The Ends of the World (The Conspiracy of Us #3)(103)

He scooped me into his arms. "A hundred times is not enough."

"Cheesy," I admonished, looping my arms around his neck. "I'm going to get tired of you if you turn into a big cheeseball all the time." This was a lie. I'd seen him smile more in the past week than I had the whole time I'd known him. I would never get tired of that.

"But cheese tastes good, yes?" He leaned down and kissed the bullet wound on my shoulder. "Healing nicely," he said, carrying me outside.

"Going to have some weird tan lines," I mused, picking at the small bandage.

It was an act, the smiles and the flirting and the fun. I didn't know how long it would be until we felt whole again. But we were safe. The world was okay. We were trying.

Stellan set me down on the porch of our bungalow, and we looked through the row of palm trees out to a wide white sand beach. This little island could only be reached by boat, and even on the mainland, we hadn't seen a single person in all of Thailand who gave us a second glance. No Circle, no paparazzi.

"Speaking of tan lines," I said, "when was the last time we put more sunscreen on her?" Anya was crouched in the sand, playing with the nanny she'd grown up with, whom Stellan had tracked down in Russia and brought to live with us. "She's going to be a lobster."

Stellan grimaced and shrugged. We might have more to learn about the being responsible for a kid thing than the being part of the Circle thing.

I grabbed the bottle of sunscreen and started down the beach. Anya jumped up when she saw me coming. "Avie!" she screeched, and ran up the beach, kicking up sand and grabbing my hand to drag me back to the water's edge. She'd started warming to me, finally.

The sun and the sand and the steady diet of mango shakes and green curry had relaxed us all a little. I'd even been sleeping better, and Stellan had, too-though I'd realized now that we were together every night that he had more nightmares than I did. When one of us woke, the other would wrap them up and whisper nonsense until we both fell back to sleep, and if we were up with the sunrise, which we still often were, we had a beautiful beach just outside our door waiting for a morning swim.

Anya dropped beside the pile of wet sand she was sculpting into some kind of creature, and chattered away to me. I still didn't understand a word, but I smiled at the nanny over her head. Farther away, down the beach, a sheer cliff rose out of the water, craggy and dramatic against the turquoise water. At its base, Elodie was panting and sweaty, just back from a run.

Jack stood on the hard-packed sand nearby, with a boy named Maxim. He was the son of Sofia, the nanny, and Stellan had known him for years-their family had been friends with the Korolevs when Stellan was a kid. Max was my age, and had been in Russian military training for the past year. When we asked Sofia to come on full-time with us, we'd brought Max, too, since the two of them were the only family either had. We hadn't said it yet, but we were hoping he could take over as Keeper at some point. So Max had been training with Jack every day, and Jack was impressed so far. We were not at the point to trust anyone we didn't know with our secrets, but for now he knew he was training to be bodyguard to a family who paid very well while treating him like an actual human being, and that was good enough.



       
         
       
        

We needed a new Keeper because once Jack and Elodie felt comfortable with his progress, they wouldn't be staying with us full-time anymore.

Something had happened in the days after the Vatican. Jack wasn't the same. None of us were, but he had taken it especially hard. Then one day, he and Elodie had asked to talk to us.

They had decided to join the Order. Both of them.

After what had happened, Elodie felt like she'd be more useful with the Order than she would with us. Jack wanted to go with her. He confessed that he'd been secretly considering working with Fitz already, and after what Fitz had done, it only strengthened his resolve. Both of them saw potential to reinvent the Order as a complement to the Circle rather than an adversary. They'd do it aboveboard, and in full collaboration with us.

It took me a few days to wrap my mind around the most faithful Circle member I'd ever met joining the Order, but Jack looked happy with his decision. It might have to do with the fact that he'd been talking to Nisha every day, but I really did think his new path was good for him, too.

The rest of the Order claimed not to have any knowledge of Fitz's campaign to make the Saxons destroy the Circle, and we believed them. There just weren't enough of them for it to be a big conspiracy. The Order was going to pull their spies out of Circle households, and there was no more need to prevent purple-eyed girls from being born. In return, the Circle would stop hunting them, and the two sides would communicate regularly, through Jack and Elodie and Nisha.