Surprisingly, Oliver’s childhood bedroom had a 1rst-aid kit that contained everything Celia needed for a makeshift bandaging job, even though the antiseptic looked so old that it might have expired.
But by Oliver’s hiss when she pressed the gauze pad into his wound, she guessed it worked well enough. This was only a temporary solution anyway; the wound wasn’t going to heal on its own without a doctor performing debridement on the area.
“What did they use on you in there?” she asked quietly. “This looks like the syringe was as thick as a 1nger.”
“I couldn’t even begin to tell you,” Oliver grumbled. He tried to Ainch away from the gauze, and Celia shot him a glare, pressing harder. He was entirely coherent now, at least. Even if his movements were a little slow, his temperature had returned to normal and his pulse thudded at a healthy increased speed. With time to replenish, his blood must have started making its additional components again.
Oliver winced. “Are you trying to torture me further?”
Celia relented, deciding the wound was as clean as it would get for now. She had forced Oliver to lie down on the bed, where the sheets were gray and covered in cartoonish stars. Ah Dou had been cleaning in here regularly, even though it had been years since Oliver was home. With a gentle brush of her 1nger, Celia prodded around the circular wound, making sure it had dried before she put anything over it.
Goose bumps appeared where she brushed. She drew back for a beat, setting the gauze in the lid of the 1rst-aid box. While she was kneeling beside the bed, she was half afraid she might suddenly lose her balance and topple, though the
bed was perfectly low—made a child’s height and unchanging through the years. One lamp lit the room in the corner. Its lampshade was moth-bitten, but the pale blue color had withstood the years, as had the miniature wood carvings of three bears that stood sentry around it on the table. Celia kept swearing she could hear gun1re outside, but she knew it had to be her imagination. They were too far from the conAict, too many streets removed with too many beautiful buildings protected by international law.
“I’m sorry to have done that.” Celia’s head jerked up. “Pardon?”
“The argument with your sister,” Oliver clari1ed. “I wasn’t trying to blame her. Phoebe will be okay. I know her.”
For a moment, Celia was disappointed that was what he was talking about. She thought it might have been something else. Something like why he was nursing a wound after being held captive in a cell. Why they’d had to pluck him away from the Nationalists’ hold. Why he had even been in the position to experience capture.
“It’s 1ne.” Celia prepared clean gauze. Slapped it to Oliver’s torso with an audible sound. He Ainched, casting her a bewildered look to ask why she was rough-handling him so much, but Celia ignored him, pulling a strip of medical tape and sticking the gauze in place.
“Is it?”
“I just said it was, didn’t I?” She reached for a roll of bandages. It was covered with dust, and she busied herself trying to clean it oP before realizing she could simply unroll the outer layers and discard the 1rst few dirtied pieces.
“I don’t know, sweetheart.” Oliver lifted himself onto his elbow. Celia cast him an immediate glare, but he was unfazed. “You’re being a little feisty right now.”
“I’m feisty because I’m playing nurse and my patient is being difficult. Lie back down.”
“Don’t I need to be sitting up if you’re wrapping the bandage around me?”
Celia paused. He was right. Dammit. She pulled a long length of the clean bandage, then tore it free. She gestured for Oliver to come forward, and he swung his legs over the bed until he was sitting before her.
“Arms up,” Celia muttered.
He obeyed. Winced slightly when it pulled at the wound. Celia shifted closer so she could place the bandage correctly, but it felt like a colossal task deciding how to get one end around. Oliver was so… shirtless. He had been shirtless before while she was wiping the blood away, but now there was no blood, only skin, and somehow it felt less like she was playing nurse and more like there was just Oliver shirtless in front of her.
Christ. Celia shook herself into focus. She could see little alternative except to
lean right in and snatch the other end of the bandage once it was around him, drawing back quickly.
Oliver put his arms down. He watched her adjust the wrapping. Though there was no sign of any hostility from his end, he stayed so silent that it was Celia who eventually caved, snapping, “Are you going to pretend you don’t know what you did?”
“Elaborate.”
He was impossible. She was going to kill him. Throw him into a ditch and report up to their superiors that he had simply tripped into an enemy trap.
“You”—Celia tugged the bandage hard, tightening it—“gave yourself up for me. Why?”
It went against all of their training. Perhaps if Oliver had had a backup plan prepared, it would have been another matter, but he hadn’t. The only thing that had mattered to him at that moment was making sure she could escape. Training would have bid them to wait it out, refuse to take unnecessarily heroic risks. If Celia were honest, training would have also dictated that she be the one to commit a sacri1ce if it came to it, because Oliver was doubtlessly the operative they needed more.
“Celia,” Oliver said simply. “Why do you think?”
