Archenemies (Renegades #2)(89)

Adrian shuffled his feet and Nova realized he’d been watching her, but she couldn’t strike the disbelief from her face.

“Cool trick?” he ventured.

Nova’s heart thumped loudly.

“All of this,” she said, speaking slowly, “and the best alias you could come up with was Sketch?”

His lips curled upward, and it was clear how much this small comment pleased him. “Better to under-promise and over-deliver.”

“Well, you succeeded.” Her cheeks were warm as she turned in a slow circle. “Where did the room go? Where are we?”

“We haven’t left. If you pull some of these leaves aside, you’ll be able to see the walls, but they’ll be plain white again. I made sure to cover them with paint so they wouldn’t be visible when you were standing in the middle like this.” He gestured around at their mystical patch of jungle. “You can walk around, if you want. Nothing here will hurt you.”

Nova kept her hands close to her body, in part to avoid taking Adrian’s hand. She couldn’t imagine putting him to sleep now, and without that singular purpose, the thought of touching him terrified her.

She paced herself, reveling in every step. Her fingers danced along each flower petal, glided across the blades of willowy grass, twined around a series of low-hung vines. It was uncanny how much it reminded her of the dream, or what she could remember of it. She was sure she hadn’t gone into that much detail when she described it to Adrian, yet he’d captured it down to the smallest element.

She paused as her attention landed on the statue. It was turned away, so she could see only the back of its hooded cloak, its narrow stone shoulders green with moss, patches of stone having chipped off with age.

Nova dared to approach it, feeling the squishy ground give beneath her footsteps. She braced herself as she walked around the statue. Its outstretched hands came into view.

Her breath hitched, even though, somehow, she had expected it.

She could feel Adrian watching her, and she wondered if he knew. If this had been a part of his plan as he’d painted the mural.

“How?” she whispered.

To his credit, Adrian frowned in confusion. “How what?”

“Adrian … how did you make a star?”





CHAPTER THIRTY

“HUH,” SAID ADRIAN, coming to stand beside her. “Would you look at that.”

He sounded as astonished as Nova felt, but that couldn’t be. This was her dream, but it was his painting. His vision. His magic.

His star?

Nova frowned.

It was a star too. At least, she thought it must be. A single bright orb hovering between the figure’s grasping hands. It was no larger than a marble, and no more difficult to stare at than the brightest star in the night sky. Its light subtly illuminated the fantastical world around them.

It was magnificent, and it was exactly like Nova’s dream. As a child, in her delirious subconscious state, she had known it was a star, and she felt it just as strongly now, though everything she knew about astrophysics told her it wasn’t possible.

But then, a lot of what Adrian could do didn’t seem possible.

A star.

Neither she nor Adrian spoke for a long time. The room was silent, but there was something about the jungle he had created—the jungle, Nova thought with bewilderment, the jungle he created—that gave the impression of life and noise, of warmth and growth, of thriving permanence.

Finally, Adrian cleared his throat. “That wasn’t in the mural.”

“I know,” said Nova, remembering the statue in the painting, and how Adrian had drawn it so that they could only see its back, not its hands. After another thoughtful moment, she said, “Intention?”

“Maybe,” said Adrian. “I was thinking about your dream when I did it.”

“What does it do?” said Nova, which might have been a strange question. What did any star do?

But Adrian merely shrugged. “It’s your star. You tell me.”

She bit the inside of her cheek. Was it her star?

“I don’t know. I woke up before anything happened.”

A part of Nova wanted to reach out and touch it. The star emanated a comforting warmth, and she didn’t think it would burn her, like a real sun out in the real universe. But she was worried that she would ruin the spell if she touched it. Maybe it would fade away. Or, perhaps worse, maybe nothing would happen at all. She didn’t know which of them was more responsible for dreaming this star into existence—her or Adrian—and she didn’t want to tempt disappointment by finding it was nothing more than a pretty visual effect.

She breathed in the aroma of dew-soaked leaves and intoxicating flowers. Shutting her eyes, Nova sank down, sitting cross-legged on the soft moss. It was easy to fall into the tranquility of this place. To believe this was the real world, hundreds of years in the future. The city had fallen, and there were no more villains and no more superheroes. No more Anarchists, no more Renegades, no more Council. No more struggles for power.

Just, no more.

She opened her eyes as Adrian lowered himself to the ground beside her, a little stiffly, she noticed, as he tried not to bend around the wound on his side.

“Is it terrible,” she said, “that it might take the fall of humanity to make me feel this relaxed?”