Map of Fates (The Conspiracy of Us 2)

I swiveled back forward. “That’s why you want to find it so much. Leverage.”

“That’s one reason.”

“There’s more?”

“There’s always more.” He spun his glass on the bar. “A few years ago, I found out that the Order had set the fire that killed my family.”

I stilled. “I thought it was an accident.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Leverage and revenge,” I said. I thought I could see right through him like he could through me, but I was wrong. “I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me.”

“You didn’t ask the right questions.” He finally glanced over. “I didn’t lie to you.”

“I know. I don’t think you’ve ever really lied to me. Surprisingly.”

The look on his face was almost a smile. “Nice to know you think so highly of me.”

I reached out to shove him, tipping off my own bar stool in the process and practically landing in his lap. He grabbed my hand to steady me. We both paused, his heart beating under my palm.

“I feel like such an idiot for trusting them,” I said. The filter on my mouth had been turned off, and my tongue felt clumsy, like it wasn’t keeping up with my brain. “The Saxons only wanted what I could do for them. And Jack . . .”

Stellan’s chest rose and fell with a deep breath. He never smelled like cologne. He smelled like something else, like pinpricks of light in the dark. Like boy. “It’s seductive, being wanted,” he said. “It makes us less careful.”

I looked his long fingers, holding my hand against his chest, and thought of Jack, trusting the Saxons blindly because they acted like they cared about him. Lydia, talking about how it was appealing, being part of something bigger than yourself. She used that very fact to coax the whole Circle into believing the Order were their enemies.

“And it’s seductive wanting,” Stellan went on, slowly setting my hand back on the bar. “It feels good. And it feels terrible at the same time.”

“I don’t want anything,” I said quietly, pulling myself upright.

The bartender came by, but Stellan motioned him away. “I don’t think you actually felt safe when you got on that plane with me. You just wanted so much that you were willing to do anything. You wanted this family, this life you could have.”

I thought of that first morning, in the car on the way to Prada, when I didn’t yet realize quite how far my life had been turned upside down. Toska, Stellan had said. Something’s missing, and you ache for it, down to your bones.

I ran my finger through the condensation on my glass.

“That’s how I know you’re lying when you say you don’t want anything. Being someone who wants that much—it doesn’t just go away, as much as you try to suppress it. You just hope you can eventually realize what it is you’re missing.”

“What do you want, then?” I said into my drink. “What do you ache for?”

He smiled an enigmatic little smile that made me stare at his mouth for a moment too long. “You remember that.”

“Of course I do.” I gathered my hair away from my face, surprised for a second not to have enough of it to twist into a bun. I let go of it, and it fell back over my shoulders.

Stellan pulled one of the strands of pink.

I batted his hand away. “I know, you don’t like it.”

“Oh, I like it,” he said.

I rolled my eyes and inspected the ends of one of the pink strands. “You don’t have to lie. It was pretty obvious that you hated it, and it’s okay. I don’t care.”

He gave a small laugh. “No, I just wasn’t stupid enough to say what I thought out loud in front of your sort-of boyfriend.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Kuklachka, I think you look . . .” He broke into a string of French. I didn’t know what the words meant, but his tone, and the way his eyes flicked over me when he said it—fast enough that it could have been an accident, but slow enough that my skin tingled—made me have to look away.

“Didn’t I tell you to stop flirting with me?” I said.

I could hear a smile when he said, “Then suffice it to say I like it.”

I pulled my hair back for real this time, quickly, into a messy ponytail.

“Why is it . . . ,” I said, the words bouncing like helium balloons. “Why are you sometimes like, my best friend or something? And then sometimes I think you hate me?”

He got very still and watched us in the mirror behind the bar. “I’m sometimes your best friend?”

I found us in the mirror, too. After a few seconds, I pulled a few strands of the pink hair around my face.

“Kuklachka.” I could feel Stellan looking down at me, then so quietly I barely heard him, “I never hate you.”

Something warm that had nothing to do with the drink settled in my chest, and I peered at his sunburst tattoo. Light in the dark.

I reached up and traced it with one finger. It was hot over the ink, like it really was the sun burning into his upper back. Then his scars, cool and smooth like marble veins over the warm skin.

And then I noticed he was looking at me in a really odd way.

“Sorry.” I pulled away. “I—did that hurt?”

He blinked. “No.”

When the next round came, I took a sip and wrinkled my nose. “Doesn’t taste right,” I said. I grabbed his and took a sip, and the bitter alcohol taste wasn’t missing in his. “Hey,” I said. “Get me a real one.”

“No.” He took his drink back and put it out of my reach. That only meant I had to lean all the way across his lap to get at it. The invisible bubble of normal personal space had officially shrunk to nothing.