When I look up, I understand what he’s looking at. The branches have blocked out enough light so that the stars in here are more visible, and from this vantage point, it looks like the rest of the world has faded away to leave only this circle of leaves overhead, enveloping for us this piece of pristine sky.

Red doesn’t turn at my entrance, but in the dimness, I see him shift slightly so that I can come to sit beside him.

I needed to go somewhere to clear my head, he tells me, his face still pointed upward. I can see a hint of his lashes framed against the night. Found this place. Have you ever eaten pomegranates?

I shake my head. Once.

I heard the Early Ones have a story about them, you know. Pomegranates.

That they do not, in fact, lodge in your teeth?

He smiles slightly at me. That they were once used to tempt a girl trapped in a place called the Underworld, where the dead are.

I make a face and wonder if he can sense it through our link. What a thing to tempt someone with.

At that, Red glances away from the sky to meet my eyes for a moment. His lips curve into a smile. I’ll take them if you don’t want them, he answers.

I join his side. We stay very still, and I let myself think about the nearness of him, the warmth emanating from his body, the brush of his arm against mine. He has been broken down and rebuilt, just as I had, had survived indescribable trauma, but it has not destroyed who he is. He is still the boy I’ve come to know, at once brave and mischievous and naïve, taking the world in.

I wonder if sitting in a grove of them connects us a bit to that Underworld, he finally says.

To the dead?

He nods slightly. I feel, rather than see, his movement in the shift of his body. We might not succeed in getting to Constantine, he says. Maybe we will fail, and Constantine’s armies will rally around us, slaughter us all before we can take him down.

I hear the question in his voice, and answer, But?

But what if we win? He turns to look at me now. What if we do reach the Premier and end his life? What will happen to the Federation then? What will happen to the rest of the lands—Mara, Basea, every territory conquered and brutalized?

I know what he’s afraid to say. If we do succeed in killing the Premier, if we end his regime, how will this world splinter? Will we really be able to return to where we once lived and see it rebuilt for us? What are we returning to, exactly?

I don’t know, I admit. Maybe nothing. Maybe something else will replace the Premier and everything will keep on going as it has.

Red nods slightly. Then he wipes a hand subtly across his cheek. When I look closer, I realize that he’s wiping tears away.