He took my hands and lowered them from my face. “Don’t,” he murmured.
I trembled slightly, hating feeling all the tiny bugs around me.
“They won’t hurt you,” he added, pushing my hands down into my lap. He kept one hand over mine. That single hand was large enough to wrap around both of mine. His hands weren’t as brawny as Sivo’s, but his fingers were long and tapering, blunt-tipped, the nails shorn to the quick.
Suddenly I wasn’t certain what made me more nervous: his touching or a horde of bugs flying around me.
“They’re harmless,” he assured me. “And beautiful.”
He uttered this last word on a breath, so close to my face I could almost imagine he was talking about me and not the firebugs.
Heat crawled up my neck, sweeping over my face and ears. “Easy for you to say. I can’t see them.”
He said nothing for a long moment and I tried not to shudder when I felt the tiny bodies brush my face again.
“They’re like blinking sparks of yellow light all around us . . . around you. It’s magical.”
My chest tightened, sensing his awe. But he was using words I could never understand. He spoke of colors so naturally and easily. “I wish I could see them,” I said. It was the first time I ever wished for sight. The first time I uttered those words.
Frustration welled inside me. I wanted to see what he was seeing. I wanted insight into whatever it was that was making him loosen his tongue and talk to me.
“Wait a moment.” He released my hand and moved away. I curled my fingers inside my palm, trying to ignore how bereft I suddenly felt without him touching me.
There was a slight rustling as he fumbled through his pack. He was back moments later, picking my hand up again. He unfurled my fingers and placed something in it. “Here. It’s like this.”
I cocked my head, feeling the object he placed in my hand. I brought my other hand over it, stroking it. It was smooth in parts but with several tiny prickles that jutted out from the glassy smoothness.
“What is this?”
“It’s granul rock.” He adjusted my grip, forcing my fingertips to stroke the cold smoothness between all the sharp points. “Feel that? The cold evenness?” At my nod, he continued. “That’s the night. The darkness. And this here . . .” He lifted my hand, his touch as sure and deft as his words fanning warmly on my cheek. He brought the soft pads of my fingers down against the tiny protrusions, running the sharp bumps over my skin. “These are the firebugs.”
My lips parted on a choked laugh as I stroked the sleekness of night before running my fingertips over the bumpy dots that represented the firebugs. I smiled. “I understand.” In a way that I had never understood before. He brought sight to me through touch and sensation.
I lifted my face, my smile widening as a firebug brushed my cheek before flitting away.
I glanced down to where our hands still clung together. I flexed my fingers and turned my palm over, bringing it flush with his. I squeezed lightly, savoring the contact. “Thank you.”
“For what?” His fingers tensed around my hand for a moment but he didn’t pull away.
“Caring enough. For wanting me to see this.”
“I . . .” His voice faded. “You shouldn’t have to miss it. There’s not much beauty left in the world.” He touched my face. Lightly at first, then more boldly. His thumb trailed down my cheek. It was just a graze of sensation, but it reminded me of that almost-kiss. Heat crawled over my face. “It’s like they’re drawn to you. They’re all around you.”
“Really?” I breathed, turning my face, letting the little firebugs brush my skin without fear now.
“Almost as though they don’t want you to hide in darkness.”
A breath shuddered out of me. I had never had this before. He made me feel extraordinary and beautiful.
Even if I couldn’t see, I understood beauty as a concept. That some people were especially pleasing to the eye. Perla told me my mother had been beautiful. Countless nobles had courted her before my father won her hand. Of course, Perla had shared, in her very direct manner, that there was only a slight resemblance between us. I simply assumed I favored my father more, but now I wondered. Perhaps I looked like my mother a little, after all.
I heard his sigh and felt his withdrawal the moment before he slipped his hand out from mine.
I reached for him. Instinct drove me. I took his face in both hands, exploring his features, feeling the aquiline nose, the broad cheekbones, and the slash of his eyebrows over deeply set eyes.
“I’ve wanted to do this since almost the beginning.”
“Do what?” he asked.
“Touch your face. Since I first heard your voice . . . I wanted to trace your features. Etch them into myself.” My fingers moved as I spoke. A single fingertip slid over the slope of his nose, across his forehead, and then back down to the corner of his mouth.
“What color are your eyes?”
“They’re green.”
“Green,” I whispered.
“Like the grass,” he supplied. “Green is how it smells right after a rain, when everything is lush and thriving.”
I smiled. Again, he was able to help me understand color.
“And this . . .” I stroked his mouth, running my fingers over the bottom lip and then the upper, feeling his breath quicken against me as I touched the center of his lip where it dipped down like an arrow’s head. Something fluttered inside my stomach, tightened and clenched. “Does it have a color?”
A beat of silence fell. He moved in, closing that small space between us. There was a slight rustling as his body inched in, the breadth of his chest like an encroaching wall. His warm breath fanned my lips.
I jerked as a dweller cried out, its eerie shriek threading through the trees.
He pulled back, tugging my hands down from his face. “That’s not important.”
