Bruce bounded over rocks to the mouth of the cave easily, and Ash followed. For a large person, he sure was light on his feet. Truman followed, forcing himself to look at where he was stepping rather than stare in wonder at the cave. But as he got close, he couldn’t help peering deep into its darkness.

  It was vertiginous and the cave echoed the sound of the waves back at him like a giant ear.

  “Whoa!”

  Ash’s arms shot out, and Truman stumbled into them on his last step into the cave.

  He found himself held tight against a broad, warm chest. Ash wrapped his arms around him and said very softly, “You okay?”

  “Ugh, yeah, sorry, jeez. I promise I don’t usually wander around just falling over. Today isn’t indicative of my typical ability to, like, be upright.”

  He felt Ash smile against his hair and then let him go slowly.

  Reluctantly?

  Truman didn’t let himself believe it. That was what got you into trouble: believing that people who caught you so you didn’t faceplant into rocks had feelings for you because they didn’t let you face-plant into rocks.

  The cave was bigger than it had looked from outside, the ceiling vaulting to an apex. Something roosted there. In the book it had been atbaj, batlike creatures with heads on both sides of their bodies so they could sight for predators in 360 degrees. But as he watched, one of the creatures descended, and Truman saw that they were seagulls perched high above.

  He walked to the left-hand side of the entrance, but there was no ledge, just sea-wet stone and sand clinging in the crevices. Same on the right-hand side. Truman didn’t want to be disappointed—after all, it could still very well be the place; surely, authors added fictional details all the time—but he was.

  As he approached the triangle of light making it through, he realized that the cave went farther back than he’d first realized.

  “Is it safe to go through here?” he asked Ash.

  “Yeah, just don’t be surprised if you find sixteen-year-old me and my buddy Lorin trying to do witchy sea rituals in there.”

  “I’m very intrigued, and I do want to hear all about that in a minute.”

  Truman crouched low to get through the opening and looked around the dimly lit area. Once through the entrance, it was tall enough to stand at full height and roomy enough for three or four people.

  And there, on the left-hand side of the rock…

  “Holy shit,” Truman said worshipfully.

  It was a stone ledge. When Truman shone his phone’s flashlight on it, he could see whorls of fossilized shell studding its worn-smooth surface. He ran a finger over them and got goose bumps.

  He was standing in a place where Agatha Tark had surely stood, was touching the rock she had likely run her own fingers over. The same fingers that had penned the Dead of Zagørjič.

  Truman took pictures of that too, and with a flash, they came out well. The flash also made visible something scratched into the wall at the corner of the ledge. Truman got on his knees to peer at it closely.

  There, incised in stone, was the symbol of owl wings surrounding a diamond. The sigil of Illmarčzia.

  Truman couldn’t breathe. Was this how paleantologists felt, unearthing proof that dinosaurs walked the earth? He let his knees give way and sat on the floor, blinking up at the sigil.

  “You summon anything in there?” Ash said breezily, sticking his head in. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he said immediately at whatever he saw on Truman’s face.

  Truman pointed and blinked.

  “Oh, yeah, isn’t that cool? It’s been here as long as I remember.”

  “It’s her. It’s really her.”

  Truman explained about the sigil, and Ash sat cross-legged beside him.

  “Wow, I can’t believe that all the times I came here as a teenager, I was seeing something from the same author you were reading thousands of miles away.”

  Truman felt a tear tickle his cheek before he was aware he was crying.

  “Oh, hey,” Ash said. He looked stricken.

  “I’m just overwhelmed,” Truman assured him. “You don’t know what this means to me.”

  “I’d like to,” Ash said gently.

  At first, Truman wasn’t sure how to put it in words. Then he just started talking.

  “When I first read the series, it was like a whole world opened up to me that I’d never known could exist. I don’t mean because it was fantasy. I mean because it was these people living in ways and having thoughts and feelings that I’d never experienced. And even though it was fantasy, the things they went through and did felt more real to me than my own life. I was twelve when I read them, and it opened up all these new thoughts, I guess. Like it was a lens I saw the whole world through.”

