It isn’t a place, I answer as I squeeze his hand back.

It is a feeling. A people.

It is those I’m brave enough to open my heart to, and those who open their hearts back.

It is us.

44

TALIN

It is another few weeks before I’m able to move around regularly. My muscles are weak from resting for so long, and when I walk, I tremble, but Red is there, holding me steady. My mother continues to stay at my side, gossiping with me late into the night about what she hears is happening outside the city. Gradually, she allows me longer and longer intervals on my own. I can now take comfort in the peace of these moments of solitude. My friends come and go in their regular intervals.

And then, one morning, I find myself waking up before dawn, my room still awash in deep blue light.

I toss and turn for a while before I finally sit up with a sigh. Then I swing my legs over the side of my bed and change out of my loose white shirt and wide dark pants. I switch to a Striker uniform, cleaned and tailored for me and hung neatly in my wardrobe. The familiar weight of the fabrics makes me smile.

The hall is cool and dark. A few nurses bustle here and there, but others are asleep, and most don’t bother me. One recognizes me and looks like she wants to say something, then stops. They know what I’ve been through. The last thing they want to do is tell me where to go and what to do.

I give her a brief smile, hoping she understands it as I won’t be long. She blinks at me, then responds with a subtle nod. She leaves me alone to continue down the hall.

The dawn is already making way for day by the time I step outside. I close my eyes for a moment, relishing the bite of a cool breeze against my skin, and breathe deeply. The aches in my back, my still-healing wounds, seem to recede for a moment, and for the first time since I left Basea, since my mother and I fled into Mara’s borders, I feel light. Soldiers dot the thoroughfare, but otherwise the city seems quieter than I’ve ever seen it.

From somewhere high above me, I hear the faint, unmistakable sound of Adena’s voice. I turn my head up to the roof of the hospital. The stairs against the side of the building lead up there, and as if on instinct, I head toward them, searching as I used to do as a Striker for the highest vantage point.

The stairs tire me faster than they should, but I still make my way to the top. And there, instead of seeing an empty ledge, I come upon Adena sitting beside Jeran, speaking in a low, rapid voice as she demonstrates the clips on a belt she has designed. On Jeran’s other side, Aramin crouches against the ledge and stares down at a crew working to disassemble one of the hundreds of structures lining the main thoroughfare. Jeran leans back on his hands, answers Adena now and then as she turns the belt in her hands. As I watch them, I realize that the slowly emerging dawn has outlined their bodies in pale blue, casting them in light so fine that I’m afraid they might disappear before my eyes.