dreamscape.”
“I didn’t allow you to do anything,” I rolled my eyes. He still thought so little of himself sometimes. “I wanted you just as much as you wanted me. I still do.”
“Hm. A truth which I will never stop being in awe of.”
I smiled, tenderness warming the planes of my skin. It was a joy to be this open with him now, after months of keeping these thoughts to ourselves.
“Has the cord been this strong for you the whole time?” I asked.
“It is different, for a Rephaite,” he replied. “We are always more attuned to the aether. It is never possible to fully drown it out. Even if we may wish to.”
I wondered if there had been times when he had wanted to be less aware of me. To quiet the rage of emotions I must barrage him with all the time.
“If you are imagining that I wish to dampen our connection, I would remind you that you are mistaken,” he said seeming to somehow catch the wandering nature of my thoughts. “Every day I have had awareness of you has been a gift. Besides, I tried to disrupt that awareness once. It did not bode well for me.”
I smiled. When we’d rescued him from Capri, he’d blocked his end of the cord for days, trying to spare me from the intensity of his desire. In doing so, I had assumed he no longer wanted me. It was absurd to think back on it now, the time we had lost to miscommunication.
“I’ve never asked you this before,” I said softly. “But…do you ever hear me say things? Through the cord?”
Without his eyes to go by, I could only imagine what he might be thinking. From the length of his pause, he was choosing his words carefully.
“It is muffled,” he said, eventually. “But on occasion, yes. I can hear you.”
My face heated. I had sent all sorts of things through the cord in desperation, assuming he would be none the wiser. Once, I had even given him a song. Hummed the notes to it myself in my bedroom one evening, when I’d been unable to fall asleep.
“And?” I asked, quietly. “What do I say?”
Arcturus didn’t respond. I assumed he was trying to spare me the embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my cheeks flaming. “I must be driving you spare.”
“Do not apologize,” Arcturus replied. “Anything you send me is a gift. It is only that…” He paused again, considering. “I cannot be certain if I hear your words correctly. I would not wish to misconstrue your message.”
His voice was careful. Measured. We had bared our souls to one another in Orvieto, but there would always be parts of us that remained guarded. Perhaps he had heard every single thing I had said, but out of respect for my privacy, he wouldn’t bring them up until I did.
“I can’t hear you,” I said eventually, filling the silence. “Do you ever say anything back?”
Though I had called for him many times since I had met him, and he had always come, I had never received a direct summons from him myself. Flickers of emotion I could always feel, especially when we were together. But from a distance, our back-and-forth had always been one-sided. When I was in the Archon, I hadn’t been able to hear him, even though he’d said that he’d tried to reach me, every single day. Why was it so hard, on my side, to let him through? It was as if my body still held up a barrier, despite the fact that I had given him my entire heart.
“I would not leave a call from you unanswered,” he said. “Someday, when you are ready, you will be able to hear my replies.”
It wasn’t a full answer, but I didn’t push him. I wasn’t exactly jumping at the bit to tell him everything I had said. If I couldn’t bare all of myself to him, I couldn’t expect him to do so either.
“It kills me not being able to talk to you,” I said. “What’s the point of this all-powerful, secret connection, if we can’t be together?”
“I might suggest that that is exactly the point. We can be aware of one another even when we are physically apart.”
“But I can’t hear you through it. Or feel you beside me. It isn’t the same.”
“Paige,” he said quietly. “What troubles you? It cannot be only this.”
I couldn’t hide from him. I’d never been able to.
“I’m having trouble with my dreamwalking,” I sighed. “I thought I had a plan. To use the water to fully conquer my fear and cushion my body at the same time. But it’s not working. You were always so good at training me. Without you, I just feel like I’m…blocked.”
“It will take time. You’re meant to be resting, to prepare for the crescendo of this conflict. There is no rush.”
“But there is,” I said. “Like it or not, Nashira is moving, and we have no say over her timeline.”
I pulled my legs up to my chest, resting my chin on my knees. I had told him I felt like I could be small around him. For the first time since coming to Canada, I allowed myself to become tiny in his presence, scrunching my limbs up into a ball.
“How am I supposed to sleep knowing I have no idea how long this will take?” I whispered. “Or if I’ll ever figure it out at all?”
“You cannot dreamwalk without rest. You know this. You need all of your faculties if you wish to make progress.”
I sighed.
“I just wish you were here.”
He was quiet again. I thought I could make out a slight crackle from his end of the line, and I imagined him sitting somewhere by a fire, his hands clasped on his thighs before him. The thought was comforting.
“Have I ever told you of the first time I left the Netherworld?” he said, eventually.
My eyes widened.
“No.” In all our time together in Paris, I couldn’t believe I had never asked. “Was it after the civil war? Or before?”
“After,” he said. “Though I would have liked to go sooner. I was sworn to the Mothallath. Duty bound to protect them. I had always wanted to accompany them to the other side of the veil, to ensure their safety.”
“But they didn’t let you?”
“No,” he said. “For years, only the Mothallath were allowed through. I served as their guard in the Netherworld only. But when they returned, they would tell stories. We never had much regard for the human world, as Rephaim. But when our world suddenly began to fall, its potential attributes suddenly gained importance. We were all eager to hear what it might be like.”
I put the phone on speaker and laid it on the pillow next to mine, allowing my body to melt down onto the bed. His voice was like a balm to my soul, pushing me gently into the covers.
“When I was finally allowed through,” he continued. “I had only vague expectations. We had been taught that the human world was full of darkness and hate. That humans, who were the cause of the waning of the veils themselves, were incapable of treating one another with respect.”
He paused, thoughtful.
“I had never imagined that a world of hate would be filled with such…color,” he mused. “For a species that wanted nothing but violence, they seemed to also display a remarkable amount of love and passion. And though their lives were short, this fleetingness seemed to instill within them a sense of urgency and need for action. For Rephaim, years are so small a segment of time that their meaning becomes insignificant, and change becomes a passive concept that unfolds over centuries. It is not something that one can create. But for humans, change was movable. It was something that they could enact at will. One might think that a species with a limited lifetime would wish for time to stand still. But no, humans were constantly striving for more. Where there was no beauty, they created it. Where things were stagnant, they pushed for the tide to resume. They did not behold themselves to a creator, but rather made ones of themselves.”
My eyes were drooping. It was almost like I could feel him beside me, like I could make out the slightest beat of his heartbeat through the cord.
“You are one of those creators, Paige. You thread your existence into the fabric of the aether, not resting until you’ve had an effect. You will not stand for your own stagnancy, because you cannot bear to think the same of the world. It is what makes you human. It is what makes you worthy of admiration. When you are ready to conquer the fear, when you are ready to enact that change within yourself, you will.”
“And until then?” I whispered against my pillow, my eyes heavy. “What do I do while I wait?”
“Until then,” he said. “We work to change everything else. And leave nothing of the old untouched.”
I had never met someone who could speak so directly to my soul. His words had calmed me enough that I felt that I was halfway in the aether, his soul dancing with mine. My body was heavy on the bed, my spirit slipping slowly into unconsciousness.
“I miss you,” I murmured. I was unwilling to give myself entirely over to slumber, given that I had no idea when we would be able to talk again. But it was as if my body had been waiting, all along, for him to usher me into rest. I didn't have the energy to fight it. Not when I was this tired.
“Sleep, Little Dreamer,” Arcturus said softly. My eyes fluttered shut. “I will be with you always. And I will be listening every time you call, even when you think I can’t hear.”