  Ash nodded.

  “So I started to apply everything in my real life to the books. Or, no. I brought the lens of the books to bear on everything in my real life? Anyway, it was a kind of…I mean, I’m not religious at all, but it was kind of like a bible for me. I admired the characters so much, so I used their strengths and ethics as a guide for who I wanted to be. I asked myself if Clarion would be proud of me for a certain behavior. If yes, I felt good. If no, I knew I should’ve done something different.”

  Truman trailed off, contemplating what Clarion would think about his recent relationship with Guy and realizing she would be horrified. She had stepped away from her lover when he made choices she couldn’t endorse because she had only been interested in a love that was a true partnership. She would never have allowed herself to be treated the way Truman had. She would never have settled for a love that was strangled and conditional and all on someone else’s terms.

  She would be ashamed of him.

  It walloped him. Here he sat, in a place that felt sacred with Agatha Tark’s presence, and his role model would be ashamed of how he had behaved. How little he had valued his needs. His ethics.

  He felt slightly sick.

  “Truman?”

  Truman tried to swallow with a totally dry mouth and choked a little.

  “Are you all right?” Ash put a hand on his arm.

  No. He was decidedly not all right. But he wanted to be—could be, he thought. He needed to do better. Be braver. He needed to take a deep breath, figure out what he wanted, and try to be honest about it. When he put it like that, it sounded so easy. But Truman’s guts knotted and his fingertips tingled.

  Just be brave. Be brave like Clarion and tell the truth.

  “I like you!” Truman blurted out. “We just met, and I’m, like, actively still heartbroken over this shitty person, but every time I see you, my stomach is like Jell-O, and I want you to like me!”

  Ash’s eyes were wide and he was blinking owlishly.

  “You don’t have to say anything, but I’ve been a coward about my feelings for basically my whole life, and Clarion would be ashamed, so. Are you happy now?”

  This last he yelled up at the cave, and it sent echoes tumbling around them.

  Ash smiled. He let out a small, undignified sound that might’ve been a choked-off giggle. Then he stopped trying to hide it and started laughing. It was booming in the small space, and Truman covered his ears.

  “I’m sorry,” Ash said between laughs. “It’s not funny at all.”

  But he kept laughing.

  “Is this a panic response?” Truman asked.

  Ash shook his head and clamped a hand over his mouth. “I just haven’t laughed in a really long time,” he managed. “I forgot about it.”

  “You forgot about laughter? What are you, a Dickensian street waif?”

  Ash snorted with more laughter.

  “Well,” Truman sniffed, “I’m so glad my confession can provide a reminder of what true hilarity feels like.”

  Ash grabbed his knee and shook his head. “No, no. I’m sorry. It’s not like that at all. I swear.”

  His grip on Truman was firm and warm. Truman instructed the nausea roiling in his gut to recede.

  “Okay,” Ash said, getting himself under control. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I was not laughing at you. Well. I was laughing at you, but I wasn’t laughing at your feelings at all. It was just that you yelled it like you were mad about it, and it came kind of out of nowhere for me. And I’m really sorry I laughed. I like you too. Obviously.”

  Obviously?

  “Uh, it isn’t obvious to me,” Truman said.

  “No? I gave you a rose the first time we even met.”

  “Well. People give their friends roses.”

  “We weren’t friends.”

  “Okay, but I do this! I take ordinary, nonromantic things and make them into this whole narrative where someone is romantic and kind and lovely, and then it turns out they have husbands and children and are actually just using me as a fuck piece on the side,” Truman blurted.

  “Don’t call yourself that,” Ash said softly. “Your boyfriend was an asshole.”

  “Yeah. But then what does it say about me that I fell for him?”

