The Sun Dwellers

“What?” I say, frowning and staring down at him, while he continues laughing to himself, as if at some inside joke. “Am I doing it wrong?” I ask, suddenly concerned that in my zealousness I’ve made some grievous kissing mistake due to my naivety.

“No, no, sorry,” Tristan says, still cracking up. “Trust me, you’re doing everything right.”

My concern dissipates and I look at him curiously. “Then why the laughter?”

“Because as we were making out I had a fu

“You mean you weren’t thinking solely of me while we kissed?” I joke, punching him lightly in the stomach.

“Oh, I most certainly was. The fu

Oh great, so I’m some big joke. “Would you mind sharing with the group?” I say, wanting to know what it is about me that’s so freakin’ fu

“I was just thinking that a few minutes ago you seemed ready to kill me—literally—and now you’re all over me. It just made me laugh.”

My face flushes because he’s right. I’ve been acting ridiculous, like I’m made up of nothing but mind-controlling emotions and crazy hormones. Not my usual, logical self, willing to discuss the facts, and figure out a solution to a problem. “I’m sorry,” I say.

“You already said that,” Tristan says. “But please tell me that we’re okay.”

Like Roc, I really don’t know. “I can’t,” I say. “Look, Tristan, I still have feelings for you, but how do I know that it’s not just someone controlling me?”

“Your mom said it was no accident that we met, right?” I nod. “That could mean anything. And she might not even have all the facts straight.”

“But there are other signs,” I argue. “You yourself said that you noticed a change when we were near each other. You didn’t feel the same pull that you did before.”

“No, that’s not right. I still feel a pull toward you, an attraction. It’s just different, more natural. Are you saying you’re not attracted to me anymore?” His lips are so close to mine I could reach them just by inching forward a little.

“Obviously, I am,” I say, kissing the dimple in his cheek. “What about your fainting?” I say, raising a finger in the air.

“In the past,” he says, shaking his head. “I haven’t felt that way in a long time, plus it has no bearing on how I feel right now.”

“And how is that?” I ask, flirtatiously ru

“Like I’m in lust with you,” he says, cracking up again.

“Jerk,” I say, slapping him playfully on the cheek.

“You asked.”

An image of Tristan’s scar pops into my head. I have to tell him. “You have a scar,” I say.

“Umm…what?”

“You have a scar on your back—I saw it when we bandaged your wounds after the fight with Rivet.”

“I have lots of scars, so what?”

“But this one is different. It’s crescent-shaped, but that’s not the interesting thing...” My heart is pounding as I know this is the truth we’ve been missing, a clue to how a moon dweller girl and a sun dweller guy happened to be brought together at the most critical of times for the Tri-Realms.

“What, Adele?” Tristan says, rubbing my back softly.

“I have the same scar, in the same place.”

I expect Tristan to say I’m acting crazy again, that he has a lot of scars from years of training, that any resemblance between our scars is merely coincidence. But he doesn’t say any of that. “Show me,” he says.

Chapter Ten

Tristan

She turns away from me, sliding in between my legs. As she lifts the back of her shirt, I feel a certain lightness, a thrill, as if I’m discovering something new about Adele. Which I am, I suppose. Her pale skin is marked by circles of dark bruising, fresh, likely from when I tackled her to the hard ground during our fight. Despite the imperfections, her back is smooth and beautiful to me. When she gets partway up, she can’t lift the fabric any further herself, so I take over, gently tugging the thick battle tunic up toward her neck.

A little past halfway I see it. A small scar, slightly raised, crescent-shaped. As the tips of my fingers graze over it, Adele shivers beneath me. “Where’d you get this?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I wasn’t even aware of it until Tawni noticed it. She thought it resembled a scar on your back, but we both sort of forgot about it. Where exactly is it positioned?”

I run my hand along her vertebrae. “It’s on your spine. Maybe…three quarters of the way up.”

“That sounds like exactly where yours is,” she says. “Let me see.”

Dropping her tunic so it drifts back over her skin, I scoot back and rotate around to face away from her. Her knees are at either side of my hips as she kneels behind me. When her fingers graze my skin, sparks practically fly off of them. I could do this all day.

“Do you feel where my fingers are?” she asks.

“Umm, yeah. I feel them,” I say, holding back the extent of what I’m feeling.

“That’s where your scar is. It’s a curved sliver, a raised bump, just like you described mine.”

“It feels like it’s in almost the exact same place as yours is,” I note.

“It is.”

We sit in silence for a moment, her finger drifting back and forth across my spine. I don’t want to ruin the moment, but I know I have to. “What do you think it means?” I ask.

“Someone did something to us,” Adele says angrily. “Injected a drug, messed with our spines, something. Somehow what they did linked us together, like as soon as we were near each other, we were inexplicably drawn to each other. That’s what the weird scalp-buzzing and spine-tingling was.”

Not this again. “I don’t care,” I say. “I’m glad I found you, no matter how it happened. And now the effect seems to have worn off and I still want to be with you, regardless of who wants us to be together.”

Adele’s sigh tickles the tiny hairs on the back of my neck. “It might not be that simple, Tristan. I want to be with you, but what if it’s your father who wants us to be together, to give him a reason to crush you? Maybe he sensed your rebelliousness and knew you’d cause him problems in the future. A scandalous moon dweller girlfriend would do just the trick. I mean, that’s possible, isn’t it?”

I think about it for a minute. “Anything’s possible with my father,” I say. “And I didn’t exactly hide my rebellious side, so it’s likely he thinks Killen should succeed him as president, as he would carry on the Nailin family tradition of rule by an iron fist.”

“And the only way to do that…” Adele says, letting me finish her sentence.

“Is to either kill me or throw me in jail. But you don’t know my father the way I do. He murdered Roc’s mother in cold blood, Adele. He didn’t need an excuse to hurt me. He could’ve just had one of his men “accidentally” kill me in training, or even kill me in my sleep and then make up a story about how it happened later. But mess with our neurological systems, draw me to a moon dweller girl just to create a scandal? It’s just not my father’s style—too complex and risky.”

“But it’s possible,” Adele says, hugging me from behind.

I shake my head. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, he could have easily done something to me, but how would he have gotten to you?”

“I was trapped in juvie,” she says. “He could have had one of the guards put something in my food, in my drink, something…”

“But your mom seems to know something about it,” I argue. “Otherwise why would she have said that to you—about it being no accident we met?”

Her head slumps and I realize she was hoping for any other explanation other than her mother being involved directly.

I capture her hands across my chest. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out,” I say. Feeling her body against my back, her arms around me, I close my eyes and let the cares of the world fall away beneath her gentle touch. “Do you still want to be with me?” I ask.