“I hate the outdoors,” Ever says with passion.
I can only agree, and I love how fierce they look, their eyes blazing.
I could kiss Ever, looking the way they do now.
Kiss already. Maddy’s voice in the back of my mind, or perhaps she simply said it again.
And perhaps my intent is clear on my face, because when Ever looks back at me, the fierce annoyance has made way for vulnerable trust—and a desperate hunger.
I bring my hands up to their face again. I don’t understand how I can count myself this lucky.
Hands along their jawline.
Eyes locking eyes.
The mountain smells of dew and early morning and the faint sulfur of lava. Ever smells of home.
I pull them close and wait for the almost imperceptible nod.
Then I press my lips to their forehead.
“I love you too much to steal that first kiss here,” I whisper low enough that Maddy probably can’t hear it. “So, not today. We still have tomorrow.”
* * *
Three more rabbits cross our path as we make our way. Some kind of bird of prey calls loudly and sends all of us huddling closer together. It seems the mountain isn’t quite done with us yet, or at least wants to give us a memorable exit. As if we could forget any part of it.
We have one another, at least.
“Next time we go adventuring, let’s skip the outdoors and stick to well-populated urban areas, please,” Maddy says, her voice soft and worn. She’s sweating, and she keeps clamping her arm closer to her chest and then realizing that only makes it worse. She sways. We take turns supporting her, but she’s supporting Ever and me as much.
Ever tenses at those words. They stop dead in their tracks, and I have to swerve to avoid colliding with them. The sky around us has lit up to a pale blue, but Ever is paler. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to play again. Not after all this.”
“Do you think our game is responsible for this?” I ask.
“Don’t you?” Ever hasn’t quite turned to face us, and now, they look away entirely. They’re all angles and tension. “I wouldn’t blame either of you for thinking that.”
“I don’t even know how to blame Liva for this yet, no matter how much I want to,” Maddy replies. She draws breath and then falls silent, Ever’s question heavy between us. Do we blame the game? Does that make sense?
Eventually, Maddy finds the right words after all: “If it weren’t for us, for our game, I wouldn’t be here.”
Ever flinches, but before they can say anything, she pushes on. “I don’t mean everything with Liva or Carter. I mean surviving. Finding you. Finding ourselves. I wouldn’t be here. Not without this place we built and without having you all by my side. Before, when nothing else was good enough, I had sports. After, at least I had Myrre. She kept me going. She kept me from falling too far. But she never turned me into a thief, simply because I play one. That’s not how that works. I can’t stealth properly, and believe me, I’ve tried.
“I honestly don’t know if I want to play again. Not immediately. Or any time soon. Maybe not ever. But the world matters to me. The game matters to me. At the very least, if nothing else…the memories matter.” Her face falls.
“What Maddy said,” I agree softly. Gonfalon taught me to survive. Here. Tonight.
And it also taught me to survive in life. To find a place where I could be fully me, without anyone denying it. To start fights when necessary and not back down. To always keep asking questions. And to come back to the people who are your home, no matter how hard it sometimes is.
It’s why I came back for it this weekend. And maybe that was the worst decision in my life—in many ways, it feels like it. But knowing that my friends were here, even if I’d had the choice, I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.
“Gonfalon is still ours, Ev,” I say. “It saved us. It’ll always be a part of us and a part of our journey. Maybe we’ll never play again, but I hope we do. I hope we play again, even if it’s ten or fifteen years from now. Even if it’s just us, sitting in an imaginary tavern, drinking imaginary mead, remembering the friends we lost and the friends who betrayed us. Remembering our shared adventures. I hope we do.”
“And maybe we’ll discover other worlds down the road, because who we are hasn’t changed,” Maddy adds. “Maybe we’ll find others like us, because the two of us are going to be hanging out in Stardust for a while longer. But let’s keep the door open.”
Ever stares at both of us. For once, I can’t read their emotions, but it seems like an impossible combination of hope and guilt. “Really? Are you sure?”
“I’m not sure about much of anything right now,” I admit. “But I don’t want to lose this. I don’t want to lose you. We’ve lost too much already today. It turns out, the world we built doesn’t have to be perfect. The people don’t have to be perfect. It matters far more that they’re here.”
Maddy reaches for Ever. “You can trust us. This time, we’re not lying.”
I nod. And though I may not know how to go from here, I know where to go. Home. To my mothers. To Damien. With Ever, wherever we want. Wherever home is for us together, no matter how long. To the observatory, or ghost hunting in the Monte Vista, or hanging out somewhere in the city.
I told them I was still leaving after the summer, no matter what happens next, and that’s true. I’ve got a taste for adventure. I want new worlds to discover and new worlds to invent. I don’t feel safe here anymore, and that hasn’t changed.
But I want to find a place
