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“Grounders in Arkadia,” Raven says. “Pinch me, I’m dreaming.”
Bellamy doesn’t look away from the crowd. “Sure you’re not having a nightmare?”
“Someone’s not feeling the spirit of unity,” Raven says over the rim of her cup. “It’s not so bad. Nobody’s gotten killed yet.”
She’s right, it’s not so bad; it’s uncomfortable, and there’s an obvious divide between Skaikru and everyone else, but nobody’s gotten killed yet. The twelve clans have all sent delegations, but they’ve each been keeping to themselves—aside, of course, from Trikru. His sister has already walked off with Lincoln, Kane seems locked in conversation with Indra, and Clarke sits at the right hand of the Commander, speaking intently. There’s no such closeness with anyone from the other eleven clans scattered around the bonfire in the center of Arkadia.
Alcohol has begun to flow, though, which tends to help. Until it doesn’t.
“It’s fine,” Bellamy says, looking away from Trikru. “I’ll be glad when it’s over.”
Raven follows his gaze. “That’s the Ice Nation king, isn’t it?” she asks. “The one with the—”
“Scars,” Bellamy says. “Yeah.”
The Ice Nation brought the largest delegation—at least twenty warriors and courtiers to the king. Undoubtedly a show of might, although Bellamy knows they’re not stupid enough to have left their own lands unled or undefended. Not with Echo’s brains powering the operation, at least. With Roan in charge—things could really go either way.
The king is standing across the bonfire from Raven and Bellamy, his warriors milling about behind him. Echo is at his shoulder, as usual. As Bellamy watches, she leans in to murmur something at length in his ear. Roan responds, and Echo pulls away, a smirk tugging at the corner of her full mouth.
Raucous laughter startles Bellamy, and he looks away from the Ice Nation delegation; Monty and Miller are arm-wrestling at a table nearby, and Miller has just won handily. Bellamy overhears Harper tell him, “Not so fast. Winner’s up against me.”
“You know, I never asked,” Raven says idly, “but how was the Ice Nation trip?”
Bellamy glances at her. That’s been nearly six weeks ago now, and he hasn’t had much cause to speak of it since. He was certainly glad when that was over. “Fine,” he says. “Why?”
Raven raises her eyebrows at him. “Glad it wasn’t me sleeping with the enemy, that’s all,” she says. “Guess they’re not our enemy, though.”
She gestures briskly to his cup with her own. “You need another top-off?”
He is getting low, but he’s not going to make Raven get him a refill. “I got it. Give me yours.”
Raven rolls her eyes and snatches his cup. “You’re no gentleman, can’t fool me,” she says. “Besides, you need to get liquored up. You’re brooding, Blake.”
Bellamy pulls a face at her, but she just shrugs and walks off in the direction of the kegs. Monty, red-faced and locked in fervent conversation with Miller, Jasper, and Harper, spots her as she approaches and calls, “Raven, wait, come here and tell them, tell them—”
Bellamy smiles at this despite himself, but he can’t help but glance across the clearing again. Roan has moved away from the bonfire to talk to a couple of his warriors. Echo is nowhere in sight.
Bellamy looks reflexively towards the kegs, but she’s not there either. He shakes the thought off and stuffs his hands into his pockets, uneasy at having them unoccupied. He’s a step ahead of Raven, for once—he’s been doing his damnedest to get liquored up since the summit ended. All that’s done is make him feel even less social.
The summit was fine, uneventful—Bellamy was only in the meeting as a guest, of course, though that’s more than can be said for the meetings he’s been brought to in Polis. He’s little more than a bodyguard there.
There was no reason for him to go on the trip to Troy, either, other than to be a bodyguard—but Kane and Clarke weren’t even particularly worried about their safety on that trip, just that they might do something to offend. The Ice Nation, a bit laughably, does seem to be particularly easy to offend.
We need you there, Clarke told him two months ago. Roan’s easy. You’ll do better with Echo, though; that’s the important part. Besides—you were invited.
Bellamy looks after Raven again, but she hasn’t even made it to the keg, still waylaid by Monty and the others. Bellamy sighs and shifts his weight to follow after her, then stops when someone behind him says, “Bellamy.”
He turns, startled. Echo stands a few feet away, watching him with her eyebrows slightly raised. “How are you?” she asks.
Bellamy blinks at her. “Fine,” he says. “Is there something I can help you with?”
Echo narrows her eyes slightly; perhaps he’s come off more rudely than he intended. He did intend to be a little rude, though.
She’s holding a cup close to her chest. “Keg’s that way,” he says, tilting his head in the direction Raven went. “If you’re looking for it.”
