“Thank you so much,” I say.
“Wow,” Ness says, sitting up. He lifts his holey shirt and examines the smooth skin that’s still slick with blood but no wound. “You’re a true miracle worker.”
“Happy to help,” Eva says.
“Helping shouldn’t hurt so much,” Wyatt says as he walks toward Nox.
That definitely felt targeted at me.
“He filled us in,” Iris says as she helps Eva to her feet. “I haven’t heard anything from Maribelle obviously, but I’ll wake up Wesley to see if she reached out to him.”
“Okay. I’m so sorry that we had to leave, it was getting grim in there and—”
“It was an impossible mission with one victory,” Iris says, though I think she’s hiding behind some diplomatic nonsense when she can keep it real with me. She shakes Ness’s hand. “Thank you for your work.”
Ness shrugs that off. “Don’t thank me. I did more damage than good.”
“You did,” Iris agrees. “But we’re personally grateful for the good.”
Eva hugs Ness, a celestial and a specter united by freedom from an unlikely captor. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she says.
“You too.”
Iris takes Eva’s hand. “We should let them catch up.”
“Actually, would you mind taking Ness to the kitchen quickly? I got to check in on the potion.” I turn to Ness. “You’ve got to be starving, right?”
Ness is reading my face like some scholar on expressions. “I should eat, yeah,” he says even though he knows something’s up.
They all walk off, and Ness looks over his shoulder a couple times, too concerned about me to really take in the castle or the phoenixes or his new lease on life. Once they’re out of sight, I go straight to Wyatt, who is lying beside Nox on the grass with his eyes closed.
“Can we talk?” I ask.
“I’m sleeping,” he says. “It’s been a very, very long night.”
“I know. You’ve done so much to save my people. I can’t thank you enough.”
“There are ways that you can try—” Wyatt shuts up, like he has some automatic flirtation function he forgot to turn off. “It was my pleasure to help.”
“Except helping shouldn’t hurt so much, right? Look, I know that you’re respecting my headspace as I figure everything out for myself but I want to respect yours too. It was really big of you to risk your life to save Ness’s knowing what he means to me.”
Wyatt sits up, his blue eyes looking more like an ocean as he tears up. “That’s precisely why I did it, Emil. For you. Ness’s imprisonment was tragic, yes, but he wasn’t some helpless, caged phoenix I’ve been trained to rescue. I’ve taken vows to serve phoenixkind and protect my fellow Haloes, and instead we abandoned Tala and Roxana. This hasn’t been sitting right with me since our flight back.”
I haven’t seen this side of him before. He’s so upset that he’s crying, something I relate to.
“You told me to start being more selfish, and I’m sorry that’s come at a cost to you.”
“I hope it’ll pay off for me in the long run. Ness is a good man who saved your family too, I would never deny that nor would I ever say anything bad about someone I don’t know. I’m simply hoping that I see you on the other side of infinity.” Wyatt looks tempted to kiss me, and part of me wishes he would so I know there’s still something good between us, but instead he lies down with his back to me. I fight back my own temptations to cuddle up to him, wondering if I’ll ever get the chance to do so again.
I return to the castle and head straight for the lab. Brighton and Prudencia should be back in the next ten to twenty minutes unless they had a pit stop so he could rip out someone else’s heart. The journal is lying open beside the cauldron. I follow the last instructions, soaking the Dayrose root in phoenix tears and setting the potion to a high boil. This will be ready in minutes, and then I’ll figure out when I might meet up with Wyatt on the other side of infinity.
There’s a knock on the door, and at first I think he’s a ghost because I’m still not used to Ness being alive, let alone here in the Sanctuary. He walks through the lab, paying no mind to anything but me, and straight into my arms. The last time we hugged was when I ran straight into his arms for coming back to help me at Nova, and before that was when we were parting ways, unsure if we’d ever see each other again.
“You shouldn’t have rescued me,” Ness says, holding me close.
“Got to live up to my nickname,” I say.
“Popping up like a firefly in the night.” He steps back to look me in the eyes. “It was a great surprise, don’t get me wrong. But busting into the Bounds? I don’t know that I could’ve pulled that off.”
“You would’ve tried. I owed you the same respect.”
Ness sits on a stool, grinning up at me. “I guess we’re stuck in our very own infinity cycle, taking turns saving each other from doom. Hopefully we don’t get separated again. I like the idea of us staying together. A lot.”
“Me too.”
There’s so much unspoken between us that when I’m reading between the lines it’s like I’m finding all the right words in caps lock.
I’m blushing and turn to the Starstifler as if there’s more for me to do here besides make sure it doesn’t blow up in its final minutes brewing. “How are you feeling?”
“Physically? All healed up, but exhausted. Emotionally? Relieved to be here and terrified that someone will drag me back to the manor or the Bounds at any moment. Psychologically? Destroyed over how a father could try to have his son killed and then greet his resurrection by using his powers for political gain.”
“He tried to kill you?”
“The Blackout,” Ness says, and explains everything
