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been told that while the
     Goblin can be a hard-ass with others, he’s got a soft spot for Jonah’s twin.
     Apparently, nobody ever warned the Guard that blatant favoritism is a bad
     thing.
    I wait until Zthane is gone
     before pouncing on Karl. “He’s back? Since when?”
    An eyebrow quirks up at the
     same time as Karl folds his arms across one another. “A couple of weeks now.”
    Kellan has been here, in
     Annar, for a couple of weeks, and nobody thought to tell me? I am irrationally
     angry with everyone I know. “Does he know he’s going on this mission with me?”
     Before Karl can answer, I add, “You know he’s not talking to me, right?”
    “I know,” Karl says. His
     patience with me is legendary. “And yes, he knows.”
    “He’s okay with the
     assignment?” I’m foolishly hopeful, which is stupid.
    “He had orders, Chloe. It
     wasn’t like he could say no.”
    My
     heart drops straight to the floor, even though I tell it it shouldn’t.
    That night, Jonah takes me
     out to dinner. We’re sitting outside at one of our favorite cafés, and the
     stars, so bright in the sky, compete with thousands of twinkle lights lining
     the umbrellas over our tables. I wait and wait for him to say something about
     his brother, but he doesn’t. He tells me about some committee he was asked to
     join, just this day, and of how the first meeting was infinitely more
     interesting than our standard Council sessions. He tells me about this great
     jogging trail he discovered in the Central Park-like park near the University,
     where the trees are like any other plane’s except apparently the Elvin and make
     a nice place to hang out in while still in the city. He tells me about this
     paper he’s supposed to write, where he’s to look into the importance in finding
     the exact moments to implement either anti-war sentiments into communities or
     dissonance best suited for uprisings. Through all these things, I listen with a
     smile on my face, but I only hear one thing.
    I hear the absence of what I
     really want to know.
    Why hasn’t he told me? I
     realize that we haven’t spoken of his brother in months, but that doesn’t seem
     like a good enough excuse for Jonah not telling me.
    “What’s going on in that
     pretty head of yours?” Jonah asks, snapping my focus back to attention. He taps
     my forehead, a grin tempered with a fair share of questioning. Of course he
     senses my distraction.
    Have I mentioned it can
     royally suck to have a boyfriend who is an Emotional?
    My best line of attack is
     the truth. “I’m thinking about my upcoming mission. You know, the portal on the
     Elvin plane in some desert forest?”
    His hand retreats as he
     drops back in his chair. Then, without missing a beat, “He asked me not to tell
     you he was back.”
    I blink at this abruptness.
    Jonah’s gaze is steady. He
     waits for me to say something. And a million words swirl around my head, ones
     that range from one end of my spectrum to the other, but in the end, I am the
     one to look away. And my words remain unsaid.

 

    I do my best to make no eye
     contact, to pretend Kellan is nothing more than another random Guard assigned
     to me with a carefully constructed veil of indifference towards everything he
     does. Only, in my efforts to make myself as aloof as possible, even though I
     know he knows better, I end up interacting with the other three Guard more than
     I normally would, babbling like a shut-in suddenly freed. It’s truly a
     grotesque and petty I’ll show you what you’ve been missing, and I’m well
     aware of it.
    Of course, if this bothers
     Kellan in the slightest, he doesn’t have the grace to show it. He is also at
     ease with everyone, but then, they’re his coworkers, part of his niche in
     Magical society. And that reminds me of how I’m the outsider in this group of
     five. They aren’t here to build a portal. They’re here to guard the Creator
     who’ll build a