I toy with the folded loam pigeon in my pocket. It’s the same one Michael gave me all those months ago on the day we met. The Families took it apart and ran all kinds of tests on it, then they asked me to put it back together. I was able to replace the sense and fold it into shape, but I couldn’t reanimate it. Animation isn’t a skill I came anywhere close to learning during my time at Genesis. So it’s just a lifeless origami pigeon now. Useless enough that hopefully the Families won’t notice I stole it back.

Though I don’t know why I even bothered. It’s just a reminder of everything I can’t do. That I can’t go back. That although Michael may have said that if I ever need his help he would come for me, I’ve severed that connection as well.

Dumb dead bird.

I pull my hand out of my pocket before I crush the loam between my fingers.

“I can’t tell you how good it is to have you back,” Kor says. “Once you know how much more is out there, it’s so hard to connect with everyone else.”

I was just thinking the same thing a few moments ago, but when he says it, it sounds so elitist. It reminds me of the way Rafe talks about provincial people. But if I’m going to influence Kor, that’s not the approach to take.

“I know what you mean,” I say. “Everything here feels two-dimensional in comparison.”

“I want to know what it was like,” he says.

So I tell him.

Not the stuff I shared over our video calls and with the Inner Chamber. But all the best parts. Everything I loved.

He takes another sip of his beer, and I’m hit with a strong image from my strange dream weeks ago—that I still haven’t managed to shake—of him drinking a glass of wine. The echoing memory of a crack of thunder sends chills down my spine, and I visibly shiver. Kor puts his arm around me, and the feel and scent of him drive away the dream and conjure up years of longing instead. I let him pull me close, and I rest my head on his shoulder as I keep talking. I tell him about hoverjousting and about watching the animation of a golem I made with my own hands. I feel his breath quicken with excitement when I describe the Valkyries flying.

“You would love it, Kor.”

“I know I would.”

“And yet you want to tear it down?”

“Not at all,” he says softly. So softly. “I just want to share their wonders with our world.”