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"Nothing"

"You’re never one for nothing" He sets his book down on his chest and pats the edge of the bed, drawing me into the rooize," I say very slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed "I’ve been distant these last months, particularly these last days I don’t think I was fair to you Not when you’ve been my most loyal friend Well, you and Sevro, but he won’t stop sending h "I think he has a problem"

Roque patsfor wagging its tail You’re always distant, Darrow You don’t have to apologize for how you are, not to rees, allowing it "We all have our own tides inside us They go in Out" He shrugs "Not really ours to control The things, people, that orbit us do that, at leastht "Is this about Mustang? I knoas hard for you to leave her, no matter what you said at the time You should seek her out while we’re here I know you miss her"

"I don’t"

"Liar, liar, cheeks afire"

"I’ve told you a hundred ti about her"

"Fine Fine Then you’re worried, aren’t you? About the auction?" He pauses, sto bid on you"

"You don’t have the money," I say flatly

"Do you kno badly a Pixie would pay to get a Peerless with ree and connections in their debt? Millions I could even go to Quicksilver if I need He loans to Golds all the time Point is, I’ll have the money, even if my parents won’t help me So never you worry, brother" He pokes , eh?"

"Thank you," I say, stuttering out the words, unable to really grasp what he’s done And why? It puts his neck out It endangers him and crosses his parents "No one else has even mentioned the auction to ious You kno it is" He pauses, waiting because he knowselse Isn’t there?"

I shake my head "Do you …" My words fail s between us, intimate, aard only on my end He doesn’t scoff as Tactus and Fitchner would, or scratch his balls like Sevro, or chuckle like Cassiusht have done But Roque, despite his Color and all the things that make him different, slowly slides a htstand beside the four-poster, taking his ti an answer to evolve between us Moveanic, like Dancer’s were before he died There’s a stillness in him, vast and majestic, the same stillness I remember in my father

"Quinn once told rievance at the mention of a story, and when I don’t, his tone sinks into deeper gravity "Once, in the days of Old Earth, there were two pigeons ere greatly in love In those days, they raised such anireat distances These tere born in the sae, raised by the same man, and sold on the saeons suffered apart from one another, each incomplete without their lover Far and wide their ain find one another, for they began to see how vast the world was, and how terrible the things in it For es for their h the air over men who killed each other for land When the war ended, the pigeons were set free by their o, neither knehat to do, so each flew hoain, as they were always destined to return home and find, instead of the past, their future"

He folds his hands gently, a teacher arriving at his point "So do I feel lost? Always When Lea died at the Institute …" His lips slip gently doard "… I was in a dark woods, blind and lost as Dante before Virgil But Quinn helpedme out of misery She became my home As she puts it, ‘Hoht when all grows dark’" He grasps the top of my hand "Find your home, Darrow It may not be in the past But find it, and you’ll never be lost again"

I’ve always thought of Lykos asnow To see her To die and find hoain in the Vale with my wife But if that’s true, why arow inside o," I say, rising froins to rise as well--"you will recover from this We are not our station in life We are us--the sum of e’ve done, ant to do, and the people e keep close You’re my dearest friend, Darrow Mind that No matter what transpires, I will protect you as surely as you would protecthis hand and holding it for a ood for your Color"

"Thank you?" He squints at htens the wrinkles in his uniform "But whatever do you mean by that?"

"I think we could have been brothers," I say "Were this a different life"

"Why do we need another life?" Then he sees the autoe in my left hand His hands are too slow to stopfear, like a loyal dog’s as he’s put slowly to sleep in its master’s lap He doesn’t understand, but he knows there’s a reason, yet still comes the fear, the betrayal that breaks e pierces Roque’s neck and he sinks slowly down onto the bed, eyes drifting closed When he wakes, everyone he has worked with and for over these past two years will be dead He will remember what I did to him after he said I was his closest friend He will know that I kneas going to happen at the gala And even if I don’t die tonight, even if they do not discover I was the bo Roque’s lifeback