Shouting for Sam to do the same, I unzipped my coat and slipped my arms free. My bag of clothes and costume supplies dropped to my feet, safe. Dozens of holes appeared on our coats; the acrid stench of burning wool made my nose scrunch.
Holding my breath, I ran my hands along Sam’s back, but he was clean. He did the same for me, then drew me into a tight hug as the third dragon hit the ground and everything shook. I shook, too, with cold and fear of what had almost happened.
The acid ate through the steps quickly and neutralized. Sam stared at it as dumbly as I had at the dragons, that darkness in his eyes. That must have been how I’d looked the night he saved me from drowning, when I’d run from his tent and found myself staring at the lake with nowhere to go.
The darkness was memory. He’d probably died in dragon acid before, maybe within the last few lifetimes. I didn’t have to ask to know, so I wouldn’t. Instead, I touched his chin and drew his gaze away from the hole in the stairs. “It’s over.” They hadn’t even had time to launch the air drones, things specially made to defend against dragons.
I had no experience with dragons other than what I’d just witnessed. I’d only read about them: failed attempts to hunt the population into extinction, diseases and poisons introduced into their food supply, and experiments done on captured dragons. But still they attacked, as angry as they’d been five thousand years ago when humans first came to Range.
The people of Heart had endured these attacks for millenia — I couldn’t begin to imagine overcoming that kind of terror every time.
More people swarmed from the Councilhouse, parting around us as they wielded small hoses that sprayed chemical mist on everything the acid had touched. It smelled sweet, like crushed grass. The cleanup had begun and we should help, but I needed Sam to be okay first.
He lowered his eyes and kept his voice soft. “I wanted to be brave.”
I held my hand over his, which still gripped the pistol hilt. His knuckles were pale, and veins showed sharp and blue. “Why didn’t you stay in the Councilhouse?”
“I knew you wouldn’t go home. I had to find you.”
My chest tightened. “You
After we helped clean our share, we fetched our belongings and went back to his house. I read to him for an hour before he fell asleep, leaning against my shoulder. I put the book aside and adjusted myself on the sofa.
He shivered closer to me, one hand tight around mine. It was strange, being in this position of having to comfort someone when I’d only recently learned to be comforted. But I remembered how Sam held me in the cabin after the sylph, and that his presence had helped. I could do the same for him.
Breathing in the scent of his hair, I realized I’d needed him my whole life, before we even met. First, his music and the way he taught me through books and recordings. Then, he saved my life and refused to abandon me no matter how much I deserved it.
But as I pulled a blanket over both of us and combed my fingers through his hair, my perspective shifted.
There was no music in this quiet, and none of the tension of two weeks ago in the kitchen. Even with his body against mine, I didn’t have knots or yearning, just desire for him to be himself again, unhaunted by past lives and deaths.
He held on to me like I was a rock, the only thing keeping him from drifting out with the tide of dark memories.
It was the first time I realized he needed me, too.
Chapter 17
Footsteps
“NO SAM TONIGHT?” Sine asked from across the library table. It had only taken her an hour to bring it up. She’d made it sound casual, but I didn’t have to be five thousand years old to know she’d been waiting for an opening. Apparently silence was as good an opening as any.
I gave a one-shouldered shrug and turned the page of my book. Philosophy. Lots of guessing why people were reborn. Why some took a year to return, while others took up to ten. No one agreed on anything, but because these were where my questions began, this was what I had to read. “We don’t do
“Don’t you? I don’t think I’ve seen you apart since the market.”
I’d been under the impression people in Heart valued their privacy. My alternate theory — that people already knew everything about one another, so they didn’t bother prying — sounded more likely now. I was the exception, of course. If I was involved even remotely, people asked questions. The afternoon I’d dragged Sam outside the city so he could show me all the nearby geysers and hot springs, gossip had spread like wildfire. I still couldn’t figure out what made fumaroles so scandalous, but maybe people were desperate.
“I’m just surprised he’s not with you, that’s all. You two have been spending as much time here as Whit, always off in your own corners, studying.”
I flashed a smile. “He said he wasn’t sleeping well and wanted to rest this evening. Everything should be back to normal soon.” Maybe. He hadn’t actually said anything. I’d
“Oh, good. I hope he feels more rested soon.” She ducked over her book again, pen scraping against the paper grain.
“I hope so, too.”
We worked in silence for a few minutes more, time dripping by like water from a leaky tap. But I couldn’t focus on the philosophy book in front of me. The author seemed conflicted on his views about Janan, whether he was real and responsible for reincarnation, or whether humans were doing it on their own, by virtue of being human.
“Sine?”
She glanced up, eyebrow raised.
“Do you believe in Janan? Do you think he created everyone and reincarnates them every lifetime?”
She lowered her pen and sat back. “Sometimes I think I don’t, simply because it annoys Meuric and Deborl. But honestly, I want to believe we humans aren’t at this alone, perpetually reincarnated in a world where dragons, centaurs, griffins, and rocs are always trying to kill us.” She shrugged and found my gaze. “Like you, I want to believe there is a beginning to all this. Life.”
My beginning was so much more recent, yet no one could tell me what had happened. People who’d been there.
“What about the walls? Do they feel strange to you?”
“The heartbeat?” She shook her head. “Everyone can feel it, certainly, but it’s comforting, and part of what makes me want to believe in Janan and his promise to return.”
Or maybe he’d never left.
The heartbeat certainly didn’t feel comforting to me. Sam seemed to think it was funny or cute how I tried to avoid touching the white stone, but it gave me the sensation of worms crawling beneath my skin.
“Thanks,” I said, turning back to the book with a sigh. I really wanted to find someone else who didn’t like the walls and see if they had any thoughts on it, but there seemed a definite connection between my newness and the creepy feeling.
“Perhaps philosophy and guesswork aren’t where you should be looking.” Sine eyed my book. “I never thought Deborl’s views were all that astute, anyway.”
I checked the cover of the book. Sure enough, Deborl, a Councilor who looked younger than me, had written it over sixty quindecs ago. Astute or not, these views were almost a thousand years old. I closed the book and slid it toward the middle of the table. “Maybe you’re right. I thought the answers were in the distant past, but I could be wrong.”
She slipped a marker into her book and nodded for me to continue.
