CASSIAN

The air between us grew thick. It was a quiet confession, the kind of thing you say by accident when you’re too tired to keep up the act.

It was too specific to be about travel or moving to a new city. It was too honest to be ignored. It sat there in the moonlight, changing everything.

Julian didn’t look the way I expected. He didn’t look shocked or upset.

He looked like someone who had been holding a secret for a very long time and had just heard someone else say it first. It was complicated.

It was the look of two people who had been careful with their feelings for years, only to have them spill out all at once.

We stood there in the garden, the moon casting our long shadows on the grass. Neither of us said anything else for a long time.

"...Okay," Julian finally whispered. It was a small word, but it felt huge. "Okay."

Leaving the estate at night was a game of timing. The grounds were large, but the guards were predictable.

If you watched them as long as Julian had, you knew their patterns. You knew when they took their breaks and which paths they avoided when the wind picked up.

We almost got caught three times.

The first was when a light flickered on in a second-story window. We froze, pressing our backs against the cold stone of a garden wall. I could hear my heart drumming in my ears.

The second was the sound of boots on the gravel path. We slipped into the shadows of the tall hedges.

Julian’s hand found my arm in the dark. It was an instinct, a way to make sure I was still there. I didn’t move. I didn’t even breathe until his hand let go.

The third was a side door that opened and closed with a heavy thud. We waited in the dark, our shoulders touching, until the silence returned.

We finally found the wall. There was a gap in the stone that the staff had used for years to sneak out into the city for a few hours of freedom. We squeezed through it, one after the other.

On the other side, the air felt different. It was the same city, but it felt wider. The estate was behind us now, a dark mountain of stone and secrets. We were on the city side. We were free.

We walked until we found a bus stop. It was late, and the streetlights were humming.

A bus eventually pulled up, one of those late-night ones that ran between the heart of the city and the far outskirts. It was mostly empty, filled with people who worked the hours no one else wanted.

I sat by the window. I watched the city move past. These were the streets I had grown up in, but they looked unfamiliar now. They were becoming strange in the way things do when you are leaving them for the last time.

A strange feeling was sitting in my chest. It was a mix of relief and loss. It kept doubling back on itself, making me feel light and heavy at the same time. The city in the glass was mine, yet it already wasn’t.

I felt a strong sense of déjà vu. I felt like I had done this before. I felt like I had experienced this exact combination of leaving and having already left. It wasn’t possible... this was the first time I had ever run away but the feeling was so strong it made my head spin.

I felt a deep nostalgia for something that was happening right now. It was an impossible kind of grief. I was missing the city while I was still looking at it.

Julian was sitting next to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his mouth moving. He was saying something to me.

But I didn’t hear Julian’s voice.

Mid-sentence, his voice was replaced by something else. It was a different sound entirely, but it was impossibly familiar. It was the way things in dreams are familiar before you can even remember why.

"This isn’t real," the voice said. It was soft and full of a kind of pain I couldn’t understand. "Wake up. Please wake up."

My mind reacted instantly. Before I could even think about it, a name appeared in my head.

Noah.

Then I caught myself. Who is Noah? I looked at Julian. He was right there. He was real. He was the one I had left everything for. He was present and solid in the seat next to me.

"What did you say?" I asked him.

Julian looked at me, his brow furrowing in confusion. "I didn’t say anything, Cassian. I was just looking at the map."

The confusion sat heavy in my chest. The voice was still echoing inside me, but the name was already starting to fade.

It was slipping away the way names always do in dreams when the dream decides you aren’t ready to know the truth yet.

"Are you alright?" Julian asked. He looked worried.

"Yes," I said. But it was the kind of ’yes’ that really meant ’I don’t know.’

I looked back at the window. The city was almost gone now. The tall buildings were being replaced by the low shapes of the outskirts. There was a new city ahead of us, a place where we could be whoever we wanted.

The voice faded away completely. The name went with it. The bus kept moving forward into the night. Julian was beside me, and the moon was still following us through the trees.

I felt like something was calling me from very far away. Or maybe it was very close. I couldn’t tell the direction or the distance. All I knew was the call. It was a tugging at the center of my being.

I looked at the window. Julian stayed by my side. The night continued, as nights always do, moving toward whatever was coming next.