The Dazzling Heights

She was maddening and stubborn and tormented and deeply flawed, but so was he; and maybe the important thing wasn’t finding someone without flaws, but just someone whose flaws complemented your own.

But the thing about the truth was that once you learned it, it became impossible to unlearn.

All of them preoccupied with their own small worries, clutching at their impossible dreams.

You really want to do something for me?” Eris said suddenly, her lovely face turned up to the sun. She closed her eyes. Her lashes fell in thick brushstrokes across her cheeks. “Live, Avery. With or without Atlas, here in New York or on the damned moon, I don’t care. Just live, and be happy, since I can’t. Promise me that.

A smile played around her lips, as if she knew a million secrets that no one could ever guess, which she probably did.

Rich girls never left something expensive on the ground, unless they’d been the one to toss it there.

It was late now; so late that it could once again be called early—that surreal, enchanted, twilight hour between the end of a party and the unfurling of a new day. The hour when reality grows dim and hazy at the edges, when nearly anything seems possible.

What a damn shame, to have the best views in the world, only to cover your walls with mirrors and brocade curtains.

Leda was very still, and very small, as Watt slid into the bed and curled around her. He listened to the ragged rise and fall of her breath. There was an excited nervousness spiking up and down her body, and Watt knew that he was the cause of it, and he realized he was glad. She turned around to face him, so they were both lying on their sides, twin silhouettes in the darkness. The only thing that separated them was a shaft of moonlight slicing through the open window. Still, Watt waited.

For an impossibly brief instant, Avery was in the dark while Atlas seemed illuminated from behind—light streaming around him, gilding the edges of his form, making him into something almost otherworldly. It seemed suddenly impossible that he was real, and here, and hers. And in truth, it was impossible. Everything about their relationship kept proving impossible at every turn, yet somehow they had willed it into being.

Lust was so delightfully uncomplicated and straightforward, while female friendships were inevitably layered with conditions, and history, and unspoken rules of behavior.

Watt let his gaze drift to the trees nearby, genetically engineered to grow dozens of fruits on the same branch. An oversized lemon hung next to bunches of cherries, alongside a row of pinecones.

She’d stayed home instead with Chrissa, and the two of them had eaten frozen lasagna and watched a few episodes of some old holo about a girl in love with a boy, except that their families were enemies. Chrissa had sighed over their relationship, but something about it—maybe the forbidden, impossible love thing—had irritated Rylin.

Today,” he said simply. “Which will only last until tomorrow, and then tomorrow will be the best day. Because every day with you is better than the one before.

You want to know how I’m feeling? Leda thought furiously. For starters, she’d been betrayed by her best friend and the only boy she’d ever really cared about, the boy she’d lost her virginity to. Now the two of them were together even though they were adopted siblings. On top of that, she’d caught her dad cheating on her mom with one of her classmates—Leda couldn’t bring herself to call Eris a friend. Oh, and then Eris had died, because Leda had accidentally pushed her from the roof of the Tower. “I’m fine,” she said briskly.

quizá lo más importante no fuera encontrar a alguien sin fallos, sino a alguien cuyos fallos complementaran los tuyos.

After all, there was no topic of conversation that people enjoyed talking about more than themselves.

She’d never bought into the theory that reliving your painful moments in virtual reality would help you move past them.

She kept looking at the dark stretch of water below them, the bridges spanning the space, dotted with lights. Party guests moved back and forth across in a dance of scattered shadows. She wondered how many of them were with the person they loved tonight—and how many of them were alone, like her.

She couldn’t take it anymore—she flung herself into Atlas’s arms and kissed him, over and over, and this time Atlas returned the kisses, returned them wildly and passionately, and it made Avery’s heart break because she knew deep down that he was kissing her good-bye. She clung tighter to him, pressing her body the whole length of his, trying to hold him so close that he could never leave, as if she might anchor him here through sheer force of will. She wished she could snatch each kiss from the air and tuck it away somewhere safe, because each kiss was one kiss closer to the final kiss of all.

It was all the same, wasn’t it? The same women moving across the terraces in a familiar click of heels, the same men murmuring to one another in low tones about the same things they always discussed, their eyebrows drawn together in the same clichéd expression of concern. It all struck Avery as futile, and purposeless. Here they were, halfway around the world, and yet everyone was stuck in their little loops—engaging in the old tired flirtations, doomed to the same disappointments.

Calliope leaned forward on the vanity, which was littered with gleaming silver beauty wands and powders and a fresh manicolor mitt—all of it arrayed carefully before her, like weapons polished and laid out for battle. Her own lethal tools, which had always made her so dangerously beautiful.

There was nowhere they could go; nowhere that the truth of who they were, the forbiddenness of their love, wouldn’t come chasing them. Maybe love wasn’t enough after all. Not when every last obstacle was arrayed against you, all the odds stacked to make you fail. When the entire world was keeping you apart. “Okay,” Avery said, as the universe quietly rent itself in two.

For the rest of tonight she would be the most sparkling, unattainably gorgeous version of herself, nothing but smiles and flashing eyes—and no one would ever see how hurt she was, beneath it all.

Her arm was outstretched, as though she were reaching for someone she loved, or maybe to ward off some unspoken danger, or maybe even in regret over something she had done. The girl had certainly made enough mistakes in her too-short lifetime. But she couldn’t have known that they would all come crashing down around her tonight. After all, no one goes to a party expecting to die.