He squeezed my hands. “I’m afraid, Ana. I’m afraid, and I feel like if I don’t kiss you right now, I’ll break apart.”
The music ended. Silence tugged through the room. All I could hear was Sam’s shallow breathing. All I could feel was the pounding of my heartbeat.
He wanted this now? After everything that had happened? Before everything we were about to do? How could anyone—
No, I understood. A heavy desire for him wove through me. We’d lost so much, and we were about to lose even more. If we survived Soul Night, maybe we could have a life together.
But victory seemed an unattainable goal, and right now we had each other.
I wouldn’t waste our chance by hesitating.
“You won’t break apart,” I said. “I won’t let you.” I watched his mouth, the curve of his lips and the creases and the gentle parting between from the way he might have been about to respond but couldn’t seem to find words. The seconds spun longer as I caressed his cheeks and through his hair, all shaggy from weeks without cutting. Then I kissed him.
He let out a relieved groan and pulled me in, his mouth warm and firm against mine. Jaw muscles worked beneath my palms. Stubble scraped my skin. I didn’t care. I wanted only to drown in this kiss.
His hands slid down my sides and settled on my hips. I looped my arms around his shoulders and let him lay me onto my back, damp hair haloed around me. He kissed my throat and shoulders, gasped for breath over my collarbone.
I couldn’t think. I could only feel the way his hands glided over my stomach and down my legs. Emotions caught up and tangled in my throat as he helped me out of my shirt and trousers, leaving only a thin silk camisole and leggings beneath. I shivered in the cool air.
“Is this all right?” he whispered. “If you don’t want to, that’s okay.”
“I want to.” I sat up and stretched to pull his shirt over his head. In the dim room, his skin was dark and I couldn’t see the burns, just shadows and planes of muscle that shifted beneath my hands. “I’ve loved you my entire life. From the moment I first heard music, to when I saw your name inside a book, to the night you saved me from the water. No one has ever made me feel like you do: like I’m wanted; like I matter.”
He kissed me, long and beautiful and desperate, and he didn’t resist when I pulled him down on top of me, trying to draw him impossibly close.
But our lives were made of impossible things. I’d known him at the masquerade. We’d danced as though we’d been dancing for years and centuries and millennia. And when we’d kissed for the first time, we’d become a song with one breath, one voice, and infinite melodies. It was music, the way he touched me, the way our bodies fit together.
He caressed my ribs and hips and legs, then kissed trails of fire down my throat. The heat of his body over mine made me yearn for something deeper, but I let him set our pace as he kissed me, hungry and desperate, firm and fierce, and gentle as though I was the most precious thing in the world to him.
He drew off my camisole, making my whole body hum with anticipation and desire. The last of our clothes dropped to the floor with a soft whumph.
My heart filled up as he showed me a thousand ways he loved me, and in these glorious moments of peace, there was no fear or mourning or despair. There was only this boy. This body entwined with mine. This soul I’d always known.
Questions hovered in the gasp-filled inches between us, but I was too dizzy to think. I touched his face, his hair, smoothed back the black strands while I waited for him to say something. If we should say anything. A thread of awkwardness coiled inside me as the waiting grew longer.
Sam kissed me again, and in the dimness, he looked my age. Really my age, not the illusion of reincarnation. He looked like I felt: excited and hopeful, a little nervous. “I hope that was—”
“Wonderful.” Did I speak too quickly? My voice was high and giddy. I hardly sounded like myself. “It was wonderful.”
“Oh, good.” Relief echoed in his words. “Good.”
The idea of him being worried about it made me giggle, and then he laughed, too, until we couldn’t breathe anymore and had to resort to shallow gasping that turned into kissing. I wanted this to go on forever.
But as my love deepened and spilled through me like music, pieces of me dreaded what would come next. We’d already lived through terrible things, terrible losses. And what happened tonight would only be worse.
Two hours before sunset, we took our things and started west, toward the temple and Councilhouse. I’d seen no sign of the sylph, but we couldn’t wait. Using Stef’s program, I’d tracked SED conversations about the fire and what was to happen tonight. Most people only speculated on how Janan would return, and what would happen with the phoenix trapped inside the cage.
Deborl had put out a warning about the escaped prisoners, as well as Sam and me, reminding everyone that I was an exile and Janan might not reward them if they didn’t find and capture me. Or kill me. Killing was better.
I kept that to myself as Sam and I crept through the northeastern residential quarter, cutting through yards, hiding inside houses and behind trees whenever we heard voices. The sun stretched lower toward the city wall, silhouetting the temple in the center of the city.
“Do you think the dragons will really come?” Sam asked.
“I think they will.”
“Because they want me dead.”
“They want the threat of the phoenix song gone.”
“It’s hard to believe this is something they’re trying to destroy me for. Not just one lifetime, but all of them.”
Mysterious as it was, the phoenix song was as much a part of him as his soul. A year ago, Councilor Sine had called music a “passion of the soul,” which had resonated with me. After years of being called “nosoul,” I’d still been accepting that I had a soul, and hearing that poetry or music or art could be tied to the soul had made me glow with happiness. But with Sam, it seemed music was literally part of him, something so intrinsic to his soul he’d be a wholly different person without it.