He moved away, leaving me with my heart beating like a wild drum in my chest. I wrapped my arms around myself, needing something to do with them, feeling crushed at his sudden departure. A firebug landed on my cheek.
I didn’t lift a finger to brush it away.
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WHEN WE LEFT the Black Woods, it was like stepping out from a dream. There were trees, but fewer and more spread out. There was also the occasional fallow field and forgotten cottage. With less foliage obscuring the sky, it actually seemed brighter. Moonlight dappled the land. I could see farther, but of course that meant we could be seen, too.
Luna seemed to sense the change, too, and not simply in the terrain. She sensed it in me. Her expression became more pensive and her face repeatedly turned in my direction as though she was seeking something from me—something I couldn’t give her.
More than once, she had made me feel like who I used to be. I couldn’t be that person anymore. I couldn’t get lost in her smiles or her voice or her touch on my skin. I definitely couldn’t get lost in her lips. Not if I wanted to keep us both alive.
A bat swell passed, obscuring the sky for a few moments, hiding the glow of the moon.
Luna didn’t even glance up to the sky. She simply kept moving.
I frowned. She was different from that girl I first met in the tower. It was bound to happen. Out here, no one was untouched.
She fell in beside me and I spared her a glance. I reached out as though to touch her, but stopped short. There was no need. I didn’t want to watch her break. I didn’t want her to turn into this twisted, hardened scrap of what she used to be.
I didn’t want her to be me.
“We’ve left the forest,” she stated more than asked, biting her lip. It was a nervous habit of hers. She did it often, drawing my stare to her mouth. I dragged my gaze away and scrubbed a hand over my face. That mouth was my hell. I’d almost kissed it. Her. Or perhaps she had almost kissed me.
Whoever was to blame, it had almost happened. And it couldn’t happen again.
Together like this, fighting for our lives, it was a natural urge, but one that would only prove distracting. The last thing I wanted was to give her a false idea of what we were to each other. She was the kind of girl that believed in love even in this bleak life.
“Yes, we have,” I answered, my voice curt even to my own ears.
“It smells differently,” she whispered.
I hesitated before asking, “How so?”
“Cleaner somehow.”
“Less rotting vegetation. And greater winds.”
Things weren’t going to be as simple anymore. The risks and dangers were greater now. With the Black Woods behind us, there would be more dwellers and more people. The wind howled in the vastness, and the lack of any other sound made my skin prickle. Even the smallest animal knew to make itself scarce out here, or at least the art of making themselves invisible and unheard.
Another light rain started, drumming all around us as we moved forward in the gloom. It didn’t leave us soaking wet, but the clammy damp of our clothes sticking to skin could hardly be called comfortable.
Her plaits hung over her shoulder in heavy skeins, and her normally pale skin practically glowed like moonstone in the near dark. Her collarbones stood out above the neckline of her bodice and dark shadows smudged the skin under her eyes like bruises. Something inside me twisted at the sight. She really needed to eat more. And rest more.
I faced forward again as we left the dense foliage farther and farther behind, gripping my bow at the ready as we walked into a maw of wasteland that had once been working fields.
I hesitated, scanning the horizon, searching for any woods to pass through that would offer some protection. The skyline loomed ahead, a dark gray plain etched against the moonlit sky. There was no easy way around it. We’d have to cross straight through that open space. Our boots crunched over short, withered-up stalks of sugarcane that even the rain hadn’t helped to moisten.
Every crunching step made me cringe. I wanted nothing more than to be off this deadened field and onto softer ground. Quieter ground.
I continued to scan the barren landscape, peering as far as I could into the stretch of nothingness. I flexed my grip around my bow.
In the distance, the outline of a copse of trees materialized against the dark. “This way,” I murmured, nodded as though she could see my gesture.
Shaking my head, I led her across the field. As we drew closer, I could see that a small farmer’s hut backed against the copse. The crank on the old, dilapidated well turned in the breeze.
“Do you hear that?” Her hand fell on my arm.
I stopped, listening.
“It’s a voice.” Her head whipped back and forth from me to the cottage. “Someone’s in there.”
My gaze narrowed on the cottage. It looked abandoned. The windows dark, gaping holes. The door was ajar, hanging off a broken hinge.
“There it is again. Someone is in trouble inside there.”
I tensed, aiming my arrow at the hut. I didn’t hear anything, but I knew to trust her in this.
She huffed in frustration and lunged ahead, quick as a darting hare.
“Luna!” I dropped my bow and tried to grab her back, but she was too fast.
Swinging my bow over my shoulder, I took off after her, reaching her just as she crossed the threshold.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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THE MAN WAS in the middle of the room. He reeked of sweat and blood. I could even detect the acrid sting of fear. He was still whispering in that pitiable voice that first alerted me to him. “Help . . . help . . . me,” he pleaded between labored pants of breath.
I stepped forward to reach him, but Fowler’s hand fell hard on my arm. “What are you doing?”
“He needs help.” I waved in his general direction.
“You can’t just go charging into every situation, Luna.”
“I charged into your situation, did I not? Do you regret that?”
