I had always heard the ghosts.
Death was no stranger in Venda. He had walked the streets boldly, rubbing his bony elbows against passersby whose cheeks were as gaunt as his own, his wide grin spotting you from afar, whispering, You, you are next. And I would whisper back, Not yet, not today. Everyone in Venda was always just a season away from death, including me, depending on which way death turned, and his frozen grin had long ceased to frighten me.
So when I saw the ghosts in Bone Channel, their bony fingers reaching out, pawing my feet, their rattled voices warning, Turn back, do not pass this way, I ignored them.
Do not pass this way.
But we did.
And now we couldn’t turn back. We had fallen through a hole and come out on the other side in a different world, a temporary world that was upside-down, where everything sounded, felt, and tasted different, and every fleeting flavor of it was dangerously sweet.
Jase leaned close, lifting my chin, his lips meeting mine—the best of it, that’s what we told ourselves, over and over again as one day rolled into the next; we were only making the best of it. It was a story, a riddle, a wish stalk that we wove into every kiss, a sweet powdered sugar that would melt and disappear on the end of our tongues, but for now it was real enough. What was the harm? We were surviving.
But as the miles we walked added up, our steps whispered a different message, each one bringing us closer to the world we had left. Heaviness would crouch in my gut, a hidden animal that wasn’t fooled, no matter the stories we told ourselves. He might be one kind of person out here, but back there, he was the enemy, the lawless head of a lawless family—a family that possibly harbored a murderous war criminal who was a threat to the entire continent, and if they did, he and his family would pay. Here, I might be a girl who had helped him escape from hunters, helped heal his wounds, the girl who loved listening to his stories, but there, in the real world, I was entrusted with a job by the Queen of Venda. I was as loyal to her as he was to his family, and I would betray him when the time came. I would bring his family and dynasty to their knees. His world was about to end.
The best of it.
We were only making the best of it.
For now.
It was our story. It didn’t have to have a happy beginning or a happy ending, but the middle was a feast at a banquet, a rich soapy bath, a night’s rest at an inn and a full stomach, a warm chest nestled up against my back, the soft heat of lips at my nape, stories whispered in my ear.
We stopped midmorning to drink at a spring, then rested in the shade of an alder. Foliage was growing thicker now, the plains behind us, the foothills steeper, the mountains topped with forests looming just behind them. I lay on my back and he hovered next to me, propped on one elbow. His finger traced a line along my jaw. He didn’t ask anymore what had been done to me. Now it seemed he only wanted to erase it, wash it from my memory, and for now, I let him.
“Kazi,” he whispered against my cheek. And then his lips slid down my neck, and I forgot once again about the world we were heading into and thought only about this one.
*
Another night closed in, a midnight blanket of clouds covering the stars, making our words safer. The darkness mercifully swallowed what might be seen in our eyes.
What is this, Kazi?
I knew what he meant. This. What was this between us? Just what game were we playing?
I had wondered too. Because now our kisses were filled with pauses, our gazes filled with more questions instead of fewer.
I don’t know, Jase.
What do you feel?
Your lips, your hands, your heartbeat.
No, Kazi, in here, what do you feel in here?
His finger stroked a line down the center of my chest.
I felt an ache pressing within. A need I couldn’t name.
I don’t know.
I didn’t want to know.
Let me taste your mouth, I whispered. Don’t make me think.
*
I screamed with joy when we came upon a deep pool to bathe in. We rushed toward it, stumbling, squealing, jumping into the cool crystal water. When I surfaced, he splashed me and an all-out war began, the pool erupting with a maelstrom of blinding water and laughter, until he finally grabbed my wrists so I couldn’t move. Calm returned, but not to his eyes. They churned with a different kind of storm. I looked at his face, water dripping from his hair and chin, his lashes clumped together with wetness.
“I like you, Jase Ballenger,” I said softly. “I think if you weren’t a thief, we might be friends.”
“And if you didn’t whisk out knives and threaten to cut pretty necks, I think we might be friends too.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Oh, how obsessed you are with your pretty neck.”
His hands tightened on my wrists. He pulled me close, his teeth nipping at my neck and between kisses, he whispered, “It is not my neck I am obsessed with, Kazi of Brightmist.”
*
A cooling breeze lifted my hair, the scent of pine wafting through it, high grass swaying around our knees. We had left early, the screech of a racaa startling us both awake. It flew low, its shadow nearly touching both sides of the valley. Jase confirmed that their primary diet was antelope, occasionally snatching foals or sheep, but he assured me he had never heard of them taking humans. “At least not more than once or twice. It’s never worried me, though. I hear they favor black-haired beauties—with their sour, tough meat and all.”
I jabbed him with my elbow. “Where I go, you go, so you better hope it finds a nice juicy antelope today.”
By midmorning, the breeze was gone, the sun relentless, and the still air seemed to hold a foreboding hum. Maybe it was just our footsteps swishing through the grass or the endless rattle of the chain dragging between us. Maybe it sounded like a timepiece ticking off our steps.
“Let’s take a break,” I said, and we headed for a stand of birch and lay beneath the shade on a thick bed of summer grass. But even without the rattle of the chain and the swish of our footsteps, I still heard a persistent hum and tick in the stillness of the air. It vibrated through my bones like a quiet warning. “Tell me a story, Jase,” I said. “Something else about your family history.” Anything to block the hum and the tick.
He told me the story of Miandre. She was the first mother of all Ballengers. She came to Tor’s Watch with Greyson as part of the surviving Remnant when she was thirteen. She was only a child herself but was forced to lead along with Greyson because the others were even younger. Like Greyson, she had watched her last living relative murdered by scavengers, so they had a common goal to create a haven where no scavenger could hurt them again. Stone by stone, the fortress they founded grew over the centuries, but they were the beginning of Tor’s Watch. “We were the first country, or as you Vendans would call it, the first kingdom.” I heard the pride in his voice. Even his eyes danced with light as he spoke.
The lines of Morrighese, Vendan, and Dalbretch history had blurred and overlapped each other long ago, but it was well recognized by all the kingdoms that Morrighan was the first to be established, not a rocky out-of-the-way fortress no one had heard of until recently. And from Morrighan the other kingdoms were born. Even Venda had been only a wild territory with no official name until the first borders were drawn. Tor’s Watch was small and isolated. It was little surprise that Jase knew nothing of the history of the entire continent. I only learned most of it myself after I went to live at the Sanctum.
“And all of this is written in the books you told me about?”