  Ash looked at him very seriously. So seriously that Truman got scared and dropped his eyes to the floor. Ash put a hand under his chin and gently raised it. His eyes burned.

  “It says that you’re kind and generous and probably give people the benefit of the doubt even when they don’t deserve it.”

  Truman swallowed hard and blinked fast to keep from tearing up.

  “I—”

  But before he could say anything, Ash’s phone chimed. Which was a relief because Truman had had absolutely no idea what he was gonna say.

  Ash was looking at his phone intently, then cocked his head and glanced at Truman. “You think I’m probably a good kisser, huh?”

  “What!?”

  Then Truman remembered his amnesiac text to Greta the night before. “Oh god,” he groaned.

  Ash smiled. Not a smile of amusement but one of pleasure. “Truman.”

  “Nope.”

  “Truman, hey.”

  “I can’t believe she told you!”

  “She’s my best friend,” Ash said gently.

  “She’s my…my… Yeah, fine, she’s my nothing. Fair point.”

  “So.”

  “So.”

  Ash looked at him and quirked an eyebrow.

  “We can’t kiss now!” Truman exclaimed. “You just got a message from your friend about a drunken text I don’t even remember sending. That is not romantic.”

  Ash’s smile was warm and fond and grew into a grin. “Okay,” he said. “I disagree. But I get it.”

  “You disagree? I drank a bottle of wine in the bathtub and got sad cuz you left our brainstorm and I was thinking about your lips?”

  Ash shrugged. “I’m not, like, up on my grand gestures or anything. But I think kissing after you yelled your feelings at me in the middle of the ocean after we discovered that our teenage years are kind of mystically linked by the cave that we’re currently in all alone is, yeah, kinda romantic.”

  “Grumble, grumble, grumble,” Truman said. Because when Ash put it that way, damn it, he was right.

  “Did you just say grumble?”

  “Okay, c’mere.”

  “What?”

  “Come here. You’re right, it is romantic.”

  “Well, now you’re glaring at me, and it’s not seeming that romantic anymore,” Ash said.

  They both fell silent.

  “This is super awkward now, huh?” Truman said miserably.

  “Yup.”

  “Should we go?”

  Ash nodded and stood. He held out a hand to Truman, and his grip was warm and sure.

  Truman let himself be pulled up, and then they were standing face-to-face in the dimness of the cave.

  The blue-gray of Ash’s eyes was swallowed by his pupils, and Truman wished they were lit by candles the way Clarion and Aerlich were the first time they sought refuge in the cave. The flickering light would carve Ash’s jawline and cheekbones, glow in his eyes, and paint the fine honey hairs of his eyelashes gold.

  They stepped closer.

  “Is it romantic now?” Ash murmured.

  Truman nodded and slid his hand to the back of Ash’s neck, cradling his skull, his thumb rubbing the sensitive skin behind his ear.

  Truman tipped his head up and Ash bent to meet him. Their lips hovered a centimeter apart, and Truman could feel the pull between them. He closed the distance and caught Ash’s lush mouth in a kiss. His lips were just as soft as Truman had imagined.

  It began as a slow, tender exploration. Then Truman hooked his arm around Ash’s waist and pressed them closer together. Ash deepened the kiss and Truman’s stomach flipped. He was breathless, weightless.

  He twisted his fingers in Ash’s long hair and touched his tongue gently with his own. He felt Ash shudder, then found himself pressed to the rock wall of the cave. Ash’s hand cradled his head, and he relaxed into the firm hold of rock and Ash.

  The kiss went on and on until Truman was light-headed and breathing hard. Then Ash broke it, groaning, and rested his forehead against Truman’s.

  “Damn,” he murmured.

  Truman couldn’t agree more. He sagged in Ash’s arms, and they slid to the floor again, grinning at each other. Ash reached out and traced his cheekbone, then dragged a fingertip over his lips. They felt kiss-stung and hot.

  Truman, too comfortable to move, said, “Can you reach my phone in my pocket?”

