Yet again, Victor simply nods. It’s something else I think he needs to work on: developing his casual side, so maybe one day he and I can have a meaningful conversation about the many flavors of ice cream, or why music moves souls, or how nothing can escape a black hole. We’ve talked about many things in the short time we’ve been together, but never, that I can recall, about the seemingly insignificant things in life, things that have no bearing on his profession—things that, to me, are anything but insignificant, and matter a great deal.

“I’ll be right there,” I call out to my mother.

Then I push up on my toes again, and kiss Victor on the mouth.

“I love you, Victor.”

“And I love you…”

I sense that he wants to say so much more, but he forces it down.

“Sarai, honey…” Dina calls.

“I have to go,” I tell Victor.

Reluctantly, he steps outside; the light from the porch touches his shoulder, leaving one side of his face in shadow.

“Victor,” I say, before he moves down the last step.

He stops, turns to look at me.

“There’s something that I’d like to know,” I say.

“Anything,” he tells me.

I pause. “How did you get me out of that cage? How did you save me? I don’t remember much after—”

“I did not save you,” he admits, regretfully. “I spared you, but I did not save you. It was out of my hands.”

That surprises me; I stare at him, blank-faced, trying to remember that night, any details at all, but I can’t.

“Then who did?”

Victor’s gaze strays, and he glances at the steps momentarily.

“Someone from The Order,” he says.

My breath catches. “Ours?” I ask, hesitantly. “Or Vonnegut’s?”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment; he doesn’t even seem fully there.

“Victor?” I turn my head at an angle, looking down at him from the top step in a sidelong manner. “Ours or Vonnegut’s?” I repeat. In my heart, I already know the answer—I just need to understand it—and if it’s true, then there is a shit-storm of new problems that lay ahead.

Still, he doesn’t answer, and I know now that he doesn’t need to.

“Are you safe?” I ask him. “Don’t lie to me, Victor—do they know where you are?”

“They have always known, Izabel.” His voice is calm, his words feel almost…apocalyptic in nature. “It is only a matter of time that all of this”—he waves a hand in the air—“all of this freedom, this life, will come to an end. I have told you, since the beginning, that until Vonnegut is dead and I am in control of his Order, none of us are free; we are but a breath away from the end of everything. And no walls or secrets or disguises can hide us forever. Vonnegut must be identified, and eliminated, before he eliminates us.”

“That’s the real reason you’re worried about me being here, isn’t it?” I go down two steps toward him. “Artemis has nothing to do with it, does she?”

He nods.

“I am confident in you where Artemis is concerned, yes.” He steps up to meet me. “But you should know something.”

“Tell me,” I urge him.

He pauses, and then says with a hint of disbelief in his voice, “The price on your head is even greater than mine.”

I feel my eyes and forehead creasing with lines of confusion; my head rears back.

“I don’t understand,” I say.

After a moment, Victor admits, “Neither do I.”

We stand together in silence, though the thoughts in my head are loud. How can this be true? Why? Why would The Order want me more than Victor Faust? For a moment I can’t find my own voice, and when I finally do, I can’t bring myself to use it.

Cradling the back of my head in the palm of his big hand, Victor leans forward and touches his lips to my forehead. My cheekbones. My chin. My mouth. I fight the urge—the need—to grab him and give him every reason to take me right where we stand. His kiss leaves me breathless, but I don’t show it. His touch, and his closeness, does things to me that I know I’ll never be able to fully control, but this time I’m able to tame it.

Then he walks down the steps, and I watch him go, his tall, athletic figure disappearing in the shadows covering the sidewalk cast by the trees.

And then he’s gone.

He asked me to marry him…No, I can’t think about that right now; I can’t carry that possibility in my heart yet when I have so much else I need to do and become and resolve and accept, first.

I look up from my thoughts, hoping to catch one last glimpse of him before the darkness swallows him completely, but he’s not there and I knew he wouldn’t be.

A time ago, I would’ve stopped him, I would’ve made sure that Victor knew this wasn’t goodbye. But things have changed. My love for him hasn’t, but everything else around me has. Everything else inside of me has. And in Victor, I see the same—he is changed; he is still changing. Can our love for each other evolve with the changes? Can our bond stand the test of time and we still come out together at the end, stronger, unbreakable? The odds are that we may never know, because we might not live long enough to find out.

I have so many questions that I could’ve asked him, that most people in my shoes would have. Questions about exactly what happened that night, about who saved me, why I was saved, why I’m still free. I want to know these things. But not yet. I have something more important I need to do before I can even begin to start thinking about any of that. Someone more important.

My gaze remains fixed on the dark sidewalk, my memory capturing the moment he traveled it, savoring every detail of the man I would die and kill for. The man I would kill, if that’s what I needed to do to take away his pain.

Shutting my eyes, shutting out the memory of his face and replacing it with that of my mother’s, I move slowly up the steps and go back inside the house. With a heavy heart. With a heavy purpose.

“I thought you left me,” Dina says, as I enter her bedroom.

The sheet she lays on has been soiled; she can barely move her arms anymore, and walking herself to the restroom has been out of the realm of possible since about a month ago, according to her doctor. She had been hiding it from me for over a year, not wanting me to worry. The last time I saw her she seemed fine; she could do just about anything I could do, but the disease recently took the inevitable turn for the worse, and with ALS there is no turning it back.

“I’m here,” I tell her softly, lifting her head with one hand and readjusting the pillow beneath it.

With difficulty, I manage to change the sheets and clean her up, without moving her from the bed.

“I’m sorry you have to do this for me, baby girl.”

“None of that,” I tell her sternly, covering her from the waist down with a clean sheet. “And I’ll never leave you again. I’m staying right here to take care of you.”

“Nah!” she argues. “You can’t be staying here, wiping my butt every day, Sarai—I won’t let you.”

“How are you gonna stop me?”

She frowns. For a second, I think I chose the worst words I could say to someone with this particular disease, but she eases my mind with a weak smile.

“You’ve had such a hard life, baby girl; it hurts my heart to think about what you’ve been through.”

“Nothing compared to other people,” I say; I wipe her forehead and face with a warm, wet cloth.

“And none of that,” she argues in return; I know she wants to shake her finger at me but she can’t raise her hand. “You’ve suffered a lot more than most, Sarai, so don’t do that. You’ve got every right to be mad as hell at the world.”

“Of course I’m mad,” I say, “but I’m doing something about it, Dina. There are women in those fucked-up countries who get stoned to death for getting raped; shot or hung for showing too much skin; eight-year-old girls murdered by their forty-year-old husbands during sex—they can’t do anything about it. But I can…”