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Leon smirked. “I thought you needed food.”
“I need that after.”
“Food first.” Leon shook his head with a smile, then squeezed his hand. “And then I want to talk to you about something.”
Sebastian’s heart spasmed in his chest. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I said food first.”
“Yeah, but we’re not at food yet, so we might as well talk.”
“We’re at food now.” Leon ducked into an empty doorway, and as soon as Sebastian followed him, a cacophony of scents hit his nose.
His mouth watered instantly. “Oh, I’ve missed Carta.”
Leon glanced over his shoulder at him as they took their places in line. The low-slung building had evidently been turned into a Resistance mess hall, except with food a thousand times more fragrant. “You’ve been here before?”
“A couple times before I joined the Resistance.” Sebastian eagerly held out his bowl for the thick stew the portly man on the other side of the counter dished out, and the portly man smiled at his eagerness. “Those were to the capital city though—Isum. It’s very different there.”
“I haven’t been yet.” Leon grabbed a piece of the flatbread at the end of the table, then shoved two into Sebastian’s bowl. Sebastian raised an eyebrow at him—it wasn’t like he was malnourished—but didn’t argue.
“You should probably wait until your name is cleared before you start going where the authorities are,” Sebastian said as he followed Leon back outside, both cradling their warm bowls. The refugee camps that spilled for miles and miles out from around the cities of Carta had been all but given up to gangs, cartels, and vigilantes, but the cities themselves had an extremely vigilant and aggressive police force.
“Yeah, that was my thinking,” Leon chuckled and took a bite of his bread as he walked. He seemed to know where he was going, so Sebastian just kept following.
“Out here is prettier anyway.” Sebastian followed suit and munched on his bread as he walked. As soon as he took the first bite, his stomach roared its hunger, and he spoke through his mouthfuls. “You have all the water.”
“Exactly.” Leon led him up a quick flight of stairs on the side of a building and stopped at the top. Stepping aside, he turned and smiled at Sebastian with a strangely proud look in his eyes.
Sebastian cocked his head and followed Leon up to the roof of the low building, then stilled when he realized what Leon was so eager to show him.
The setting sun blazed before them and reflected off the numerous canals surrounding the camp’s flat islands like so many rivers of fire. In the distance, past the scattering of islands, the sea stretched out toward the sun and melted into the orange and pink of the sky.
“Is it this beautiful everywhere in Carta?” Leon asked quietly, and Sebastian glanced at him to see him riveted to the scene.
Sebastian’s heart melted in his chest. Had Leon ever before let himself stop to appreciate something lovely?
“Everywhere I’ve seen.” Sebastian nodded and swayed closer to stand close enough for their thighs to touch. He thought he felt an earpiece-shaped lump in Leon’s pocket but didn’t ask about it. He shoveled more delicious food in his mouth as they watched the sun dip lower and lower toward the horizon. “Had you never been here?”
“No.” Leon shook his head. “I’d never been off Tava.”
“Really?” Sebastian’s eyebrows shot up.
“Nope. Never had any reason to.”
“And there were too many more important things to do, I imagine.” Sebastian rolled his eyes as he remembered their conversation in the tunnels when Sebastian had been in Leon’s head.
“Yes, there were, actually.” Leon laughed that beautiful, open laugh that he never did enough of, and Sebastian gazed at him, blind to the sunset.
They stood in silence as the sky morphed from reds, to oranges, and to pinks. Leon seemed to have forgotten his food, and as Sebastian got down to his last quarter, he eyed the full bowl. He used his last scrap of bread just as the sun finally slipped under the horizon. Leon glanced at him, huffed a laugh, then passed him his bowl.
“Yes! Thank you.” Sebastian took it and dunked Leon’s leftover half a crust of bread into the still-warm stew. “So you wanted to talk about something? Is it that busted earpiece you keep in your pocket?”
Leon’s shoulders hunched up, and the tops of his ears turned red. “How did you know about that?”
“Little birdie told me.” Sebastian grinned so hard his cheeks hurt. He dug an elbow into Leon’s ribs. “See, now that’s romantic.”
Leon scoffed and knocked Sebastian’s elbow away with his own. “Shut up.”