Yet he still didn’t know how to use it.
Well, he wasn’t a phoenix.
We came to the edge of the market field with an hour to spare. Our goal had been to get here early to give us time to wait on top of the Councilhouse for the dragons, but we hadn’t anticipated all of Heart getting here early, too.
From behind heavy underbrush, we spied thousands of people in the market field, closing in on the industrial quarter where the cage was. Bright lights hung from poles, the white beams focused on the cage and the cloth-covered lump inside it. Could there really be a phoenix in there? It didn’t look as if it had moved in the days since Merton had paraded it into the city—not that I had a good view from here.
“We have to cross the market field,” Sam muttered.
“Yeah.” Maybe we should have come much earlier, but then we’d have been waiting on the roof for hours, possibly getting seen. . . . “Let’s go north, then around. Most people will be heading south, so we only need to wait for the market field to clear on that side before we climb up.”
Sam’s expression darkened, but he nodded and we crept north and east along the edge of the market field, hiding in brush and trees whenever voices came too close, but never forgetting that time was limited. If we were too late—
We wouldn’t be too late.
As evening deepened, the temple seemed to shine brighter, a fallen star in the center of our city. Their city. I was an exile.
It seemed like forever before the flow of people on this side of the market field stopped. Their voices toward the industrial quarter were a low roar, and I could just hear someone speaking above the crowd.
“Janan, who gave us life!” The voice sounded like Deborl. “Janan, who gave us souls!”
A cheer rose up at his lies. They’d all been living and soul-filled long before Janan began reincarnating them. I wanted to believe there was something out there giving life and souls, but I knew it wasn’t Janan.
“Let’s go,” I muttered to Sam, and together, we trotted across the market field. I strained my ears for any sounds besides ours, but I heard only the steady thump, thump of our boots hitting the cobblestones.
I checked over my shoulder, hyperaware and paranoid that someone was watching us, but I didn’t see anyone in the gloaming, only shadows. The temple lit our path, too brilliant to look at directly. I kept my eyes down as we approached and veered toward the Councilhouse, which was fused to the temple.
Half an hour until sundown.
At the base of the Councilhouse, Sam and I pulled off our backpacks and removed Stef’s last gift: gloves and boot covers.
We were going to scale the exterior wall of the Councilhouse.
The gloves and boot covers were inside out to keep the adhesive fresh, and to keep them from sticking to everything else we owned. As quickly as we could, we stepped into the boot covers and pulled on the gloves, carefully tightening all the straps so they wouldn’t slip off.
“Ready?” I glanced at Sam.
He looked grim, but determined. “Yes.”
I shouldered my backpack—awkwardly, thanks to the gloves—and pressed my palm against the white stone wall. It stuck.
Giving it a little tug, the adhesive held, and I reached with my other hand, higher. I tugged, and it didn’t come loose.
“It’s working?” Sam balanced with his elbow on the wall, peeling his feet off the ground slowly. With only his toes on the cobbles, he jumped with his hands splayed out, smacked the wall, and hung like that until he pulled up his legs and pushed upward.
“It’s working.” I did the same as he had. It’d be the only boost we got. The adhesive held if jerked on, but would peel off quite readily. That meant we had to crawl up the side of the Councilhouse, as there were no outside stairs, and no roof access points from inside the building.
So we crawled, reaching and pushing and stretching ourselves higher until we came to the rooftop. White spread out ahead of us, and over the far edge I could just see the gathered crowd, all trying to get a peek at the cage. Was the cloth off the phoenix yet? Was the poor creature still alive?
The sun moved below the wall, making the sky look brilliant blue.
Ten minutes until sunset.
I tore off my sticky gloves and pulled my boots from the slip-ons. “Where are the dragons?” They should have been here by now. Already we wouldn’t have the distractions that Stef and Sarit had put together, since they had to be remotely activated and said remotes were still in the mill. Whatever was left of the mill . . .
“Maybe Acid Breath lied,” Sam said. “Maybe they aren’t coming.”
Just then, a tremendous thunder burst through the sky. The crowd below was silenced. I held my breath and looked north.
From among the broken black obelisks, a hundred dragons took to the sky. Their wings shone brilliantly in the setting sun as they surged toward the temple.
Chaos erupted and screams sounded from below, but my heart lifted. The dragons had arrived.
Acid Breath landed, delivering the first canister of poison. He swung his head around to face Sam and me. <As promised, we will rip the tower from the earth.>
“Thanks.” Such a small word, considering my heart felt ready to burst. I hadn’t really believed that we could work with dragons, but we had. They’d come through.
Acid Breath roared and took off, his wings creating a wave of air that made me gasp for breath.
As the next dragon landed, I glanced at Sam. He was pale and sweating, and his knuckles were white where he gripped his laser pistol, but he was still functioning.
More of the dragon army dove toward the temple, delivering canisters of poison. Fifteen were here. Five to go.
Seven minutes until sunset.
I fumbled through my coat pocket for the key. I would create a door and open the canisters from the inside. Then—ideally—I would escape before the door shut and I was trapped as the dragons ripped the tower from the earth, as Acid Breath had said.