Ocean's Echo (The Resolution Universe)

by Everina Maxwell

Tennalhin Halkana arrived at the party fashionably late, which might have meant something if he’d been invited in the first place.

Tennal had found there were very few things you couldn’t do if you didn’t care about fucking up. Tennal was low on money, low on options, and didn’t have a lot left to lose.

Surit dealt with uncertainty by making lists in his head. He started another one.

He’d thought he was in trouble when Tennal had been a ranker on the Fractal Note. Surit hadn’t been able to look away from the controlled chaos then, and he hadn’t realized just how much that was Tennal being discreet. Now Tennal had a hundred places to channel his energy and Surit couldn’t look away. They were working together, they were rooming together, and every time he turned around, there was Tennal—unpredictable and razor-edged, crackling like the end of a live wire. Surit worked in a universe of fixed possibilities. Tennal was a chaos event. Surit was drawn to it like a gravity well.

Surit knew his own tendencies, which had nothing to do with gender and everything to do with people who were lightning strikes on dead land.

“We have solved your situation for you,” Tennal announced grandly. “You haven’t!” Zin said. “You absolutely haven’t!” “We have fucked up the situation,” Tennal amended, just as grandly, “in a new and interesting way.”