The Ends of the World (The Conspiracy of Us #3)(83)

I tried not to think about how, whether I died tomorrow or he left the next day, this might be the last time he looked at me like this. It might be the last time I teased him. It was so unfair, and it was the way it had to be.

"I almost forgot," I said. My voice was surprisingly level. "I got you something."

"You got me something? It's your birthday."

I felt around in the tiny bag over my shoulder and handed it to him.

He set down the candle and twisted the top off the little pot. A tangy, medicinal smell wafted out. "Lotion?" he said.

"I asked Nisha to try this while they were doing their other experiments. It's for your scars. To make them not hurt anymore. And if you don't want it, for Anya."

Stellan raised his brows.

"I only told Nisha. I know she won't tell anyone."

He stared at the little pot of cream. Then he put one finger in it and spread it over the scars on his opposite hand. After a second, a surprised smile came over his face. "It feels-" He shivered. "Strange. Tingly." He pushed experimentally on the scars and looked even more surprised. "Different. I think it might be working."

He put the cap back on the cream and stuck it in his pocket, then looked up at me with the same tormented look he'd had on his face a few times over the last day.

"Birthday girl! Where are you?" Luc called.

Stellan smiled ruefully down at his candle. "Shall we?"

We followed the tinny music and the laughter into a new gallery. Stellan's hand brushed mine. I looked down at it. So did he. Our fingers slid together.

I let out a low breath. This was not just secret kissing. This was a declaration that, at least for tonight, it was more. And that neither of us was making a secret of wanting that.

Still, I glanced self-consciously at our hands, then in the direction of our friends. One, specifically.

"Jack knows," Stellan said.

I wasn't even surprised that he'd understood. "Are you sure?"

He shrugged. "I told him. It would have been bad manners not to."

I couldn't help a small, desperate laugh at that. "You told him what?"



       
         
       
        

"Well, I didn't go into detail . . ."

I elbowed him, and he grinned. "I told him that . . . I like you."

I wasn't sure how I could be thinking so much about dying and still have this kind of giddy smile keep creeping onto my face. "Oh," I said. "Okay, then." I linked my fingers more tightly through his as we walked under the portraits of stern-looking men and women gazing down at us from the walls.

It turned out our friends paid no attention to us at all. Everyone's candles were on the floor. Luc and Rocco and Jack all had their tuxedo jackets off, and the three girls were sitting on them like sleds.

"À vos marques," Luc said, crouching like he was at the starting line of a race and gripping the arms of his jacket, "prêts, partez!" They took off, the boys pulling the girls, dress shoes echoing on hardwood floors. Colette fell off Rocco's jacket immediately, collapsing in a laughing heap on the hardwood. Elodie's and Luc's feet got tangled up, and Luc yelled as they fell.

"We win!" Nisha exclaimed. She leapt up before Jack had even stopped, and tackled him in a hug. He picked her up and twirled her around with a grin that made me think of all the time Jack had spent getting briefings from the scientists the past couple days, and wonder, just for a second, whether there was something going on there I hadn't seen. I squinted behind them. "Is that the Mona Lisa?"

"It is," Stellan said. I let go of his hand and ran across the room, sliding in my slippers on the hardwood. Don't think about the fact that this might be the only time you'll see it, I told myself.

"It's so small!" I said.

Elodie stood beside me, crossing her arms and squinting at Mona's enigmatic smile. "At least you get to see it up close, without six thousand people taking selfies in front of it."

"Ugh." Luc came up behind me. "It's so boring, and so terribly overhyped. That's the valuable one." He gestured over his shoulder at a painting on the opposite wall that must have been twenty feet tall. "It's a portrait of the Circle from centuries ago. We made up that the Mona Lisa mattered so no one would ever make a move against the one we care about."

This was something almost no one in the world knew. Almost no one in the world had run around the Louvre at night, or flown in a private jet all over the world. Whatever else the Circle had done to my life, I'd also gotten to do some amazing things.