She purses her lips slightly. “I don’t know how any of you can stand this swill.”
Bellamy makes a wry face. “Well, it goes down easier the more you drink.”
“I haven’t drunk enough, then,” she says, arching one dark, shapely brow. The orange glow of the fire suits her; she’s not far enough away that Bellamy can’t see the reflection of the light glittering in her eyes. “There is something you can help me with. One of our party is gone; I was hoping you could help me look. You know these woods better than I do, of course.”
Bellamy raises his eyebrows. “Do you think something’s happened? I can round some people up.”
“No,” Echo says. “He’s just big, and drunk, and it may take the both of us to haul him in.”
Bellamy inhales. His annoyance—or perhaps his hesitance—must be plain to read, because Echo nods once as though he’s spoken. “Forget it,” she says, starting to turn away. “I’ll do it myself.”
“No,” Bellamy says quickly, loathing himself. “The woods—you shouldn’t go alone.”
She scoffs. “I’ve braved worse.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Bellamy says dryly. “Relax. Let me get a flashlight and we’ll go.”
She looks at him for a beat, her expression strangely inscrutable, then nods. “I’ll meet you at the gate.”
She slips off into the darkness away from the crowd before he has a chance to say anything else, so he has no choice but to hurry off to fetch a spare flashlight and meet her at the gate. It’s guarded, of course, but not especially well tonight; nobody even acknowledges Bellamy when he approaches, and he can smell moonshine on the breeze.
Echo is lurking just outside, illuminated by the flickering electric light closest to the gate. She’s discarded her cup and is standing with her hands folded neatly in front of her, pale where they stick out from the fur cuffs at the end of her sleeves.
“Where d’you think he might’ve gone?” Bellamy asks.
“No idea,” Echo says. “We should check the perimeter first—he might have had the good sense to stay close.”
She gestures to the east, and Bellamy nods. They set off, keeping close to the fence; Bellamy turns on the flashlight and aims its high-powered beam at the trees. “You don’t sound optimistic,” Bellamy says. “About his good sense.”
She gives a little moue. “If you knew him, you wouldn’t be, either.”
“How long’s he been gone?”
“Not too long,” she says, her eyes on the tree line. “He can’t have gotten far.”
“What’s his name?” Bellamy asks. “We should call out for him.”
“Ticus,” Echo says. “Yes, we should.”
They walk a ways further, calling out Ticus’s name periodically. Nothing stirs near the trees save for a pair of startled deer, and they don’t immediately come across anybody along the fence.
After a minute, Echo says, “I have to admit, I never thought I’d be here. Certainly not for a summit.”
Bellamy glances at her; her eyes are forward, not scanning the area as they were before. “How long’s it gonna be before your people get used to mine being a part of the coalition?”
The last cup he drank has hit him; his blood has grown warm, overheating him slightly despite the fairly leisurely pace they’ve adopted. It’s shortened his temper, too—well, that and his circumstances. He can’t help but be on edge, taking a walk with Echo. Another walk with Echo.
Echo huffs as though amused. “My people still aren’t used to being part of the coalition,” she says.
“Well, your king is putting on a pretty good show of diplomacy,” Bellamy says. “I’ve been an esteemed guest of the Ice Nation, remember?”
He doesn’t want to talk about the Ice Nation trip; he shouldn’t have brought it up, even hintingly. Echo doesn’t falter, though—of course not. In all the months they’ve known each other, through all the diplomatic meetings he tagged along to and all the bullshit negotiations it took with Lexa and Roan and everyone else to ensure the coalition didn’t tear apart at the fucking seams and doom them all—through all of it, she’s never faltered.
He knows she’s capable of weakness, though; he remembers the Mountain. Too well, sometimes.
“Yes, you have,” Echo says. “And it is an honor. There have never been outsiders in Troy.”
Bellamy rolls his eyes. “I’m flattered.”
“You should be,” Echo says emphatically, glancing at him before turning her gaze forward again. “The king was pleased with the trip.”
“Well,” Bellamy says, “if it pleased the king.”
Still, Echo doesn’t flinch. Bellamy could swear. “Are you sure this guy’s out here?” he asks, shaking the flashlight slightly so that the beam flickers over the trees. “Could he have gone somewhere else?”
He’s not enthused about the idea of a lone Azgeda warrior wandering around Arkadia—calls to mind unpleasant memories. It occurs to him suddenly that he probably should’ve told someone what he was up to before he left.
“He’s out here,” Echo says, quickening her pace slightly. “We’ll find him sooner if you hurry up.”
