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“I know. It sounds impossible. I never had anything like this, until…”

I met Drake.

“Now,” I say instead.

Cosmer looks away from me. Reaches for his clothes.

“Are you angry with me?”

He slips on his shirt. “I don’t know how to feel right now.”

“I didn’t mean to use magic on you. I just wanted you to feel what I was.”

If your intention is good, but your choice was bad, are you a good man, or a bad man?

“You didn’t need to do that. I was enjoying it just fine.”

“I know. I promise it just happened. Cosmer,” I plead, because he’s pulling up his breeches, and then he’ll be fully dressed, and it will feel like something is over between us.

“What?” he snaps.

“Please forgive me. Honestly, these last few hours, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.” I intake a breath. “Cosmer. You love me, don’t you?”

“I told you as much. Last night.”

I feel choked. “Well, I think I’m in love with you.”

He finishes dressing.

Looks over at me.

Then his face softens.

He crawls the short gap over to me. Pecks me lightly on the cheek.

“Okay,” he mutters. “Let’s forget about it. I know you’re not really yourself right now, and there are things going on we don’t understand yet.” He stares at me sideways. “Do you really mean that? That you love me?”

“I do.”

He gives me my favourite crooked smile. I think I fell for it as much as his kindness.

“You don’t know how happy that makes me.”

“We have to go now, don’t we?”

“Sadly, yes.”

If only we could just stay here.

I stare at his ship in the distance.

“Pilots could disappear with their ships,” I state. “Couldn’t they?”

“We get some deserters. But it’s a tough life. You’d eventually run out of osimidite and food, if you stole any, and what then? No village would take you in. Watchers would shoot you on sight.”

“That’s Hevalla,” I stress. “What about other countries? Where you could be anyone? Start over?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it. I don’t suppose they’d be any kinder to a deserter. Or to Hevallans. You know our way of living isn’t very understood.”