He growled low, and I felt a surge of satisfaction. “Fine. You stay here. I’ll check him.”
His boots thudded on the wood floor as he advanced cautiously. The floor creaked beneath him as he squatted. I hovered close behind. Clothing rustled and I presumed he was searching the man for weapons. His ministrations must not have been gentle enough. The man groaned and Fowler hushed him softly. “Quiet now. We don’t want any unwelcome visitors, do we?”
“I look bad.” The man coughed and gurgled blood. “But you should see the other one.”
“You killed it?”
“He won’t be going back underground.” He laughed and the sound sputtered and twisted into violent hacking.
“He’s unarmed,” Fowler said to me as if there was still some doubt.
This man didn’t want to hurt anyone. He was the hurt one. He just wanted the pain to stop.
I hastened forward and dropped down beside Fowler. I stretched out my hand to touch the stranger, but Fowler’s hand on my wrist stopped me.
I turned my face in his direction. “Something wrong?”
“He’s . . .”
“What?” I asked.
“He’s missing part of his face.”
“Oh.” The word expelled from me in a horrified rush.
“I went out at midlight,” the stranger wheezed. “Thought I could get back in time . . . so stupid. I went too far. It was just one dweller, but I didn’t see him until he was on me.”
Fowler spoke into my ear. “There’s toxin all over his wounds.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Amose.”
“Amose?” I moistened lips that felt suddenly dry. “Can I hold your hand? Would that be all right with you?” I had barely finished asking the question before he seized my hand, squeezing it tightly as if staying connected to me somehow helped him bear the agony.
“I had a daughter once. She had small hands like yours.” He paused on a pained gasp. “She married. Moved away to Cydon . . . maybe she’s still there . . .”
“It’s a big village. I am sure she is there and thriving.” I had no idea if the village still stood, but I would say anything to him in that moment that could provide comfort.
Fowler tensed beside me and I could read his thoughts. His judgment. No one thrived.
“I’m so . . . thirsty,” Amose rasped.
I reached for my water. Instantly, Fowler closed his fingers around my hand, each finger a biting imprint on my cold skin.
“He’s thirsty,” I explained as though it were the simplest thing in the world.
“We have a precious amount of supplies.”
“Then take this out of my share,” I said tightly.
He cursed. “Damn it, Luna. We’ll need every bit of that. This man is going to be dead soon. I know it’s hard, but surviving means making hard choices.”
His words were a splash of cold reality. He was right and I resented him for it. I turned my face toward the man wheezing for air on the ground. He was alone in this world. With half his face missing and his blood soaking into the floor of the hut, his only thoughts were for his child. I couldn’t refuse him this relief.
Fowler’s hand squeezed mine. “Be strong, Luna.”
Anger spiked through me and I jerked my hand free. “Not in this. If turning my back on him makes me strong, then so be it. I’m weak.” I slipped a hand under Amose’s head, lifting him up so his mouth could find the rim of my flask. He slurped greedily. “Easy,” I advised when he broke into a sputtering cough.
“Thank you,” he huffed.
I lowered him gingerly back down, plugged my flask shut, and claimed his hand again.
Fowler made a sound of disgust deep in his throat and I squared my shoulders, pretending that I didn’t care what he thought of me.
“I suppose we’re
staying,” he complained.
I tossed the words over my shoulder in a rushed whisper: “I doubt this will take long.”
He said nothing. After a while, he moved away, his boots thudding a hard line to the door to stand watch. Or perhaps he simply didn’t want to witness this.
I settled on the cold floor, resting his head in my lap, careful to touch only his hair and not the toxin-soaked wounds of his face. “Tell me about your daughter. What’s her name?”
“Nessa.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
“Yes. She was . . . is beautiful. Like her mother. Like you.” He touched me then, pressing one finger directly over my heart. “You have it in here.” He coughed violently, his hand dropping away from me. “It’s a beauty that nothing can take away. Not this world or its monsters.” His voice faded. His breath grew too labored for him to talk anymore, just a heavy cadence of puffs and wheezes.
I stopped asking questions and just talked, about everything and nothing, swatting away the bloated gnats and flies that circled him, hungry for their next meal. Conscious of Fowler standing vigil at the door, I whispered a steady stream of words. Stories. We had a few books in the tower left by my parents. Perla often read aloud to me. One of them was a collection of love poems. It was my favorite. I would hold the rich leather-bound volume in my hands, caressing the pages, stroking where the words rested, imagining my mother holding the book, reading from it. It was my connection to her. I had most of the poems memorized and I recited them now, pausing at the scuff of Fowler’s boot on the ground, mortified that he was listening to me share words that were so personal, that spoke of longings etched so deeply in my soul. “And in your arms, I find truth . . . the burn of an unbroken light.”
Amose’s sawing breaths grew more labored and spaced apart until he took a last shuddering drink of air. He went utterly still.
Silence pressed down, a palpable weight on my shoulders as I bowed over him. There was only the noise of whirring insects circling his lifeless body.
I held his rough hand even as the warmth started to slip away from him.