Mercury didn’t look at me when I got in.

Just sat there with her hands in her lap and her eyes on the dashboard, holding herself in the specific way of someone who has put their feelings somewhere manageable and is concentrating on keeping them there.

I sat beside her and said nothing.

The old car ticked softly as the engine cooled, each faint metallic click vibrating through the chassis and into my seat. Outside, the plain’s silence pressed heavily against the windows, thick, complete, and watchful.

"He was funny," Mercury’s voice broke the quiet first, low and steady. "Did you notice that? He was genuinely funny."

"Yes," I said. "He was."

"Forty minutes." She let out a short, humorless laugh. "I haven’t connected with anyone that easily in years. That’s ridiculous."

"Yes it is," I said.

She turned and looked at me for the first time since I’d gotten in. Her eyes were dry. Mercury didn’t seem like someone who cried easily. She seemed like someone who felt things fully and then figured out what to do with them.

"You saw it, didn’t you," she asked.

"Yes," I said.

She nodded. Not angry. Just confirming something she had suspected.

"Who did it?"

I looked at the windshield. "Code."

She was quiet for a long moment.

"I think it was Sinn." She confirmed what was exactly in my mind. "It was definitely Sinn’s instructions."

"I think so."

"I’ve driven that man for two years," she whispered, shaking her head. "Two years. And he left us there like we were nothing."

"He did."

"Of course he did," she repeated, almost to herself. The betrayal sat heavier on her than Major’s death.

I stayed silent, letting her turn it over.

"Are we going to make it back?" she asked, direct and unflinching.

"Yes," I said.

She studied my face, searching for any crack in the certainty.

"You don’t know that," she said.

"No," I admitted. "But I intend for it to be true."

Something shifted in her face. She turned toward me, the shift in her body sent a faint wave of warmer air across the small gap between us. Her eyes carried the weight of everything she wasn’t letting spill out.

She studied me for a long moment, then leaned across the console. The gearshift pressed against her thigh as she closed the distance. Her hand found the back of my neck first, warm, deliberate pressure, fingers sliding up into the short hair there like she was anchoring herself. Then her lips met mine.

The kiss was slow and intentional, almost careful at first, as if she were testing whether this was allowed.

Her mouth was soft but carried a quiet hunger beneath it. I tasted the faint salt of dried sweat on her upper lip and something sweeter, maybe the remnants of the coffee we’d shared hours earlier at Major’s place.

When I slid my hand to the back of her neck in return, her skin was fever-warm under my palm, the fine hairs at her nape damp. She made a small sound in her throat, half sigh, half surrender, and the kiss deepened for a few heartbeats, less practiced, more real.

For those seconds the rest of the world disappeared. No Sinn. No Major bleeding out in the guest section. Just the wet sound of mouths, the creak of old leather, and the sudden, startling need to pull her closer. I hadn’t realized how badly I wanted this too.

The car’s interior felt smaller, the air thicker. Outside, the plain’s silence pressed harder against the windows, making the wet sound of our mouths and the faint creak of the bench seat feel impossibly loud.

When she pulled back, her forehead rested against mine. The point of contact was warm and slightly damp. Her breath brushed across my lips, uneven now. I could feel the rapid flutter of her pulse under my fingers. For a moment neither of us moved.

Then she glanced down, becoming aware of how far her skirt had ridden up her thigh during the lean. She tugged the hem down with one hand, smoothing it back over her skin in a single, unhurried motion. The quiet rustle of fabric was strangely loud in the still car.

"Just needed that," she said quietly, voice a little rougher than before. "Really needed that."

The words carried warm air against my skin.

"I know," I said. My own voice came out lower than I expected.

She didn’t move away immediately. Her thumb brushed once along the side of my neck, almost absentmindedly, before she settled back into her seat.

The leather creaked under her weight, and the warm air between us cooled slightly. Her right-hand returned to the steering wheel, gripping it with steady pressure. The posture radiated a reset tension I could feel radiating from her body beside me.

"So," she said, finding her voice again. "The Fallen City."

"The Fallen City," I said.

"It’d be a miracle to reach it in this car."

"Yes. We’ll need divine intervention."

She was quiet for a second. Then she straightened up, both hands back on the wheel even though we weren’t moving yet, the posture of someone who has finished one thing and is beginning another.

"Okay," she said. "Then let’s not waste the night."

"We need to rest tonight," I told her. "We start moving at first light. The journey’s going to be brutal if we want any chance of reaching the city and getting back to the walls."

She nodded once, then looked over at Jenn’s silhouette still sitting on the bonnet.

"Poor girl," Mercury murmured.

The stars sat overhead the way they had for twenty years of my life. Indifferent. The plain stretched ahead the same way. Whatever was waiting in the Fallen City wasn’t going to be moved by our planning.

And inside the car, two people who had just been abandoned by their own sat quietly together, already turning their minds toward the next impossible stretch of road.