She was having trouble making a knot on the bandage. Her 1ngers weren’t limber enough to tuck the end under itself.
“I have a hypothesis,” she whispered. Her voice almost gave up on her. The attitude she had possessed before grew legs and slipped away, scrambling out the window and out of sight. “But I don’t wish to be correct.”
Oliver’s room hummed with an insular sort of quiet, one that rang in Celia’s ears when she wasn’t speaking. They were on the ground Aoor, tucked in the hallway behind the living room, surrounded by the servants’ rooms and cleaning closets. Any commotion around the house didn’t make its way here.
“Why is that?”
His tone was unreadable. He made a noise resembling a wince, but that might have been the sudden press of pain when Celia adjusted the gauze.
“Maybe I worded that a little strongly.” She 1nally managed to secure the bandage. “Maybe it’s more accurate to say that it frightens me.”
Oliver went silent again. Celia rocked back, pulling her hands into her lap and clenching them tight. This conversation could end here. It didn’t have to break them further than they were already fractured.
“Have I ever told you,” Oliver said suddenly, just as Celia was about to rise, “that I latched on to this work in rebellion against my father?”
Carefully, Celia set the bandages back into the box. She closed the lid. “No,” she answered. “You haven’t.”
A diPerent quiet settled into the room. A certain hesitance—as if Oliver couldn’t believe he had started this track of conversation, but it was too late to renege on it. He leaned back, biting down on his grimace when he needed to shift his torso. Celia would have snapped for him to be careful, except the bed was short enough that he was already resting against the wall. He met her eyes, then inclined his head to his side. He wanted Celia to sit with him.
“Well, it was a bad year when the hanjian accusations started coming for my father,” Oliver went on. “Orion and Phoebe were still in London, but I was old enough to have returned already. Not only that, but my father had taken me under his wing as his protégé: 1rstborn son with the making to be exactly who he was in higher society. To tell the truth, I don’t think I minded it at all.”
Oliver gestured for Celia again, more insistently. This time she relented and folded herself down onto the starry gray sheets, tucking one leg underneath her in the neatest, politest manner she could manage. The sheets were soft as silk.
“I did mind when it started going downhill, though. Even if he never admitted it, I could feel his guilt. In every gesture and every word of advice he tried to turn on me at the dinner table, I knew he would brush whatever he
needed under the rug if it meant holding on to his place in society. I hated what I saw. He and my mother alike—it was not the family they loved but the ultimate image of what it could be. When we were younger, it was every language shoved into our heads until we were walking, talking foreign society assets. As we grew older, it was career paths placed into our hands and dinner party guests who needed to be entertained in case they would be of use down the road. If I kept following that same line, I would be exactly who they wanted me to be. I would have turned into my father.” Oliver’s eyes Auttered closed. Though he appeared tired, this wasn’t a gesture of rest. “He was cleared of his charges because he found the right people to put in the right calls. That very same day, I made up my mind to ensure I would end up nothing like him. I would be the exact opposite, in fact, and start from there.
“But I know how it goes. There’s always the old order with its Aaws and the new order that wants to 1x them. Then the new order starts to turn old, starts to pick up its own Aaws, perhaps turns even worse, and suddenly the cycle begins again.”
Oliver snapped his eyes open. Celia felt like she had missed something, that Oliver had jumped from his 1rst point to the third, and she hadn’t caught where the leap had happened. She waited a moment to see if he would keep talking. He stared forward instead, his arms clasped loosely around his middle to keep himself warm while his temperature continued adjusting.
“What are you trying to say?” Celia 1nally asked.
Slowly, Oliver’s gaze returned to her. At such proximity, Celia almost wished she hadn’t spoken and drawn his attention, because there was something intensely horrifying about the fact that he was looking at her and wasn’t looking away—that he was looking at her, and she could not hide from him.
“I’m trying to say that I thought it cast me apart from my father if I joined
the rebelling side of a war. If I worked for something outside of myself. He only cared about his own standing, so I would never do the same.” Oliver’s expression had softened. “But then I hear how you see me, Celia, and I fear I’m not so diPerent after all. Why are you so afraid of me? Of us?”
“I never said I was afraid of you,” she protested at once.
“Then what is it?” Oliver asked. “If it is not duty you are choosing over me, where does the fear come from?”
Celia shouldn’t have sat down. She should have taken several strides across the room away from him to put some distance between them. Only moonlight covered Oliver’s shoulders, and even that was weak, too heavily clogged by the smoke in the skies. She wanted to reach forward. Her 1ngers craved to revolt against reason, to press outward and—
“Just look at what happened,” Celia hissed. “You gave yourself up for me, and you got hurt for it. I already have a problem with your secret-keeping, Oliver. I already have a problem with you deciding to shake the world and catching me up afterward. I won’t let you do the same when it comes to your life.”
