forget that, even for a second.
I think of the first moment I saw her, with her head thrown back and
her arms open wide, laughing as she ran through the garden. I thought she
was crazy then, but what I wouldn’t give to hear her laugh like that right
now. I have to find her. I have to. She
high enough to touch this side of the mountains, but the stars give enough
light for me to see the scuff marks leading up the trail. She was walking.
Not steadily, but alone. That’s something.
time my left foot connects with the ground. I deserve this pain. I’ll gladly
take this pain and more if only—
There! An Isra-sized lump, curled on the ground by the side of the
trail.
“Isra!” I kneel beside her, expecting her to wake up and snap at me
for frightening her. Expecting her to stir in her sleep, or grumble beneath
her breath. But she doesn’t move, even when I push her hair from her face
and cup her cheek in my hand.
Instantly, I know something’s wrong. She’s so cold. Colder than
anything living.
All this time, I thought I was changing Isra’s mind, but she was the
one changing mine, so much so that I forgot that there
from the hardships of the desert; she has a body that must be fed and
watered more often than mine; she is smaller and more delicate and clearly
isn’t able to tolerate variations in the temperature of her blood.
The Desert People grow cold during the winter, but there’s no danger
in it. We are more vital in summer, but we don’t lie down and die when the
winter nights take hold.
Die. She can’t.
“Isra. Is—” My voice breaks as I gather her into my lap. Her limbs are
limp and lifeless; her head rests heavily in my palm. “Isra?” I whisper,
throat so tight, I can’t speak any louder. “Can you hear me?”
She doesn’t move or speak, but when my gaze drops, I see it—the
flutter of a pulse at her throat, there, but fainter and slower than it should
be. She’s alive, but if I don’t find a way to warm her, she might not be for
long.
The thought has barely formed before I’m on my feet, running back
to the remains of the fire, with Isra in my arms. I no longer feel the pain in
my leg. Fear has banished the awareness of everything but Isra’s life, so
close to slipping through my fingers. By the time I fall to my knees by the
fire, I’m shaking. I have never trembled with fear, not even on the night we
swam up the river and crept into the dome.
I settle Isra across my lap, fold her head into my chest, and hold her
there with one hand as I rearrange the wood and tuck dried grass beneath
it with the other. I could move faster if I laid her down, but I’m afraid to risk
it. I’m not as warm as a fire, but I’m warmer than the night, and my blood is
certainly hotter than hers.
“Just a minute or two,” I whisper into the hair on top of her head,
some part of me certain she can’t die as long as I’m talking to her. “You’ll
be warm soon.”
I reach carefully around her limp body, and extend my claws, using
them to sharpen the end of one stick and notch a hole in another, before
reaching for the wood with my hands. I fit the pointed stick into the
notched one and spin it as fast as I can, shaking Isra from my chest in the
process and sending her tipping off my lap.
I take only a moment to pull her back to me and shift my position,
before starting to spin the wood again. I spin and spin, holding my breath
until I smell smoke, and then spinning even faster. My muscles burn and my
breath comes fast, but just when I think I can’t keep up the pace any longer,
sparks fly from the notch and the grass beneath the kindling catches. The
grass flames, high and fast, and the slender twigs at the bottom of the pile
flare to life. After I add more grass and coax the twigs with a stick, the
larger limbs begin to smolder and, finally, to burn.
I am famously quick with a fire, even among my people, who all have
a gift for flame, but I don’t know if I’ve been quick enough. I shift Isra, and
her head falls limply over my arm. Even in the warm light of the fire, her
face looks pale, her parted lips bloodless.
We’re sheltered from the worst of the wind by the rocks on either
side of our camp, and the fire warms up quickly, but even as her cheeks
regain their color, Isra remains terrifyingly still. I whisper her name what
feels like a hundred times. I smooth her hair from her forehead, pat her
cheeks a bit too hard, rock back and forth and back and forth in the hopes
of raising my own body temperature, growing more frantic with every
passing minute.
I’ve made a fire. I’m giving her the heat from my body. There’s
nothing left to do. I could wrap her in her shawl, but it’s no longer around
her shoulders. She must have lost it when she wandered up the trail.
“Why didn’t you feed the fire?” I whisper, lips moving against her
cool forehead. “Why?”
I’m suddenly angry, belly-burning angry, but not with Isra. With
myself. This is
should have insisted on going alone. That would have proven I was
trustworthy; this only proves I’m a fool. I had no idea she’d be so sensitive
to the winter chill, but ignorance is no excuse for what I’ve done. If Isra
dies, it will be for nothing, a senseless waste.
Yes, there are bulbs at the top of these mountains, and they’ll take
root in her garden and put out a pretty flower that sweetens cactus milk
into a treat that makes a man dizzy, but drinking it won’t give Isra what she
wants. This garden she’s desperate to plant will accomplish
let me out of my cage, like every smile and laugh I’ve forced while we’ve
worked the ground together, like everything I’ve pretended to feel.
And everything I’ve pretended
we’ll always be enemies. She rules a wicked, selfish city, and my tribe
suffers for her people’s comfort. She’s a queen; I’m her prisoner. I resent
her and she fears me, and there are times when I fear her, too. I am her
monster, and she is mine. But right now none of it matters.