  Ash cocked his head in question but slid his phone out and handed it to him.

  Truman opened the text thread with Greta and, in full view of Ash, wrote Can confirm. Those lips were made for kissing. Twelve out of ten would recommend.

  He held up the phone and Ash grinned. In the cave he’d read about at twelve years old and never thought was real, Truman sent the text. Then he leaned back in for another kiss.

  Chapter 15

  Truman

  Truman and Ash left the cave and bundled into the van like giddy teenagers, giggling when Bruce howled at the ocean, chortling when a gull almost flew into Ash’s windshield, and snorting with disgusted laughter when Bruce sat between them with a dignified expression, like a third person, then farted so loudly he scared himself and rocketed back into the rear of the van to recover.

  Back at Truman’s house, they made cocoa to get warm and then flopped onto the couch.

  “And we’d bring candles in our pockets and stick them to the floor, but it wasn’t that big in there, so once Lorin almost lit their knee on fire.”

  Ash was regaling Truman with his teenage attempts at witchcraft in the cave.

  “What were you trying to conjure?”

  “I’m not sure we even knew, really. But going through the rituals felt important somehow. It’s like we wanted something to happen. Something that would tell us we weren’t alone in the world or that there was power we could tap into.”

  Truman understood.

  “I still feel that way, I think. Like there’s forces out there that I can feel working, but I want to know how to tap in. Not god or anything. More like…something outside that’s made of the same stuff as something really deep inside me that I don’t even know how to access.”

  Ash’s hair was a windblown cloud around his shoulders and his cheeks were pinked from cold. He tipped his head back and looked up to the ceiling. “Do you ever think maybe it isn’t something that’s out there but just something we choose to do? Like…that there’s this…I dunno, this well of power and control that we can tap into inside ourselves. But then the world gets in the way. The world, circumstances, other people, like, squeeze it out of us. Make it smaller and smaller until it’s gone.”

  Truman reached a hand out and found Ash’s rough fingers. He twined their hands together.

  “Yeah, maybe. Then you have to get away from that stuff to refill it. Or…biggen it. That’s not a word. Biggen? What the heck?”

  “Enlarge?” Ash offered.

  “Yeah. Like, for me, that’s how the cemeteries at home are. It’s not because they’re cemeteries Or, not mainly. It’s because they’re these repositories of so much history and feeling. Over the decades and centuries, so many important emotions have happened there. It becomes like a bottomless source of feeling and beauty and personal history. So spending time in them always fills me back up. I leave feeling like that well or whatever is bigger, deeper, fuller.”

  “I feel that way about the ocean,” Ash said. “Especially in the spring, when the air is warming up but the sea is still holding on to winter. It’s a never-ending engine of change. It never looks exactly the same for two seconds in a row. It’s so deep and vast that things inside it are unlocatable. You could just disappear into it and have a whole world of possibilities. Just looking at it, especially when no one else is around. Especially in the moonlight. Fuck, it’s so magical.”

  “I love hearing you talk like that,” Truman said.

  “Like what?”

  Truman shrugged and flipped over on the couch to face Ash. “Like, often you’re so practical and, like, controlled. It’s cool to hear you be more expansive.”

  “I am pretty expansive,” Ash said.

  He said it with the inflection of a joke, but Truman didn’t laugh. “I can tell,” he said.

  Ash’s teasing expression turned serious, and he put a hand on Truman’s arm. “You are too.”

  The words sounded pat, but Truman could tell he meant it.

  “I don’t always know how to talk about the things I think about,” Truman said. “I wish I were creative like my sisters and I could paint about them or something.”

  Ash screwed up his face. “Uh, are you kidding? You’re creative. You came up with thirty creative ideas to grow my business. You made a whole website. You take beautiful photographs. And you’re basically obsessed with an epic fantasy series that you’ve said determines the goals of your life. What on earth makes you think you’re not creative?”

 

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