By the look in Oliver’s eyes, it seemed that he was cycling through a thousand diPerent thoughts at once, trying to choose only one response. Celia had gotten so caught up in telling him oP that she forgot to be afraid of his scrutiny, and now she was staring back at him with equal brazenness.
“Why?” Oliver asked.
“Why what?” Celia returned. She really ought to move away. She was starting to lose track of her own thoughts.
“Why won’t you let me do with my life as I please?”
Celia wanted to strangle him. She wanted to pull apart his head and take a good look around to 1gure out why he would ask such questions.
“Because I know you,” she snapped. “I know what sort of burden-bearing paragon you are. And I refuse to be the reason you act counter to everything you believe in and end up dead because you put me above everything else.”
Celia shifted to stand up. At once, Oliver scrambled to stop her, both hands on her arms. He was no doubt jostling his wound in the process, and Celia started to tell him oP, except he was already shaking his head, quieting her.
“Is that what you think?” he asked. “That loving you is a death sentence?”
All oxygen had left the room. Nothing remained except the void of Celia’s own lungs.
“I make you weak.”
“No, Celia, tell the truth.” His grip tightened on her. One hand rose, sinking into her loose hair. “You spoke correctly the 1rst time. You’re afraid. I tell you
over and over again that I want you, but you generate excuses for me. I tell you that I refuse to worship my father’s image of respectability, but you make it a matter of safety. I will love you if I please. I will make you my altar, I’ll put you above everything else in this world, I’ll revel in every morsel you are made of. It’s simple—just tell me you don’t feel the same, and I’ll let you go. But I won’t accept anything else. I won’t accept your refusal on the make-believe grounds of our work.”
He was impossible. Absolutely impossible, and maybe Celia was just as bad, because she looked at him under the moonlight, his very presence like some sort of plea from the universe, and she couldn’t stop herself from suddenly leaning forward to press her lips to his with every feeling she didn’t know how to convey
—for goodness’ sake, Oliver, I love you. I love you so much that I would die if you
did, and that’s precisely the problem.
She pulled back in an instant. Eyes wide, lips humming with the brief contact. The moment she drew distance, though, Oliver made a noise in his throat and yanked her close again, muttering, “God, it has taken you long enough, sweetheart.”
Then he was kissing her properly. It wasn’t their Aeeting contact in the hideout, frantic and desperate on death’s door. His hands moved to her waist, his hold tightened, and though Celia would have thought she had no clue what she was doing, her response was as easy as an exhale. On assignment, she knew how to anticipate Oliver’s next move and keep in tune, and kissing him was no diPerent. He was warm and he was safe, and when they paused for breath, Celia didn’t even think to fret. She hovered there, on the edge of the bed, on the precipice of something unfurling into unknown territory.
“Maybe I am afraid,” she whispered. “How do I live with myself if there ever
comes a day you get hurt because of me?”
Oliver smoothed his hand over her cheek. Brushed right at the soft space beneath her eye, like he was dusting oP the stars that had fallen between them.
“You accept it,” he replied simply. “Because that’s what it means to be alive. That’s what it means to 1ght for something—to love something. The country is good enough for us to die for. Why wouldn’t you be?”
Celia breathed out. Shuddered. Oliver seemed to 1nd that funny because his mouth quirked.
“That’s terribly morbid,” Celia muttered.
“It is only the truth,” Oliver returned. “Either accept it or resign the both of us to live miserably forever.”
Celia tried to glare at him. Oliver didn’t appear fazed. He waited—waited because there was clearly more on her mind. Somehow she’d had the bravery to kiss him, but words were lodging in her throat now. She felt as though she needed to loosen her pendant. She felt as though she needed to run and hide, to 1nd some corner to tuck into, but this was Oliver, and if she couldn’t answer Oliver, then what more could she do in this lifetime?
“You know,” Celia said very carefully, her voice almost hoarse, “that being with me would be diPerent from being with another woman.”
Oliver didn’t hesitate before grasping her chin, holding her in place, keeping her from diving out of sight.
“Good,” he said. “It should be diPerent because you are the woman I am in
love with, not another.”
Oh. Okay.
“Oh” was all Celia could manage aloud too. “Okay.”
His responding grin was utterly new to anything he had ever shown her. Unabashed. Almost shy, perfectly suited for the boyish nature of his childhood bedroom.
“Okay,” he echoed. “Have we settled that? Can I kiss you again?”
Oliver tugged her higher, careless with his wound. She shot him a stern frown in warning. The moment he gave her an aggrieved look in return, she relented with a small huP and reached for him, biting back her laughter. There would be plenty of time to be afraid on the battle1eld. A whole lifetime to be afraid.
“Kiss me. Please.”
