66

66

The Boy I Loved Best

I shout up at the sky. “Are you kidding me? You didn’t say anything about nightmares.”

Which this clearly is. Though maybe not mine, because I don’t have a thing about spiders. Or at least normal-sized ones. These are something else. Their fangs could lop my head off in one snap.

A wet nose against my hand draws my attention. The fox whines, then noses the outline of the tarantula on my forearm. The large, fuzzy red spider wiggles and then lifts both her front legs and waves them.

“Can you do something about this?”

The fox gives a high-pitched yip while the tarantula waves her legs again, both of which I take as a yes. So I touch the tarantula, and she crawls out of my skin, and I hold very still while she tickles her way down my arm and onto the foliage-covered ground. While I stand well back and watch, my tarantula scuttles across to the spiders that could squash her without a thought.

With lots of creepy clacking and more eyeballs than are necessary turning my way, the creatures seem to have a conversation. Then, finally, the nightmare spiders move back into the trees. Not far. I can still catch the sun reflecting off their eyes.

My tarantula gives me a little wave. Not taking a chance, I run the rest of the way and try the door, which is unlocked, and burst into a room.

A single room.

And lying on a bed against the wall, eyes closed and perfectly still…

My heart flies, then drops, because for a second, I thought it was Hades.

But it’s not. It’s…

“Boone.” I whisper his name.

It makes sense, but at the same time, it doesn’t. I mean, I knew I had a crush. I knew I admired him, craved his attention. But love? Is that really love? Or is it that I had no one else?

When I get to his bedside, I crouch down. I don’t take his hand, because that feels wrong somehow. We’ve never touched like that.

Instead, I grasp his forearm and give it a shake, but he doesn’t open his eyes. I can see by a trail of glittery bronze dust across the top of his pillow and forehead that Morpheus has been here.

“Boone?” I frown and shake him harder. Still nothing.

Which is when I remember what I have to do. At least it will be easier with him asleep.

“I have something I have to tell you.”

“Oh my gods, you’re dead,” a low, horror-filled voice blurts out from behind me.

With a yelp, I jump to my feet and spin to face where Boone’s voice came from. A translucent version of him stands in the opposite corner, which was empty just a second ago. Do I look the same to him? Like a ghost?

Then his gaze falls to his body on the bed, and if it’s possible for a dream ghost to pale, he does. “Wait…” His voice sounds sort of hollow and echoey. “Am I dead?”

“No!” Both my hands shoot up. “Not dead. I just… We’re both alive,” I assure him quickly. “Just…um… We’re dreaming right now.”

His brows draw together as he looks from me to his body on the bed and back to me. “You sure about that?”

“Yes.”

After a second, he nods. He’s taking this surprisingly well. “I don’t understand. If we’re dreaming, why are we in my cabin?”

That has me leaning back, then looking around. “Yours?”

He shrugs. “I bought it a while ago.”

My eyes go wide.

But it doesn’t matter. Not for the labor. “I’m guessing your dream took us to a place that’s special to you. I had to find you.”

Now for the hard part. And by hard, I mean squirm-worthy awkward for both of us.

Oh gods. I have to say it to his face. I mean, he’s already heard the rumor, but that doesn’t make it true. Not until I say…what I’m about to have to say…out loud. “You’ve been pulled into the Crucible with me for a few days,” I start out. Yes, I’m stalling. “I have to tell you something…important…and then take you back to Olympus with me. Okay?”

He crosses his arms, feet planted wide, and an intrigued grin pulls the corner of his mouth up. “As long as I’m not dead, yeah. Okay. What’s this important thing?”

Right. Time to say it. I open my mouth but close it again.

Just say it, Lyra. It’s just words.

Open. Close. Nothing comes out. Because it’s not just words. It’s vulnerability.

I give my head a shake. Maybe it would be better to ease into it. “Remember when—”

No. I should just cut to the chase. Band-Aid-rip-style.

“I’m supposed to—”

“Hey,” Boone says, dragging my attention off the floor at my feet to him. “It can’t be that bad.”

A quick laugh punches from me. “I love you.”

Those three short words string together in a rush, and I blow out a sharp breath at the end, hands going to my hips as I drop my gaze from his eyes to his feet.

Only that doesn’t feel right. Or maybe never was. Except we’re here now.

He doesn’t say anything. For a very long time. Long enough that I start shifting my weight.

And he still says nothing.

Oh gods. This is worse than I thought it was going to be.