“Isra, please. Open your eyes,” I beg, but I don’t think she will. When
her lashes flutter, I’m so surprised that my elbow jerks beneath her head,
sending her chin jabbing into her chest. Her teeth knock together and she
moans, low and grumpy.
It is the most wonderful sound I’ve ever heard.
“Can you hear me?” I support the back of her head and smooth the
hair away from her face in time to see her eyes slit open.
“Gem?” Her voice is sleep-rough and cranky and even
better-sounding than her grumpy moan. “What are … Where …” She blinks,
and for a second it looks as if her eyes are trying to focus before they go
empty once more.
“Do your eyes hurt?” I ask, hoping her cold sleep hasn’t left lasting
damage.
“No, but my head does. A little.” She winces. “More than a little.” Her
lids droop, and for a second I worry she’s falling back asleep, but then she
asks, “What happened?”
“I was about to ask you.” She shifts in my lap, and I’m suddenly very
conscious of the places where we touch and everything I was thinking
before she opened her eyes. Everything I was feeling. When I speak again,
my voice is rougher than hers. “I found you on the trail. You were cold and I
couldn’t wake you. I brought you back here and rebuilt the fire, but for a
while I wasn’t sure … I thought …” My arms tighten around her, but Isra
doesn’t seem to mind.
She turns her head, resting her cheek on my chest with a sigh. “I’m
sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have left you alone.”
“I shouldn’t have let the fire go out,” she says. “But I couldn’t find the
wood and I got scared, and then I was so cold and confused and … I … I
started remembering things. About my mother … her buttons …” Her hand
drifts to her chest, but hesitates there only a moment before coming to rest
on mine.
“I never meant for this to happen,” I say. “I didn’t understand. I—I
never meant to cut you that first night; I had no idea how fragile your skin
was. And tonight, when I left—I thought—I didn’t know it was so dangerous
for you to get cold.”
“I didn’t, either,” she says. “It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right.”
“It is.” Her fingers slip between the buttons on my shirt, brushing
bare skin. It becomes even harder to breathe. “I forgive you. Can you
forgive me?”
I start to assure her there’s nothing to forgive, but I can’t tell any
more lies. “I don’t know.”
She bites her lip. “Is that why you sound angry?”
“I’m not angry. Not at you. I’m just …”
“Just what?”
“Happy that you’re alive.”
“Me too. And grateful. To you. I …” She swallows, and her next words
seem to come harder. “I meant what I said. I’m not afraid of you. I’m … I
know it’s crazy … but I …” She lets out a tired sigh, and when she speaks
again, her voice isn’t much more than a whisper. “I’d like to see your face
again. May I?”
At first I think she means see me the way she did the first night, in
the garden, but then she lifts a hand into the air and I understand. She
wants to touch me.
“Yes,” I say, doing my best not to shiver as her fingers feather around
my eyes and down my nose, before her thumb smoothes across my bottom
lip. “Thank you for asking,” I whisper, lips moving beneath her lingering
touch.
She sits up, bringing her face even with mine. Her mouth is close; her
breath warms my chin. For the first time, she doesn’t smell like roses. She
smells like cactus milk—clean and salty and of the desert, like my
people—and I suddenly wonder if she would taste like all the girls I’ve
kissed in my life. There were other girls before Meer. After she found Hant,
I always assumed there would be more, but I never thought …
Even a moment ago when I …
I didn’t think … imagine … that
I’ve been dying to touch, and the memory of the killing cold banished by
the way he makes me burn.
I don’t care what he is, who I am, what’s wrong or right. There is no
shame or fear, only the driving need to get closer, kiss deeper, consume
and be consumed, to lose myself so completely that I will never be found.
I want to stay this way forever, with his chest pressed tightly to mine,
and his lips moving at my throat. With my fingers in his soft hair, his breath
warm on my skin, his hand—so hot I can feel it through my clothes—sliding
between us, down my ribs, over my stomach, down until—
I gasp and my eyes fly open, and for a bare moment I think I see
something in the air above my head—a hint of color, a flicker of light,
something strange and unexpected that makes me hesitate to push Gem’s
hand away. By the time the flicker vanishes and the familiar darkness
settles in, I am still … hesitating …
Hesitating …
A quiet, shame-filled voice inside demands I put a stop to
imagined that he would feel it, too, this pull, this longing to touch and be
touched and oh …
I draw his mouth back to mine and kiss him until my lips feel bruised
and my breath comes faster. Faster and faster, until my head spins and
something overwhelming and frightening and beautiful rises inside me. My
fingers dig into the back of Gem’s neck and my legs tremble and I shift in his
arms, bringing my hip into contact with something I hadn’t considered.
Something that—despite what the bawdy ballads claim—feels
nothing at
I bleat like a sheep and roll off Gem’s lap so fast, I nearly tumble into
the fire. I try to stand, but my legs are trembling and my knees are liquid
and I end up flopping onto my bottom and kicking a foot into the flames,
and suddenly Gem is cursing his ancestors—or my ancestors, I can’t really
tell—and snatching my boot from the fire and slapping at it, and the acrid
smell of burned animal skin sours the air, and the warm, beautiful feeling
vanishes in a puff of smoke.
I suck in a deep breath, and for the first time since Gem pulled me
back from the cold, my head clears. This is
drove my fingers through his hair and tasted his taste and let him touch me
for so long my cheeks heat just thinking about it. It’s madness, but in the
moment the madness made perfect sense. I had no idea it would be like