They’d walked slowly, that night in Troy, as Echo took him to see their forge—it was the most impressive, she'd said, of any in the twelve clans. He didn’t give a damn about a forge. He was warm-blooded then, too, from spiced wine at dinner—it was much too easy to drink, leaving them all flushed and relaxed, more relaxed than Bellamy could’ve ever predicted given the circumstances. Echo’s breath smelled of cinnamon, that night.
They walk on. They’ve gotten far enough from the activity in Arkadia that things have gone quiet—they’re near the residential quarters. The tree line is closer to the fence back here, the forest denser. Crickets chirp in the trees.
“Your people have done well,” Echo says after a few moments. Their pace has slowed again; there doesn’t seem to be much point in hurrying, considering this is probably a fool’s errand. “With your village.”
“I didn’t come out here for small talk,” Bellamy says.
“Then why did you come out here?” Echo asks, her tone sharpening slightly. “You could’ve let me do this alone.”
He knows exactly why he didn’t let her do this alone. Firstly, because he shouldn’t trust her, and secondly, because there are still dangerous things in these woods. “You wanna get eaten by a wildcat, be my guest.”
“I’m armed,” Echo says.
So is he. “Of course you are.”
When he glances at her, she’s almost smiling—but it’s a strange, thin sort of grimace, not the catlike smirk she sometimes favors people with. He’s been on the receiving end of that one before, on the rare occasions he’s spoken up in a meeting and during the days they spent in Troy. “The worst things in these woods are long gone now, anyway.”
He doesn’t want to think about the Reapers. Almost on cue, though, something shifts at the edge of the forest, rustling in the foliage; Bellamy aims the flashlight at the brush about ten feet away and grabs, without thinking, for her arm. “There.”
“It’s nothing,” Echo says as they jolt to a stop.
“Your weapon,” Bellamy says, “you should—”
Something small bolts from under a bush, scuttering deeper into the forest—a raccoon, by the look of its striped tail. “I told you,” Echo says, “there’s nothing out here.”
Bellamy swallows a burst of embarrassment and lets go of her arm. Then it hits him.
He turns to face her, letting the flashlight aim downwards, so that the light bounces upwards from the ground and illuminates her from below. “Your man’s not out here.”
Echo meets his gaze evenly. “He could be.”
“He isn’t,” Bellamy says. “I was watching your warriors before. I didn’t see any of them wander off.”
Echo raises her eyebrows almost innocently. “Was it them you were watching?”
Bellamy grits his teeth; he has to resist the urge to gnash them at her like an animal caught in a trap. “So, what is this, then?” he asks. “You taking me on another wild goose chase?”
Echo’s jaw clenches. Bellamy thinks he might know what she wants to say—that she saved his life, and Octavia’s, too, all those months ago. She has to know how hollow that defense would ring, even now, when they’re supposed to be allies.
Or maybe she’s thinking of the last time she took him on a walk. Doubtful. She clearly isn’t as affected by it as he is. Not enough to be uncomfortable now, at least.
“I don’t want you to be—angry with me,” she says. She glowers at him as though he’s forced this out of her. “That’s all.”
“So you lied to me,” Bellamy says. “Great plan.”
“Would you have agreed to come, otherwise?”
“There’s no reason for me to have come,” Bellamy says, exasperated. “What are we supposed to be doing out here? Talking?”
There’s nothing to talk about, she’d told him six weeks ago. This is the way things are.
Her tone was cruel then, deliberately so. Bellamy tries to mimic it now. “You should go talk to your king, Echo. He’s probably missing you already.”
He sees her register this, analyze it, and recognize the insult in the matter of an instant; she blinks once, maybe in shock, and then her brow furrows as rage sets in. “You dare—”
He dares; he shouldn’t, but he does. It’s petty, juvenile, and almost certainly unfair, but Bellamy no longer claims to be above such things. He watches her fumble for words and for a split second feels like he’s won the world’s shittiest prize—but a prize nonetheless.
She can switch on a dime, he’ll give her that. Her tone goes cold, the fury iced out of it. “I think you’d forgive my show of pride much more easily if I hadn’t wounded yours,” she says. “What about you, Bellamy? You have your Sky women. Your pretty friend. But you kissed me.”
He swallows hard. So he did; no amount of petty, vindictive cruelty will change that. He was fool enough to think, when her gaze dropped to his mouth that last night in Troy, that she wanted him to kiss her. He let himself relax; he let himself think all the lingering looks she’d ever given him, in corridors and meetings, meant something—that she wanted him. Maybe even that she cared for him.
But Echo has never cared for him, that much is painfully clear, at least not in any way other than that she felt she owed him a debt—a debt he supposes she’s repaid, however poorly. Bellamy has spent the last six weeks being cruel to himself, cursing himself for thinking of her, of all people, absolutely loathing the part of himself that burns for her with anything other than hate. If he’s being honest with himself, that part of him has been burning for far longer than six weeks.
