Foul Lady Fortune

A concerned neighbor was crossing the courtyard when Orion hurried through the building door, shifting Janie in his arms so that she wasn’t jostled. Of all times to run into a neighbor he had never met before, the universe chose now?

“Don’t worry!” he exclaimed, swerving out of the neighbor’s path. “This is my wife. She just drank too much at a banquet.”

He hurried away, beelining for Lao Lao’s apartment. He knew that Janie’s situation had to be serious, because if she were even slightly conscious, she would have scolded him for making it sound like she couldn’t handle her alcohol.

“Lao Lao!” he called outside her door. “Are you home?”

There was no response. Gritting his teeth, Orion marched for the stairs instead—at the very least, he had the key to Janie’s apartment. Though it was a small struggle that involved a slight adjustment, he was nudging through the doors before long, tossing keys and bag and crate piece onto the couch and maneuvering Janie carefully into the bedroom. He set her on her bed as gently as he could manage.

Janie looked too pale. It scared him.

“What’s this ruckus?”

The familiar voice boomed from the apartment front door, croaky and tired. Orion hurried out, skidding into the living room to see Lao Lao standing outside in her nightgown.

“Lao Lao,” he heaved. “I don’t suppose you have poison antidotes?”

The moment Janie dropped into his arms, he had run a cursory inspection for wounds, frantically searching for what had taken her down. He found the red scratch after a minute of panic, then remembered what she had said before about her hairpins being poisoned. Damn Janie and her silent burden-bearing.

“Antidotes?” Lao Lao echoed, taken aback.

“She’s breathing,” Orion went on. He had started rambling. “It’s shallow and it’s not getting worse, so I didn’t take her to the hospital. I don’t want to risk blowing our cover, but I also don’t want to risk her dying—”

“What was she hit with?”

Orion stopped. Took a ragged breath. “Her own hairpin.”

“Ah. I should have something downstairs. Talk to her, bǎobèi. Make sure she keeps breathing.” As calm as anything, Lao Lao turned on her slippers and started back down the stairs. Orion was left standing in the dark living room, wondering if the old woman had grasped the severity of the situation.

“Talk to her?” he called back. “She’s unconscious!”

Lao Lao was already in her own apartment, rummaging about loudly. Orion had no other option except to hurry back into the bedroom and crouch by Janie’s side, watchful of her breathing. It hadn’t been hard to carry her around the city. He was barely winded. The only part of him in distress was his pulse, beating at a hundred miles per hour.

“Please don’t scare me,” Orion muttered. A thin glean of sweat remained on her forehead. He had never seen Janie Mead like this before: eyes closed, withdrawn from the world. For as long as he had known her, she didn’t seem like she was capable of shutting down. She seemed as if she might have been born with her eyes wide open, keen and observant.

It felt like he was witnessing something he wasn’t supposed to see—but he didn’t want to look away. The storybook thief who had managed a glimpse into the dark and foreboding caves, only to find glimmering treasure instead of terrors. This wasn’t supposed to be his to claim.

He wanted it nevertheless.

Orion brushed Janie’s face, moving her hair out of the way. There was a tightness in his chest, spreading from the cage of his ribs to the hollow of his throat. He thought it might have been the start of a headache, but when he looked up and down to test the tension behind his eyes, he felt perfectly fine. It wasn’t his head; it was his flesh and insides, his raw heart, pounding and pounding.

“I’ve split every memory of my life into two categories, Janie Mead,” he said aloud, as if she might hear him. His touch trailed from her cheek to her chin. “Before my family broke and after my family broke. The way I lived when my world felt whole and the way I live now to mend those fractures.”

Orion sighed. Janie returned a shallow exhale. He reached for her hand, clasping her burning-hot fingers in his palms.

“You were my first hope that there might be something else.” She was not a remnant from his life before who expected a foolhardy version of him. She was not a discardable tool of his life after who could be exploited for some task. “A third category of memory. A future separate from the past. I have spent years thinking that if I just do the right thing, then I can go back to how it used to be. But maybe I don’t want that anymore.”

Maybe he wanted her laughing at him over the sound of traffic. Maybe he wanted her threatening him with a straight razor in her hand. They could continue to perform national missions under a joint cover because they worked well together, not because he needed to play hero and prove something. Once this assignment was finished, he wasn’t ready to lose her. He didn’t want to lose her now.

“Why am I talking to you when you can’t even hear me?” Orion muttered. “You are a daunting force, beloved. If you fade away because of some measly poison, I will not forgive you in the afterlife.”

“Not… measly.”

Orion jolted, his spine going ramrod straight. He hadn’t imagined her response. Her lips had moved.

“Beloved, are you awake?”

Janie huffed. It was strained with effort, like she needed to summon every bit of energy in her body to make the noise. Her eyes remained closed. “Dizzy.”

Lao Lao finally returned, her slippers clattering across the living room floor. She barged into the bedroom and started telling Janie off for poisoning herself as if she had done it intentionally. Orion was too afraid of the old woman to do anything other than step out of the way when she neared the bed and eased Janie’s mouth open to pour something down her throat.

Janie emitted a single cough, almost choking on the liquid. Lao Lao took away the cup and dabbed a wet cloth over Janie’s face, satisfied.

“She will be perfectly fine,” the old woman said, shuffling away from the bed and handing Orion the wet cloth. “I’ll check in again when morning comes. Now let her rest. She’s not used to it. I’m going back to sleep too.”

