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never supposed to have left the shelter of that house on the outskirts of the capital. But for some reason they had chosen to abandon the one place they couldn’t be harmed and put themselves directly in the path of Ahriman and the Opposition—making it my job to get them back.
    My frustration didn’t wane even as my belly filled. Armise and I sat silently at the table, the sounds of warfare crackling above us. We avoided eye contact, avoided speaking to each other. It was the first time we’d been relatively alone since the tunnels under the stadium where Armise had confessed his involvement with the Revolution and that he had done it all to protect me.
    And wasn’t that just the last fucking thing in the world I wanted to discuss. Like feeling his arm around me on that transport platform after the shot, it all felt too intimate.
    As if I knew what real intimacy felt like at all.
    Armise pushed his empty plate away, grabbed the steaming cup of coffee into his hands and rested his elbows on the table. He didn’t bother waiting for me to finish when he said, “You have no desire to make sure your parents make it out of this alive?”
    The fork stopped partway to my lips. “My parents gave me nothing.”
    “Life. For a cause that you believe in.”
    I dropped my fork, pushed away from the table and crossed my arms. “We’re going to have a heart-to-heart?”
    Armise sipped at his coffee. “You going to stay in this shit mood?”
    I ran my fingers through my hair and mumbled, “I can’t sit here anymore. Exley!” I yelled. The door to the kitchen swung open and his head appeared around the corner, braids swinging. “They have a gym here?”
    Exley nodded. “Full training facility one floor down. Weapons range as well. You want me to take you?”
    I shook my head and nearly sent my chair halfway across the room with how fast I got up. “I’ll find it.”
    I didn’t wait for Armise. Didn’t extend an invite for him to join me. I was too restless. That feeling of too close, too much was grinding away at me each second I was forced to look into Armise’s steely gaze and begin to refit the pieces of our convoluted fate back together in a way that could make sense.
    It only took one question to a woman scurrying through the hallway—as if she was desperately trying to get as far away from me as possible—to find the stairs down to the lower level. True to Exley’s words, most of the lower level appeared to be a stocked training facility.
    I was standing in the centre of the room debating the benefits of working off some aggression with either weights or guns when the door snicked open and Armise entered without a knock.
    I glared at him. “Listen, Darcan. I don’t need you following me around here. As if I’m expected to entertain you. This truce or whatever it is between us changes very little.”
    Armise chuckled. Low and derisive. “Is that right? Are you telling me there’s not even a part of you that’s beginning to trust me? A part of you that wonders why you’re so fucking smart and capable yet it took so long for you to figure out what was actually going on? Open your eyes for once, Merq, and focus on something besides yourself. This ‘whatever’ between us changes everything. And if you’re too self-absorbed and petulant to see it then I’ve wasted the last fourteen years of my life.”
    Petulant and self-absorbed? Right. As if I was a child who Armise had been sent to mind.
    “Fuck you,” I answered and went for the weights.
    I slid the weights over a barbell—maxing out the amount I could press—and lay back on the bench. Armise came up behind me and stood with his arms crossed.
    I positioned my hands around the bar. “I believe I said fuck you.”
    “And that’s supposed to be my cue to leave? It’s as if you don’t know me at all.”
    “Do I?”
    Armise motioned to the bar, for me to start. “Not really,” he answered with an honesty that surprised me.
    I hesitated for only a