Tavia was so pretty and Wesley was a little mad at himself for forgetting just how much.

What a mess every hallucination seemed now.

Zekia hadn’t even gotten her glare half-right.

“Wesley,” she said again, this time louder.

Saxony and the other two people whipped their heads around to face him.

Wesley swallowed. Scrunched his eyes closed in a quick blink.

Things were so bright here and the sun seemed foreign to him after so long in a series of dark rooms.

“Many Gods,” Saxony said.

And then Tavia was running toward him, faster than he knew she could be, and her arms were swinging around his neck and clutching on to him as if for life.

Then Wesley was somehow hugging her back, even though he wasn’t sure he had told his arms to move. He didn’t know they could, he was so tired even blinking hurt, but still his body folded into Tavia’s like it was instinct and when he breathed in, he inhaled the scent of her.

By the Many Gods, he had missed that scent.

“Tell me you’re not actually here,” Tavia said. “Because if this is real, then hugging you is actually quite embarrassing.”

“I’m here,” Wesley said.

They felt like the first words he had spoken since he’d jumped from that window. Tavia pulled away from him and ducked her head sheepishly.

“I was worried about you,” she said.

“Why? It’s not like I was kidnapped by a mass murderer.”

Tavia’s eyes met his. She glared and then she punched him in the shoulder. “You bastard,” she said.

Wesley wasn’t sure it was possible to miss someone as much as he had missed her.

“Did you win the war without me?” he asked. “Am I too late for the victory dance?”

Tavia looked like she was going to punch him again, but instead she laughed, which Wesley found equally as intimidating.

“Who are your new friends?” he asked, gesturing toward the man and woman who were standing on guard beside Saxony.

The wary way Saxony stared at him, scanning his hands for knives and his eyes for secrets, made Wesley want to smile.

Just like old times.

“Does that glare mean you missed me?” he asked her.

Saxony looked inclined to relax, but she kept her body rigid as if she had a reputation to uphold and being kind to Wesley might interfere with it.

“This is my father, Bastian,” Saxony said.

The man by her side stood like a fierce protector, with thick black hair pulled back into braids. He had a beard, which Wesley had never managed to grow himself, and a stern line in the center of his forehead that looked like it could be from frowning or laughing.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Wesley said.

He held out his hand and Bastian stepped forward to take it.