you.”
Lidea looked amused. “Are you corrupting him already?”
“Just a little.” I smiled so she’d know I wasn’t serious.
“I’m worried,” Lidea confessed. “After earlier, all that yelling.” She squeezed her eyes shut, and tears shimmered across her lashes. “What if they really try to hurt him?”
Wend appeared by her side, hand on her shoulder. “Nothing will happen to him.” When Lidea twisted toward him, he leaned over to hug her.
Sam touched my elbow and murmured, “Ready to go?” I nodded, and we said our good-byes, fetched our belongings, and headed for the exit.
It was raining again when we went outside, and fully dark now. Only the temple glowed, shedding watery light across the market field. Without conversation, we headed back to the southwest quarter of the city where all our homes were located. Sarit and Stef broke off onto their streets, close to ours.
Inside and dried off, I said, “Sam,” before realizing I’d spoken.
He paused on his way to the piano, one hand drifting over my hip as he faced me. With his face in shadow, Sam’s eyes were even darker, more mysterious, and heavier with the weight of centuries.
Millennia.
“Once, you called me a butterfly, because my existence seems so fleeting to everyone else in Heart.”
A line formed between his eyes. “Ana—”
“I know you didn’t mean it to hurt me, and I know you’ve apologized a thousand times.” I swallowed nerves caught in my throat. “That doesn’t make my existence less potentially ephemeral. I could die and never be reincarnated.”
“Please don’t say that,” he whispered.
“You, Stef, Sarit, others—you’ve made the Year of Hunger bearable. I didn’t think I could have friends until you proved me wrong.” I reached up for his shoulders, let my hands slide along the backs of his arms. “But the beginning of my life was terrible, and half the people still treat me like I’m responsible for Templedark and every other horrible thing that’s ever happened.”
He looked downward, like I blamed him for others’ actions. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. None of it’s your fault. I just meant to say, I don’t want Anid to grow up like I did.”
“Lidea and Wend will care for him. So will we.”
I nodded. “But it’s not enough. You saw what happened in there. People were anxious to welcome back a friend, and then it was
“Ana.” Sam stepped so close I had to drop my head back to meet his eyes, and the way he said my name— it was same reverence people used in their prayers to Janan. My insides knotted up as he touched my jaw and kissed me. Softly, gently, aching with restraint. “Anything you need from me, just ask. I promise, we’ll give these newsouls the chance you never had.”
Hearing it in those words made everything so clear. Sam understood me better than I understood myself, and he’d known what I needed all along.
9
LAKE
I’D BEEN RIGHT about the shift in Heart over the next couple of weeks.
Twice, when I went out on my own, someone threw rocks at me. People jeered and called me names.
At the market, people refused to sell things to me without one of my friends there. Strange calls came on my SED, just loud breathing. Stef traced them for me and blocked them from calling again. Then Sam started getting calls.
I tried to ignore it. The rock throwing and SED calling were new, but all in all it wasn’t much different from when I’d first arrived in Heart. The fear and anger were the same.
Every morning, Sam and I had music lessons and practice. I took Council-required lessons in the afternoon—they’d kick me out of the city if I didn’t—and my monthly progress report was coming up.
After my long trip to Purple Rose with Sam, I should have been trying to squeeze in more study to make up for time lost, but Lidea called and asked if Sam and I wanted to go to the lake with some friends.
Absolutely.
“What about your paper on the history of geothermal energy?” Sam asked, not quite hiding his smirk as we walked to Lidea’s house.
“I’m sure you can see how devastated I am about going to the lake on the last warm day of the year.
Spending time with you, with friends—Ugh. I don’t know how I’ll make it through the afternoon.” I grinned and slipped my hand into his.
With Lidea, Wend, Anid, and a handful of other friends in tow, we headed out the Southern Arch, toward Midrange Lake. It was the biggest lake in Range, and mostly used for the city’s fish and water supply, but there were a few beaches set aside for enjoyment. Sam and I had gone a couple of times over the summer.
Geyser steam wafted across the barren land between the city wall and the forest, reeking of sulfur. I wrinkled my nose until the wind shifted to blow the stink away from the path.
I held on to Sam’s hand, listening while Stef and Orrin inquired about the baby’s health, and Whit and Armande discussed the effort to rebuild sections of Heart that had been destroyed during Templedark.
“The Council isn’t even trying,” Armande complained. “Have you noticed the statues by the Councilhouse? And the relief over the front? Not to mention the stairs.”
“Those things are hardly as important as rebuilding the mills and agricultural areas.” Whit shook his head. “Lots of private gardens and livestock were destroyed, if not by sylph or dragon acid, then by drone fire and neutralizing chemicals. Even with sharing and appropriating supplies from”—his voice caught
—“the darksouls, it’s going to be a hard winter.”
“Because the Council stored food in buildings that won’t stand up to dragon acid.”
“Armande,” Whit said gently, “even if they’d put everything in the Councilhouse, it could have been destroyed just as easily. Templedark, remember? The walls were useless.”
The white stone had repaired itself when Janan awakened, so some people preferred to believe the cracked temple had been only a nightmare.
“Anyway,” Whit continued, “you’ve completely changed the subject. You’re upset about the statues and stairs, but don’t you think that’s a little shallow, considering all the things that
Armande snorted. “Maybe so, but I’m the one who has to look at them every day.”
“You don’t
Armande pressed his palm to his chest. “You’re condemning even more people to starvation. Or, at the very least, bad breakfast. Besides, our art is a testament to our society. It’s a symbol of our achievements, like your library and Sam’s music. It’s something to be proud of, and we should take care of it.”
I thought about that as we stepped into the shade of fir trees and headed down a smooth path that thumped solidly beneath my boots. We were off the thinnest part of the caldera.
Sam held aside a low-hanging branch for me, then ducked under after.
“Thanks.” I glanced back; the branch was as big as my arm. “If you’d left it, we could have had matching bruises on our foreheads.”
He laughed. “That’s not as romantic as matching hats or belts.”
“And that’s not romantic at all. Did anyone really do that?”
“Some did. About a thousand years ago.” He rolled his eyes, but his grin widened. “I don’t think I was ever so happy to see a fashion pass. The hats got worse every year. Taller, bigger feathers, ridiculous shapes. It was terrible.”