Without waiting for a response, Lao Lao exited the bedroom, letting herself out of the apartment. Orion wrung the cloth in his hands and approached Janie again, setting it onto her neck gingerly. Her breathing had already improved. There was more color in her cheeks.

“You’re awake?” he asked hesitantly.

“Pas vraiment,” Janie replied. She was mumbling in French, the side of her face buried in her pillows. She hadn’t seemed to notice her switch in language.

Orion hovered. He suddenly didn’t know what to do with his arms. He suddenly forgot how normal people stood.

“Okay,” he decided eventually, his voice quiet. “I’ll leave you be—”

Just as he backed away from the edge of the bed, her hand shot out, grasping his wrist weakly.

“Stay,” she whispered.

Orion stared at her grasp. He wasn’t sure if he had misheard her.

“Stay,” she said again, clearer this time. “Please. I don’t want to be alone.”

“All right.” Slowly he shuffled close, sitting hesitantly on the bed. “I can stay.”

“Tell me,” Janie managed slowly. “Tell me more.”

“More?”

“Your family.” She paused. “You.”

He thought the tightness in his chest might ease now that Janie was recovering, but it was only worse. And he knew—he tugged at the piece of string hanging from his thrashing heart and traced it to its source.

“Well.” He tried to tamp it down. Janie Mead was a girl with so many secrets. If he followed that string, he was following it to his own heartbreak. Even though he couldn’t release his hold on it. Even though he refused to release his hold on it. “It all started on a hot August night when I was born…”

Rosalind had been poisoned once previously during her training—on purpose, no less, so that Dao Feng could instruct her on how to handle it. That prior experience was the only thing that kept her from going into a panic when she woke up with a start, struggling to remember that it was normal to be confused, that nothing was wrong if she couldn’t immediately place her surroundings.

For someone who never slept, being forced into a shutdown was a bewildering experience.

Rosalind opened her bleary eyes wider, trying to take inventory. She was lying on her own left arm—that much was certain when she felt the pins and needles of her limb waking up. As for the other one…

It was draped over a torso. A warm body, its chest rising and falling with even rhythm.

Rosalind froze in place. For several very long seconds, she didn’t dare move, afraid that it would stir Orion out of sleep and he would see them tangled up. But then she remembered her last groggy wisps of memory before Lao Lao’s antidote had dragged her unconscious again and could have sworn that she had reached for him while they were both still awake.

Jesus. This was so embarrassing.

She lifted her head in a daze. Outside her window, she caught a glimpse of purple-hazed skies, which made no sense, because that would mean a whole day had passed—

“Orion,” Rosalind gasped, giving him a rough shake. He jerked awake, his eyes flying open and turning as round as coins. “Orion, what time is it?”

“Hey, hey—”

Rosalind lunged to the side, intent on lurching to her feet even as her head spun. The moment she sat up, however, Orion’s reaction was whip-quick, grabbing her shoulder and pushing her back onto her pillow.

She started to rise again immediately. “We need to go.”

“Janie.” He swung an arm around to her other shoulder, scrambling to keep her down.

“What are you so calm for?” she exclaimed. “The whole day has passed—”

“Will you hold on?” Orion demanded firmly. Before she could fight him further, he outright clambered over her and pinned her wrists over her head. “Now look what you made me do.”

Rosalind blinked. Her heart leaped to her throat.

“Well, don’t be dramatic.” She tried to pull her wrists down. His grip was iron. Where she should have scoffed, the memory of her face pressed to his chest was still warm in her mind, and she found herself swallowing nervously instead. “You could have said it nicely too.”

“There’s no fun in that. Are you going to behave if I let go of you?”

“Behave?” Rosalind echoed. You share the bed with a man once and he starts thinking he can tell you what to do. The power was getting to his head. “First of all, I’ll smack my skull against yours if you don’t release me in three seconds. Second of all, we have a cover to keep at our jobs, and it’s dusk outside—”

“Janie. It’s okay. I called in and said you were sick. People get sick.” He grinned, visibly waiting three seconds before tapping his forehead to hers. “Don’t smack me. I’m behaving now.”

With a bounce, Orion let go of her, easing away and returning to his side of the bed. Rosalind sat up, eyeing him suspiciously. “Oh.”

Now that they were both awake and Rosalind had calmed down, Orion’s expression turned serious. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got run over by a military tank.” Her muscles hurt. Her organs hurt. She ought to stop making her poison so strong. If it was the next day, then Silas was arriving shortly to debrief. She needed to freshen up and shake herself back into commission. It probably would have been less miserable if she had gotten run over by a military tank.

“You gave me a fright.” Orion slid off the sheets, running a hand through his hair. He ducked to look into her vanity, peering at his reflection while he spoke, but his eyes were unfocused while he tucked and untucked his wrinkled collar, as if he was only doing so as an excuse to turn away. “A very big fright, Janie. Please never do that again.”

Rosalind’s lips parted. She didn’t know what to say in response to that. How could she promise to never be in harm’s way again? They were national operatives. It was a part of the job description.

“At the very least…” She shook her sleeve, and the vial they had stolen fell out. When she placed it on the bedside table, her eyes also wandered out to the living room, where Orion had tossed the crate piece upon one of the couch cushions. “We’re one step closer to the end.”

“Yes.” Orion didn’t sound too pleased by the rationalization. He had a strange look on his face. “I suppose we are.”

He did up his top button. Before Rosalind could stop him, he said, “I’m going to fetch Lao Lao to check on you once more. Give me a minute,” and strode out of the room.

The apartment door opened and closed. Rosalind swung her legs off the bed, frowning.

“Why are you being so weird?” she asked the empty bedroom.