Page 45 of Kavan

"All of it."

"All of it."

She kisses me, soft and slow and deliberate, and a tightness I have carried since the fourth day on a cliff above Cove Nine finally lets go.

When she draws back, her expression changes.

"One thing," she says. "Before we go out there."

"I should be at the aperture."

"You will be. In a minute." She takes my face in both hands. "If we don't leave this room⁠—"

"Sophie."

"If we don't walk out, I need you to know that I don't regret a single second of this. Not the gutter, not the observatory, not the blister. Every part of it."

"Sophie."

"Shut up, I'm being articulate."

I laugh, and it hurts, and it's the best thing I have done in eleven years.

"Sophie," I say, "we're walking out."

"You don't know that."

"I do." My good hand closes on her waist. "Because I have spent nineteen years learning to survive losing everything, and I'm not going to lose this. Not you. Not now."

She makes a sound and presses her forehead to mine, and we stay that way.

The alert comes at 1738.

It isn't the seat. It's Enwright's relay, which has been dead for fifteen days and isn't dead anymore, because the fortress has brought the planetary net up and the net includes the surface. What comes through it is a League emergency broadcast on every band at once.

Sophie is off my lap and pulling on her trousers before I can stand.

I find my own clothing one-handed, the movements automatic, the marshal sliding back into place like armor I have worn so long I've forgotten it isn't skin.

Above the island, forty-one orbital platforms have finished deploying. The League cordon is still up there, and every ship in it has just been designated.

I look at Sophie across the blister. She's pulling on her shirt, her hair a disaster, her thighs still trembling. There are marks on her collarbone I put there.

"This changes nothing," I say.

She meets my eyes. "What doesn't?"

"Nothing." I cross the blister in two steps and pull her to me, one-armed, fierce. "If we walk out of this room, I won't let you go. Not to the Initiative. Not to the stars. I'll make tea and I'll let you watch the weather and I won't ask you for anything except to stay."

She laughs into my chest. "That's a lot to ask."

"I have stopped asking for permission."

She tips her chin up and kisses me, quick and hard. "Good."

Then we're moving. The blister empties. Nineteen people become a column again, and I'm at its head, and she's at my right shoulder, exactly where she belongs.

I have been standing at a burning cordon for eleven years waiting for permission to leave.