“You said nothing could happen between us,” Bellamy says flatly. “I apologized. That’s the end of it, isn’t it, so why am I here?”
She didn’t just say nothing could happen; she dug her thumb into the wound. You have me mistaken. I could never, she’d said, her expression hard. Not with Skaikru. Not with you.
Bellamy turns to walk back the way they came, hardly caring whether she follows; man or no man, woods or no woods, Echo can take care of herself.
She surprises him by catching his elbow and tugging him to a halt, forcing him to turn to look back at her. Lit by the flickering blue light from the fence above and the flashlight’s eerie glow from below, a strange fervency comes over Echo’s expression. “Don’t you see,” she says. “I was trying to make you hate me again.”
Bellamy scoffs. “What makes you think I ever stopped?”
“You were beginning to.”
Bellamy rolls his eyes. He ought to wrench free of her grip, but he doesn’t. She might actually let him go this time. “You read minds now?”
“You are insufferable,” she says, her voice rising, startling him slightly. As if registering his minute reaction, she loosens her grip on his arm. Her tone goes brittle, her mouth thin. “You shouldn’t have kissed me, you fool.”
“Let go of me,” Bellamy says, “if you’re just going to insult me—”
“It’s insufferable,” Echo says, softer now. “I think about you all the time.”
She pulls him in by her grip on his forearm; he has enough time to stop her, stop this, but he doesn’t. Their lips crash together, teeth clicking painfully, and Echo hisses softly and then opens her mouth wider for his tongue. Tonight she tastes like moonshine, or maybe that’s him—he doesn’t care one way or the other.
Bellamy drops the flashlight and takes her by the waist; she allows it, nipping at his bottom lip too lightly, almost playfully. He wants it harder; if she’s going to do it, he’d rather she fucking do it.
In that spirit, he’s not exactly gentle when he starts herding her backwards. She gasps softly when her back hits a tree trunk, but she doesn’t seem displeased as she clutches at his back and shoulders to pull him in tighter. Still, he breaks away from her mouth to ask, “Okay?”
“Shut up,” she says, sounding breathless. Her mouth looks full and dark in the dimness, ripe. “I mean—yes, fine.”
It feels strange, passing up the only opportunity he might ever get to feel superior to her with her so obviously flustered, but the flush of warmth that rolls over him is heady, all-consuming. “Take this off,” he says, tugging at her coat.
She does, fumbling it off clumsily while pinned to the tree, and kisses him again. He slides a hand up her shirt, letting it span the flat of her belly, testing the waters; she doesn’t protest, and he palms at her breast next. It’s uncoordinated and sloppy—he’d never treat a girl like this ordinarily, at least not unless she asked, but Echo only arches into the touch.
He pinches her nipple lightly and she lets out a startled little gasp, then breaks the kiss to say, “Now yours, take it off—”
He moves his hand to more easily shed his own jacket, then lets her yank his shirt off over his head. The cool air feels good on his bare back, like a balm on tender skin. Her eyes are dark, black as coal in the low light; he can’t make out the finer details of her expression, but her ragged breathing tells him enough.
She lets him undo the knot of her pants next, kissing at his jaw while he slides a hand down the front. The nearness of her mouth to his ear means he can hear the little whimpers she can’t quite suppress as he touches her. Bellamy feels half-wild for the sounds, gone feral like an animal in the fucking woods, but he keeps his touch gentle when his thumb finds her clit. Injuring her isn’t his intent, although he doesn’t think she’ll mind if it hurts a little.
He must find a decent rhythm by accident, because she digs her nails into his shoulders, her exhales pitching higher. “Bellamy,” she says.
“Can I fuck you?” he asks. “Please.”
“Yes,” she says immediately, her hands already slipping between their bodies to fumble with his belt.
It would be easier to turn her around, fuck her from behind, but it seems that’s not what either of them wants. He tries to help her undress, fumbling at her pants as she steps out of her boots, but she lets out a little snarl of frustration and swats at his hands, so he rucks his own pants down to mid-thigh instead.
He grabs at her ass, then at the back of her thighs, and is gratified at the undignified gasp she lets out when he hoists her up. She’s not especially heavy, and she instinctively locks her thighs around him to bear some of her own weight, but he quickly pins her back against the tree for support. Her chest is heaving slightly, as though she’s out of breath; he feels it, too, moving in a mad, breathless rush as he fumbles to get the angle right so he can thrust into her.
