“Something wrong?”

It’s only when Gideon speaks that I realize I’m not dancing. “Sorry—no. You’re doing well, I’m impressed.” I try to put everything else out of my thoughts and follow his lead into a slow turn. Just focus on your steps.

“It’s not so hard,” he replies, voice soft as though he, too, is affected by the music. “Who taught you how to do this?”

Don’t answer. Make something up. Change the subject. My mouth opens, though, and I reply with the truth: “My father.”

Gideon’s hand against my waist shifts and draws me a little closer. “How long ago did he die?” His voice is gentle.

“Nearly a year ago.”

“And you’ve been on your own since then?”

I think of Dani, and of a boy on the Polaris space station who helped me get my first fake ID, and I think of the couple on the Starchaser who let me stow away in their cabin on my way to Corinth. I swallow. “I prefer to be on my own.”

“Me too.” Gideon’s gaze, when I look up, is waiting for mine. “Easier that way. No complications.” He’s no longer trying out turns and spins. His palm against the small of my back is warm, and it’s only then that I realize that if his hand’s against my back and not at my waist, we must have drawn closer, breath by breath, over the last hour.

“No one interfering with your plans,” I reply, my voice barely audible.

His steps slow, and mine mirror his, until we’re standing still in a pool of light cast by the bookstore sign behind us. “No one you’ll hurt by messing up.”

“No one to hurt you.”

He lowers our joined hands—no longer even pretending that we’re still dancing—until they hang between us. His fingers tighten, and though I know what’s coming, I can’t make myself pull away. The neon lights turn his eyes every color, colors I never even knew growing up on Avon. His throat shifts in the light as he swallows.

“Gideon,” I whisper, unable to speak above a whisper. “This is a bad idea.”

“I know.” His eyes don’t move from my face, scanning my features, lingering on my eyes, my lips. “Just let it be a bad idea a few moments from now.” When he lowers his head his lips are soft, brushing mine once—then again, lingering a little longer, pressing a little closer. Then he eases back a fraction, giving me a chance to pull away.

I ought to do just that. Or I ought to play him. I should end this now, before it goes anywhere, or I should take advantage of this moment and secure his loyalty and banish any hint of mistrust. I should do a thousand million things differently, and instead I do the one thing I can’t do, the one thing I want to.

I lean closer and tilt my head up, meeting his mouth again and stretching up on my toes so I can press into him, harder. His hand at my back tightens and pulls me in against him, his body warm all along mine, and our lips part, and I slide my arms up around his neck, and he gives a tiny groan against my mouth, and my whole body turns to fire as the Butterfly Waltz in the background sings of wanting, and of dreaming, and of things lost far too soon.

Maybe there is something more than killing LaRoux. Maybe…maybe…

Abruptly the music cuts out, leaving us in silence. I jerk back from him in surprise, glancing at the palm pad, which is buffering and searching for a signal. My breath is coming too quick, too loud—I can hear it echoing in the silence. My lips feel hot, swollen, and my gaze swings back toward Gideon as if drawn by a magnet.

He’s staring at me, looking every bit as ragged as I feel. His eyes are a little wild, his hair disheveled on one side where my fingers raked through it. He swallows hard, and when he speaks, his voice shakes a little.

“You’re right,” he manages, gazing at me. “That was a terrible idea.”

On the gray world, the blue-eyed man has found a way to sever us from our universe. We can no longer feel the others, in this world or in ours. Once we were infinite. Now we are three.

The emptiness is pain, and the only relief comes in the brief flashes we see when we break through the blue-eyed man’s prison for an instant. We try to watch the green-eyed boy, try to remember our plan, but we are so few now.

We are alone. And loneliness is a gnawing madness. The other two let their agony escape in the flashes and gaps in the prison around us, driving the people of this world mad.

But we…I…I remember the ocean, and a little girl who called me friend.

I remember dreams.

THERE’S SOME SORT OF SHORT circuit happening in my brain, and I can feel my pulse pounding at my temples, and all I want to do is lean in again and shut out any need to speak, at least for a few more minutes. I’ve been dying to do exactly what I just did for days—and now, all I want to do is kiss her again.

But though her eyes are as dark as mine must be, her grip tightens on my hand, easing it away from her waist, and there’s nothing I can do but let her. She clears her throat. “You were a fraction behind on the beat that last time, but I think we’ll blend in well enough on the dance floor if we have to.”

“The…” It’s all I can do to remember what a dance floor is, but I nod because I know nodding’s the thing I’m meant to do, and slowly my thoughts clutch at each other and pull themselves back into order. “Right. No more practice, then?”

She shows me her lopsided smile in return for the tease, but I know she’s as thrown as I am by the intensity of that kiss. So when she steps back, I turn away to pick up the palm pad and switch it off before the music starts again—I need to give us both a little time to recover. “Time for a rest?” she suggests.

“It’s getting late,” I agree, setting down the pad after I nearly drop it, and sinking down to sit in our nest of blankets, my back against the wall. She walks over to ease down beside me, and picks up the burner pad she’s been using today, checking for any updates from her contacts. Making herself busy.

I’m hyperaware of her presence, her knee just a hair’s breadth from mine. I could reach across and touch her with the smallest movement, and I can practically feel the static jumping back and forth between us, but I hold back. Reach for safer ground—because if I don’t put some distance between us, I’m never going to think straight. “You know what? Stay here just two minutes. I’m going to go get you something that’ll put your fancy upper-city food to shame.”

I can’t afford to move around much out here, with cameras on every corner, but I know the mouth of the alleyway is a blind spot—it’s one of the reasons I chose it. So I keep my head down as I step out into the street, and the bright red banner I want is only two stalls up. Its takeout storefront is nothing more than a tent, really, a canvas roof strung between the two neighboring buildings, the kitchen tucked away in the back of the building behind it.

Mrs. Phan’s has the sector’s best Pan-Asian grub, light-years ahead of the pretentious crap they serve in the four-star, hundred-galactics-a-sitting places in the upper city. Sofia deserves a break from my protein bars and gel packs. What are you trying to do, man? Bring her a courting gift?

I shove the voice in my head aside and nod to Mrs. Phan, who’s manning the counter herself. They have a menu here, but the locals just ask for whatever’s cooking; it’s always good. I hold up two fingers to indicate my order, and she bustles away to call unintelligible instructions to the kitchen staff. There are a couple of guys sitting together in a corner, gazing deep into each other’s eyes, and a woman by the other wall working a logic puzzle on her palm pad, and none of them casts a second glance at me.