I peek at his face to find him staring at me with a confused frown. Like my words and my face don’t quite belong together. Apparently, I can blush in my dreams, because heat crawls all over my skin, and I’m tempted to wave my hand in my own transparent face to cool off.

“I don’t understand,” Boone says slowly.

I thought getting the words out was hard, but I guess it can get worse. “You need me to explain it to you?”

He frowns harder. “Not the love part, just why you had to tell me that.”

Oh.

I close my eyes and sigh. So very, very much worse. Without opening them, I say, “I had to find the person who…” I can’t believe I’m going to admit this. “Who I love most in the world and tell them. It’s the only way to wake you up.”

Except he’s not awake. Did I get the wrong person? But no. He’s here. So obviously, right person.

More silence.

I crack one eye open, then the other, and my heart slowly drifts to the soles of my feet like an autumn leaf dropping from a tree.

Because Boone’s scruffy face is all things regret and exactly what I feared…embarrassment. He won’t look at me.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I…” He shakes his head. “I don’t feel the same.”

I swallow around a heart that should be slowly cracking. Except… “I know. It’s okay.”

“I mean…I’m flattered, Lyra-Loo-Hoo, but—”

“Stop.” Oh hells. I drop my head in my hands. “Seriously, you don’t have to. I had to tell you. It’s how this Labor is played. We can forget about it now.”

Please let’s forget all about this. Forever.

“Labor?” he asks.

A tiny tapping noise has us both turning to the window, where I can see the outline of my tarantula waving her legs.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Boone mutters behind me.

Spiders. He hates them. Not many know about that. I only do because it’s in his file and I’m his clerk.

The tarantula taps again, and I hear the fox give his high-pitched yip outside. And that’s when realization strikes me between the eyes and my lungs seize. Evening is falling, the purpling shadows in the trees growing longer by the second.

How?

We started this in the afternoon. I had hours before sunset. And it didn’t take that long for us to fly…

I pinch the bridge of my nose. Because if it took that long to get to Boone, the one-way journey is longer than it felt. What if I don’t have enough time to get him back to Olympus?

I’m getting really tired of night as a deadline. Or deadlines at all. That word has taken on a whole new meaning for me.

I reach for one of the pearls tucked into my vest and realize that while things feel real here, they’re not. The tattoos are part of me, but the pearls, the real ones, are back in Olympus.

And Boone is still a ghost.

Why? I confessed my very embarrassing feelings. He should have woken up.

“We don’t have time,” I say, hurrying across the room.

I grab his hand and tug him to the door, which I fling open, but the two giant arachnids scuttle out from the trees to crowd into the doorway. Boone reaches over my head and slams the door, having to put his shoulder into it. The door surges and rattles as the spiders try to push their way inside. He’s breathing hard by the time he gets it shut.

“This is bad,” I say.

“You think?”

“No.” I shake my head. “I mean I think your dream turns into a nightmare that won’t let you leave while you’re still asleep.”

He glances at the window and startles. Probably because a bunch of eyeballs are now pressed up against it, watching us. “So wake me up,” he demands, slowly backing away.

“I tried. I told you what I was supposed to tell you.”

The front door shudders.

“Tell me again, then,” Boone urges. “Maybe I was too shocked to really hear it. Or tell that me.” He points at his body on the bed.

Again? I have to say it again? Fuck me.

Crossing the room, I kneel beside him and take his hand. I have to clear my throat twice. I’d better do this right. “I love—”

My heart pinches, and I swallow the rest of the words. That still doesn’t feel right. Not the way I was going to say it.

So I change it. Just a little. Still the truth. Maybe more of the truth than I’ve been willing to admit, even to myself, until now.

“I’ve had a crush on you since I was fifteen,” I say, my words tumbling over themselves. “You’re the only person who has ever shown me a lick of kindness. It’s pathetic. I’m well aware. And you don’t have to feel anything for me.” I know he won’t. He shouldn’t have to deal with guilt for it. “Just know that I’ll always love you a little, for making my time in the den even the tiniest bit easier.”

Boone’s body doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, nothing.

I look over my shoulder, but…he’s gone.

Gone. Gone. Not just that I don’t see him. It’s a single room. He’d be hard to miss.

“Boone?”

I whirl to face his body. Does he look paler? I glance at the window, where the outside world looks dark, but we’re in a forest. Did I take too long?

“Oh my gods!” The whisper rips through my throat as my hands fly up to cover my mouth. “Oh my gods, it’s too late. I’ve killed you.”