“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Adrian, laughing. “Start over. Knitting? Seriously?”
“It’s an undervalued art,” said Nova, managing to keep a straight face. It had, in fact, been a four-month preoccupation when she was twelve or so, but she’d been less interested in making winter accessories and more interested in the idea of being able to tote around weapons as vicious as ten-inch-long needles and no one batting an eye about it.
“And bird-watching?” said Adrian.
“Bird-watching, yep.” That hobby had been Leroy’s idea, who had insisted that it would help develop her patience, stealth, and observation skills. “Mostly around the bay. Did you know this area is home to over forty species of waterfowl?”
“In fact,” said Adrian, “I was not aware of our waterfowl population, but that does seem like good information to have.”
“You never know when it might come up in conversation.”
He grinned again and Nova saw that his cheeks dimpled, just a tiny bit, once his smile got broad enough.
She swallowed.
“Okay, what else did you say? Juggling?”
She could still hear Ingrid waxing on about the many physical benefits juggling offered—from dexterity to balance to hand-eye coordination.
“I got pretty good at it, actually,” she said.
“If I draw you some bowling pins, will you give me a demonstration?”
“Nope.”
“How about some scarves? Softballs? Flaming torches?”
She turned her head away, in part to hide the smile she was having trouble keeping back. “We’re supposed to be on a very important mission, you know. I’d hate to be a distraction.”
“Fine. I’ll let it go … for now. What was the other thing you mentioned?”
“Astronomy.”
“Right. Now, that one, I get. Being up all night, you’ve probably spent a lot of time looking at the stars.”
Nova looked up, to the few bright stars that could be seen dotting the sky between the buildings. There had been no ulterior motive for learning about the night sky, only that she found it fascinating. She could remember the sky being full of stars when she was a child. They were more difficult to see these days, now that so much of the city’s power grid had been fixed.
She liked electricity, but some nights, she would have given almost anything to see the Milky Way again.
Nova was still staring at the stars when, behind her, Ruby started to mutter in her sleep—Nova heard only show you a zero … and then what might have been casserole. She looked back as Ruby rolled onto her side and curled into a fetal position, her head sliding off the pillow and onto Oscar’s outstretched arm.
“Are they…？” she asked, gesturing between their sleeping forms.
“No,” said Adrian, who was turning pages in his sketchbook again.
“But they like each other?”
“Hard to say.” He found the sketch of the library and glanced back once, his eyes softening a bit as he looked at his friends. “I’m almost positive Oscar likes her, but I think he’s too afraid to do anything about it. And Ruby … she pretends to be oblivious, but I wonder.” He thumped his pen against the paper. “So, what are you training for?”
“Hm?”
“You said you spend a lot of your time training. For what?”
She leaned back on her hands. What did she train for? To destroy the Renegades. To avenge her family’s deaths. To someday see Ace’s vision realized—a world in which all people could be free. Where the people would not be heralded over by villain gangs or the Council. Where prodigies would not be subjected to constant injustices and cruelty, as they had been before the Age of Anarchy.
A world in which the Anarchists could return to sunlight and not fear persecution for even the slightest misstep.
“For this, I guess,” she whispered, tracing the filigree of her bracelet. “To be a Renegade.”
Adrian nodded, as if this were a perfectly reasonable thing to train for. “And is it everything you hoped for and more?”
Smirking, Nova looked back at Oscar and Ruby again and saw that Ruby was drooling a tiny bit. “So far, I can honestly say that it is surpassing every expectation.”
Turning back to the window, she saw that a slivered moon had risen over the library. It must have been going on two o’clock in the morning.
“What’s the significance of the bracelet?”
Nova looked down. She hadn’t realized she’d been fidgeting with it again. “Oh. It … was my mom’s.” She cleared her throat. “Thank you, by the way. For fixing it.”