Page 19 of Guardian of Exile

A choked sound behind her led Nyx to spin on her heel, where she found Morgen and Kaden. The former was trying not to laugh, the latter was unreadable. Great.

“Did you guys find anything?” she asked.

Two heads shook no in answer.

“We covered most of lower Manhattan but no sign of Veld,” Morgen said. “You?”

“Nothing.”

“About that conversation we walked up on⁠—”

“Anyone else starving?” Nyx interrupted. “I’m starving.” With that, she walked into the Empire State Building.

What was it with men and towers, anyway? It was a good thing Nyx wasn’t actually starving, because as soon as they’d gotten inside the building, Morgen had produced tickets for the 102nd floor observation deck. How and when he’d purchased them, Nyx had no idea, but she was now certain his choice of restaurant had only been made to get her here, where she then couldn’t reasonably deny him the full Empire State Building experience.

In fact, if Nyx had to guess, Morgen had no intention of eating at the restaurant sequestered in the base of the tower at all. She’d thought it an odd choice when she’d glanced at the menu online earlier. It was limited, and what she personally defined as “moderately upscale generic”. A perfectly fine option if you were already at the tower and wanted the experience of dining within it, but she couldn’t see Morgen, with the breadth of NYC’s options spread out before him, picking such a safe and inoffensive dining option to save her life. She just hadn’t cared enough earlier to interrogate the thought much.

Now, as an elevator hurtled them upwards at an alarming rate, Nyx wished Seth was here to bet her on the outcome. He’d take it just to be contrary, then talk Morgen into actually eating here to win it. She closed her eyes, opened them when the elevator doors slid open. Morgen was animatedly explaining the history and importance of the building, to the extent that the actual guide had quit speaking altogether. Evra was listening with the patient expression of a person who was not nearly as interested in niche intellectual pursuits as their beloved, but who was working hard to be attentively supportive anyway.

Nyx tried to focus on what he was saying, but she just…didn’t care. She wanted to, but she couldn’t actually summon the energy to fake it. All of her anger had drained out of her with Kiev’s death. The blackest depths of her depression had receded with it too, with the trip she’d made to Kyvren and the memorial the Meerkin had made to Seth. Now she was just…tired. As she walked to the edge of the room and looked out the window, trying and failing to feel anything at the sprawl before her, she had to admit she was tired of herself, too. That she could be in a place like this and it could inspire nothing in her, that her most interesting thoughts were about making bets with her dead boyfriend.

Stars, she was a fucking mess. Evra was right. She needed to feel something. She just didn’t think a one-night stand was the thing that would make it happen for her. The idea of going out and finding a random person to hook up with didn’t appeal. She wished it did. But she’d never been attracted solely to physical features. Stars knew she’d had plenty of chances to observe people without them noticing her during her memory-less time in Dead Earth, but staring at objectively beautiful people had never given her the urge to jump into bed with them.

She’d slept with Seth because she loved him. She’d slept with Kaden because he’d been a connection in a world where she’d had none, and because she’d liked him. And later, because she’d loved him. Loved who she thought he’d been, anyway.

As if thinking of him had summoned him, Kaden came up beside her, staring out at the city. Nyx wished she was one of those people who didn’t feel the need to fill a silence. The ability always seemed like a badge of honor when a character in a book she was reading possessed it, as if they’d risen above the social niceties that plagued ordinary humans.

Nyx, an ordinary human plagued by the pull of social niceties, lasted less than a minute before she asked, “Feeling awestruck?”

Kaden shrugged. She thought that was all the response she was going to get, until he said, “I never liked large cities much. Too many people pressing in.”

“Is that where your obsession with the ocean comes in? No one around for miles?”

He looked at her then, and she realized she’d done it again—pulled on that history between them without meaning to. “Maybe,” he said, turning his gaze back out the window. “Probably. I grew up by the ocean. It’s…peaceful on the water. You can hear yourself think.”

He’d never told her that before. He could have. Telling her he’d grown up by the ocean wouldn’t have told the Nyx who hadn’t known about the universe that those shores had been on another planet.

But…she’d also never asked. She’d never wanted to know, afraid that if she asked he would turn into a real person who had a real life and obligations, and that life and those obligations might call him away from her. She’d blamed him so much for never telling her anything, but she’d selfishly never asked, not wanting the paper life they’d built together to rip. Knowing, instinctively, that if she’d asked she would find things that didn’t make sense. Things that meant she would have had to wonder, from a cynical perspective, why he was the only person who could see her, why he could take the bizarre story of her life in stride instead of telling her she needed professional help.

He’d conned her, yes. But you couldn’t con someone who didn’t want, at least in part, to be conned. It didn’t make what he’d done right. It didn’t make it her fault. But even if he’d never cared about her back then, her lack of curiosity about him must have hurt him somewhat. She wondered if, when they’d been together, he’d realized what she hadn’t—that she’d wanted him not for who he was, but simply because he’d been there. That she might have wanted anyone who’d been there.

A shift in the air between them was Kaden pulling back in on himself. She couldn’t point a finger to what the difference was. He didn’t shift his stance or move away. His expression didn’t falter. It was a change felt rather than seen. He’d told her something that, while it would be nothing coming from most people, was the Kaden Moor equivalent of handing her his diary to read, and she’d gone too long without responding.

A little buzz of anger crept under her skin. A few days ago she’d asked about his mother and he’d more or less mocked her for the curiosity. Now he was the one offering something without her asking and he was, what? Disappointed she hadn’t responded?

Why did this always have to happen with him? One of them was always pissing the other one off, and she couldn’t ever seem to figure out why. Inevitably, just as she would convince herself she’d quit being angry about her past with him, it would snap back out of her without warning. The majority of the time, Kaden seemed to want nothing to do with her, but then he would occasionally say something like this.

It would be easier if she could just cut him out of her life, but he was a part of Morgen’s, and she’d seen how much happier it had made Morgen to have Kaden around again. She wouldn’t take that away from him by asking Kaden to leave when most of the time it wasn’t an issue. She and Kaden could avoid each other just fine at the Station.

A thumping impact on her back, hard enough to crack her upper spine, was Evra’s hand slapping her in what the Amazon no doubt meant as a friendly gesture. “Have we marveled long enough at the technological achievements of Earthlings? Morgen informs me we are meant to feel small in the face of the vastness of the world. If the two of you have achieved this, I believe we may go eat.”

Nyx arched her eyebrows at Morgen, who stood at Evra’s side. He grinned in return.

“Yeah,” Nyx said, “we can—wait, no.”

“‘No’, you have not come to terms with your place in the universe?” Evra asked.

“No, I mean I’m not ready to go. There’s something I want to do first.” Try, she reminded herself. Try and feel something.