Archenemies (Renegades, #2)(45)

“Eh—nothing worthwhile,” he said. “Just a stroll through some defunct subway tunnels. You know, typical Saturday morning.”

“Subway tunnels?”

“It’s kind of a long story, but … I was given clearance to talk to Winston Pratt after the presentation the other day.”

One of her toes clipped into the trail and Nova stumbled. Adrian reached out to steady her. “You what?”

“I thought maybe I could learn something about the Anarchists. Don’t get excited; he didn’t say anything useful. But he did say that if I could bring him this puppet of his, he would give up some information.”

A puppet of his. Hettie. He had let Nova play with it occasionally when she was little and it had always felt like a great honor.

“So I went looking for the puppet, but of course, everything was gone. All that’s down there now is a bunch of dead bees and some stray trash.”

Nova scowled. She hated to think of the Renegades picking through her home, analyzing and inspecting everything they found.

“Speaking of bees,” said Adrian, his tone lightening, “how’s your uncle’s beekeeping business?”

She laughed at the unexpected absurdity of the question. She’d nearly forgotten about the lie she’d told him in an effort to explain away Honey’s hives in her backyard. “Uh … not great, to be honest. But he’s not the type to give up.”

Adrian grinned. “That must be where you get it from.”

It was obviously a compliment and Nova felt her neck warming. “Oh yeah, stubbornness is definitely a family trait.”

Unbidden, Ace’s words turned through her head, reminding her that this was not a casual weekend outing. She had a mission, and Adrian was a part of it. Earn his trust. Earn his respect. Earn his affection.

It shouldn’t be that hard, she had been telling herself all week. Adrian was handsome, talented, honorable, kind. So why did every nerve in her body rebel at the thought of faking attraction to him? Of flirting with him, merely for the sake of flirting? Of pretending to be interested?

The answer was thrown back in her face, and she fidgeted with her bracelet.

Because maybe it wouldn’t be fake.

And to discover that she actually liked him, against all her better judgment, would cost far too much.

Still, if she was ever going to sneak useful information out of Adrian or use his loyalty to undermine his fathers, she had to get close to him.

She had to …

Her thoughts trailed off as her attention fell on a crop of trees around the north side of the lake. Her feet halted and she glanced around, spotting a small playground not far away. Her breath hitched. “Do you know where we are?”

“That seems like a trick question.”

She grabbed his sleeve and started walking again. “The statue glen is this way.”

“Statue glen?”

“Yeah, you know. You had that drawing of it in your sketchbook, the one you showed me when we were watching the library. The statue of the hooded figure?”

“Oh—right. You said you used to go there when you were a kid?”

“Only once.” Nova couldn’t quite explain the giddiness that was surging through her limbs. Her feet sped up almost of their own accord. They rounded a corner and the paved path turned one way, while a smaller gravel trail led into a strip of dense woodland. “My parents brought me to that playground, but I wandered off and found…” Nova pushed back a low-hanging branch and froze.

She stood at the top of a rough, moss-covered staircase. The steps curved down into a small ravine, surrounded by towering oak trees and dense shrubs. “This,” she whispered.

She descended into the glen. The clearing was not much bigger than the bedroom she shared with Honey at the row house, with a short rock wall set in a circle around the edges. A wrought-iron bench on one side faced a solitary statue.

Nova felt like she’d stepped back in time. Nothing had changed, not since she was a little girl.

“This is silly, but … until I saw that drawing you’d done, there had been a part of me that thought maybe this place was my own little secret. Which makes no sense. Probably thousands of people come here every year. But … being so little when I found it, I guess I felt like it belonged to me. Like maybe I’d imagined it into existence.” She chuckled and knew she would have been embarrassed to admit this to anyone else, at any other time. But being here again was so surreal she couldn’t bring herself to care.

She circled the statue. It was exactly as she remembered, if maybe sporting a touch more moss than it had back then. A hooded figure dressed in loose robes, like a medieval monk. The face carved beneath the hood was amorphous, with closed eyes and a contented smile and rounded features. Its hands were stretched toward the sky, like it was trying to catch something.

She did not know how old the statue was, but it looked like it had stood there for a thousand years. Like it would stand there for a thousand more.

“I’ve only known about this place for a couple years,” said Adrian. “Though I’ve been back to sketch a handful of times. How old were you when you found it?”

“Four or five,” she said, trailing a finger along the statue’s sleeve. “That night, I dreamed about it. This was before I stopped sleeping, obviously, and to this day it’s the only dream I can remember in perfect detail.” She surveyed the glen. The woods were so dense here the sounds from the festival could no longer be heard. Only bird melodies and rustling leaves. “I dreamed that I was walking through a jungle, with flowers bigger than my head, and a canopy so dense I couldn’t see the sky. The whole place hummed with life … insects and birds … Except I kept coming across things that didn’t belong there. Concrete steps that were covered in moss, and vines dangling from street lamps instead of trees…” She swirled her hand through the air, tracing the vines from memory. “It was Gatlon, but it was in ruins. Just a jungle now, all overgrown. And then … I found this clearing, and there was the statue. It was facing away from me at first, but even before I got close, I knew that it was holding something. So I walked around it, and I looked up, and…” She paused, feeling like she was back in that dream, drowning in the sense of wonder she’d almost forgotten.