JUNE MILLER POV
"Brandt, if you don't step on it, I will literally jump out of this moving vehicle!"
I was halfway out the window again, the wind whipping my seafoam-teal hair into a frenzied nest of knots. The sun was barely a sliver on the horizon, painting the sky in a bruised palette of orange and violet. The wooly mist from the night before was burning off, leaving the city looking sharper, colder, and terrifyingly normal.
"I am stepping on it!" Brandt yelled back, his voice cracking. The engine of his hatchback was making a sound like a blender full of rocks. "But June, the hotel district is on lockdown! Did you see the news? The church... the 'gas leak'... the police are everywhere!"
"I don't care about the police!" I gripped the edge of the door. "I saw them, Brandt. After they saved you and Becky, they didn't just walk away. They looked... tired. Like they were leaving. I felt it in my gut. If I don't find Adam now, he's going to disappear back into whatever castle he came from, and I'll never know if he was real."
"He was real, June," Brandt muttered, touching the dark bruises on his neck. "My throat can testify to that."
We skidded around the corner of the Grand Celeste promenade. My heart was a drum in my chest, beating a frantic rhythm of please-don't-be-gone. I had spent the last two hours at the hospital with Becky, making sure she was stable—which she was, miraculously, according to doctors who couldn't explain how her "severe anemia" had suddenly reversed itself. But the moment she fell asleep, I knew I had to run.
I couldn't let him leave without saying something. Anything.
"There!" I pointed toward the black sedan pulling out of the private underground garage of the Ritz-Valerius. "That's the car! I recognize the tint!"
"June, that could be any billionaire's car," Brandt said, but he swung the steering wheel anyway, the tires screeching as we pulled an illegal U-turn.
The black sedan didn't speed. It moved with a quiet, arrogant grace, weaving through the early morning traffic toward the coastal highway. It was like it didn't belong to the city's frantic pulse. It was its own island.
"Get closer!" I urged.
"I'm trying! It's a literal tank, June! My car is held together by hope and duct tape!"
We trailed them for three blocks, the distance between us widening as the sedan hit the open stretch of the highway. My desperation was reaching a fever pitch. I reached into my backpack and pulled out the only thing I had—a crumpled, neon-pink sticky note and a Sharpie.
I scribbled my number on it in giant, messy digits, adding the words "YOU OWE ME POPCORN" in all caps.
"Brandt, pull up alongside them! Just for a second!"
"Are you insane? We're going sixty miles per hour!"
"DO IT!"
Brandt let out a scream of pure terror and floored the accelerator. The hatchback groaned, shaking violently as we drew level with the sleek, black passenger side of the sedan.
I rolled my window down all the way, the roar of the wind deafening. I could see my reflection in the dark glass of the sedan. I couldn't see him, but I knew he was there. I could feel that warmth again—the Golden Impulse that felt like a summer afternoon.
"ADAM!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. "ADAM! LOOK AT ME!"
For a second, nothing happened. The sedan stayed its course, cold and indifferent. I felt a wave of crushing rejection. Of course he wouldn't look. He was a masterpiece, an angel, a prince. I was just the girl who tackled him in a lobby.
Then, the rear window of the sedan began to slide down.
Slowly. Deliberately.
First, I saw the slate-gray coat. The girl—Eve—was leaning back, her arms crossed, looking at me with an expression of pure, unadulterated amusement. She looked like she was watching a particularly funny circus act.
And then, he shifted into view.
Adam.
He looked different in the daylight. His white shirt was fresh again, crisp and blinding against the morning sun. His hair was perfectly in place. But when his eyes met mine, that gold wasn't cold. It flared. Just a tiny bit. A spark of recognition that made my breath catch in my throat.
He looked startled. Like he couldn't believe I had actually chased him down on a highway in a car that sounded like it was exploding.
"YOU FORGOT THIS!" I yelled, waving the neon-pink sticky note frantically.
I didn't think about the physics. I didn't think about the wind. I just balled the note up around a heavy, star-shaped keychain I'd pulled off my bag and threw it.
It was a terrible throw. It should have been swept away by the drafting wind and lost forever under the wheels of a semi-truck.
But as the star-shaped projectile left my hand, a faint ripple of gold light reached out from the sedan's window. The air seemed to solidify, catching the note in mid-flight and pulling it gently, magnetically, straight into Adam's outstretched hand.
He caught it with the effortless grace of someone who lived in a different reality.
He looked at the crumpled pink ball, then back at me. I could see his lips move. He didn't say it loud enough for me to hear over the wind, but I saw the shape of it.
June.
I gave him a thumbs-up, my face split into a grin so wide it actually hurt. "CALL ME! OR DON'T! JUST DON'T DIE!"
Eve leaned forward then, giving me a two-finger salute and a wink that was both terrifying and cool. She said something to the driver, and the sedan's window began to slide back up.
"June, I have to slow down! The engine is literally smoking!" Brandt wailed.
The hatchback shuddered and began to lose speed. The black sedan didn't accelerate; it just maintained its steady, graceful pace, pulling away from us as we drifted toward the shoulder of the highway.
I watched it go. I watched the sun glint off the rear window until the car was just a black speck against the shimmering horizon of the coast.
"He got it," I whispered, falling back into my seat. "He actually got it."
"You are the most chaotic person I have ever met," Brandt said, pulling the car to a stop and slumping over the steering wheel. "We almost died. I'm pretty sure I have a heart condition now. And you just gave a phone number to a guy who can literally melt buildings with his face."
"He's not going to melt my face, Brandt," I said, clutching my backpack. I felt light. I felt like I was floating. The "wool" of the city was gone, replaced by a crystalline clarity. "He's going to call me."
"And if he doesn't?"
I looked out at the ocean, where the mist was still swirling over the dark water. I thought about the church, the violet vines, and the way Adam had looked when he healed me—like the weight of the world was on his shoulders, but he was willing to carry mine too.
"Then I'll just have to tackle him again," I said.
Brandt groaned and started the car back up, the hatchback limping back toward the city.
I looked at my phone. It was silent. But for the first time in my life, the silence didn't feel lonely. It felt like a countdown.
Somewhere on that highway, a boy with golden eyes was holding a neon-pink note. And in a world of rifts, monsters, and "prodigies," that felt like the biggest miracle of all.