Echo clenches around him, clutching at his shoulders again with desperate hands, and he holds still. Without quite meaning to, he’s hidden his face in her neck; she’s tall enough that her head is slightly above his own with him holding her up by the thighs like this. She smells good, earthy like pine and smoke and herbal soap. He kisses her throat, resisting the vague urge to sink his teeth in as she relaxes by degrees, letting her hands come to gently cradle his head and neck.
“Bellamy,” she says after a few moments, shifting restlessly. Her thighs are tensed on either side of his hips, holding him in tight. She gives the back of his neck a squeeze.
He snaps his hips once and she lets out a shivery noise, like a growl. “Yes,” she says, almost vicious in her delight, “do it.”
It’s clumsy, a bit ungainly—even with her pressed against the tree, his hamstrings are burning soon enough. Echo doesn’t seem to mind; each sharp thrust knocks a little moan out of her, a punched-out sort of noise that Bellamy’s pretty sure will haunt him. He wants her to come. He can’t let go of her thighs to do it himself, so he growls against her breastbone, “Touch yourself, c’mon.”
She obligingly worms a hand between their bodies; he groans softly at the fumbling touch between them, and she lets out a soft moan in response. He feels like he has no other purpose but to keep fucking her, to hold her up against this tree forever. He mouths deliriously at the sharp point of her collarbone and wants to be subsumed.
She tightens around him, shivering as she comes. Now he feels it, too, the beginning of the plummet, a hook catching in his gut.
“You gotta let go of me,” he mumbles against her breastbone, “I’ll come—”
She moans softly, almost as if in despair, and that very nearly does it, but she relaxes her thighs, letting him ease out of her. The blind brush of her hand is enough; he groans, too loud, muffling the sound in the crook of her shoulder as her hand on the back of his neck keeps him from shaking apart.
He holds her there for a few moments longer, until he realizes he’s pressed so tightly against her that he can feel her ribcage shifting as she breathes in and out. She seems unbothered by the pressure; her fingers brush idly through the hair at the nape of his neck. He inhales deeply, steadying himself on the smell of woodsmoke and warm skin, before he relaxes his hold on her and lifts his head.
She drops her legs to the ground slowly, almost stiffly, and exhales at the same time he does. They don’t speak; he looks into her eyes for a moment, studying the shape of them, the whites and the dark irises and indistinguishable pupils, before he looks away.
Bellamy feels off-kilter, vaguely disoriented, but he feels like he needs more to drink, not less. Echo’s movements are quick, efficient. She’s dressed by the time Bellamy has located his shirt, the dark fabric hidden on the leaf-littered ground until he remembers the damn flashlight.
“We should go,” she says, once he’s put himself to rights. “I’ll be missed.”
“Yeah,” Bellamy says, meeting her eyes again. “I’m sure you will.”
Her eyes narrow slightly as she searches for the insult in this, but there’s none to be found, at least not right now. Next time he sees her, he’ll have to try harder. But he could be missed soon, too, especially if anyone realized who he left with; he sets off back in the direction they came, trusting Echo to follow.
They’re nearly in sight of the gate when Echo grabs at his wrist to still him. “Me first,” she says, not quite looking square at him. “Follow behind. Discreetly.”
“Yeah, I get it,” Bellamy says.
Now she does meet his eyes, her brows drawing together slightly. He thinks of that night in Troy again, of how he stood there, discombobulated by what he’d done, stunned even worse by the way he felt at being rebuffed. Echo’s look now is similar to what it was then—half-pitying and half-something else. He can delude himself into thinking it’s remorse in her eyes.
He wonders if she’s going to say something, but she doesn’t. She seems to marshal herself; she nods once, curt, then lets go of his wrist. He watches her walk away until she disappears around the curve of the fence.
He gives her about five minutes, though it’s agony, standing there with nothing to do and nothing to think of but her. He can hear the murmur of voices inside the fence, the party—if it could be called that—somehow still going on.
Someone is lurking just inside the gate when Bellamy walks through; he barely manages not to startle when he realizes it’s not another one of the guards. It’s King Roan, sipping idly from a metal cup, one arm crossed over his broad chest. Bellamy nods by way of a greeting and keeps moving, but Roan stops him with his name.
“Seen Echo anywhere?” he asks.
“No,” Bellamy says. “Why?”
“She went looking for one of our men,” Roan says. “He came back. She hasn’t.”
Bellamy licks his lips and thinks of cinnamon. “Well,” he says. “She’ll turn up.”
“She always does,” Roan says, smiling in that same thin, smug way Echo has sometimes. “Say, have you seen your friend anywhere? The girl, dark-haired.”
Bellamy shoots him a look, and feels the Ice King’s smirk firm like a hand on his back as he walks away.