Howl grabs my shoulder, giving it a shake. “Your staying wouldn’t have changed anything.” When I don’t respond, he whispers, “I think it would take quite of bit of hard evidence to get at the Hongs, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Relief floods through me, but guilt and fear immediately crawl up after it. My escape could be blamed on anyone. The nuns, my teachers, my roommate. Except Peishan was already in the Sanatorium. And if Tai-ge believes I meant to kill him that night . . . at least he’s above suspicion. It’s not as if I can ever see him again. But is he safe? Dr. Yang said something back in the City about hurting Tai-ge as some kind of warning to General Hong. . . .
“Should we have brought him, too?” I ask.
“Would he have come?”
“No.” I wouldn’t have either if I’d had a choice.
“Then just be glad you’re alive. There’s nothing you could have done differently except let them kill you.” Howl sighs, and the hand on my arm slips down to encircle my wrist. His fingers feel warm through my coat, comforting. Genuine. “You care a lot more about them than they seem to care about you. No one has thought twice about abusing you for the last eight years.”
He turns my hand over, the two of us staring at the brand’s star shape melted into my skin. I can hardly find my voice, the words coming out in a whisper. “Some people decided to look past these to find out if I was human or not.”
“Tai-ge.” Howl looks up at the sky again.
I take a deep breath and let it out, not ready to speak for a moment. The corroded ring around my finger has left a permanent stain on my skin, a rusty fungus-looking smear. That’s probably exactly what he thinks of me now: a stain on his past that will be hard to scrub away. But Tai-ge couldn’t believe I would have hurt him, could he?
Another deep breath.
It doesn’t matter now what Tai-ge thinks. As long as he’s safe. His father would never let anything happen to him. “What about June? Are there many more . . . like her in the Mountain?”
Howl blinks. “Everyone gets a fair chance in the Mountain. Wood Rats, City runaways, people from out past this forest . . . No stars, no brands, and no one cares who you are or what you look like.”
“Even for me?” It seems impossible that my stars could not mean anything. That people wouldn’t look at my birthmark or my star burn and see my mother.
Howl looks at the ground again, choosing his words carefully. “Whatever happened during the Great Wars, everyone left over just wants to survive. I don’t think having light-colored eyes should take away your right to a good life any more than having the wrong number of lines on your hand should.”
My head is swimming with information, all of it glassy and distorted, as if I’m peering through murky water. “Why were we so worried about June’s family, then? Why don’t all of them just go to the Mountain?
“You can’t just walk in. They’ll let anyone in who’s willing to help with a war. Plenty of Wood Rats are content to scavenge on the edges where they don’t have to fight. I don’t understand what was going on in that family. Liming could have found a Mountain patrol and asked for a guide in.”
Why didn’t Liming come with us, then? I glance back up toward June, though I can’t see her sleeping form from where I sit. “How long did you live out here?”
“Two years. A little more.”
“How is it . . .” I shrug. “I never heard anything about you being gone.”
Howl looks down at his hands, and suddenly I’m uncomfortable, seeing things on his face that no one ever should feel. He can’t even call his father anything but “the Chairman.” Was it more important for the Chairman to save face, to keep it quiet that Howl was gone, than to mobilize Seconds to get his son back?
“What did you ever hear about me?” he finally asks, still staring at the ground.
I cock my head to the side, bending so he has to look at me. “I heard at least one pretty little girl from the orphanage wish Third boys were as nice-looking as your portrait. Maybe she meant she wished they were cleaner?” Looking him up and down, I give a mock frown. “Not really sure I agree.”
He rolls his eyes. “Well, there you have it. I lived out here. That’s how I know where we’re going.”
“And what tubers are?”
The lighthearted question almost makes him smile. “Right. Tubers.”
His hand finds mine again, and the tightness in my chest eases. No more fighting, no more anger. No lying or withholding information. We’re friends again. More than that. We could be partners, part of this cause, if it’s real. I could help people like June.
People who have no chance, like my sister, Aya, before she was shot down in the street.
People like me.
The City, no matter how I feel about it, isn’t an option anymore. Neither is Tai-ge. He never was. And, just like the rest of the City, Tai-ge never could completely forget my brand. No matter what he felt or thought about me, my past was a wall that we both knew he wouldn’t try to climb. He never tried to hold my hand. No one ever even noticed that I had hands at all in the City, except to crush them while checking my traitor star. And Howl is right here in front of me, asking me to listen, just to think it through. That maybe I’m worth more than a messy burn. That there’s more to life than Yuan Zhiwei and rows and rows of canning jars, and the pieces on the weiqi board numbered from one to four.
Hand-holding has nothing to do with it. I want to believe him.
I do believe him.
? ? ?
That night, I dream of Zhinu and Niulang. Except when Niulang first sees Zhinu, his teeth stretch out over his lips, jagged and sharp. Morphed into one of the monster qilin, he chases her back to his den, where the other snarling creatures wait. Her cries surround me, choke me, as her eyes open—deep brown. My eyes.
I wake to find myself precariously balanced against a tree branch on the edge of our rock, slick with sweat. Zhinu’s sobs ring in my ears, echoing against the night sky, moon covered by a sea of clouds. My heart drums against my chest as if it’s trying to escape its bloody prison.
Howl climbs up from the ground, perching next to me. “What’s wrong, Sev?” His eyes wash over June before flicking back to me.
I take a deep breath, trying to erase the image of Niulang’s long, sharp teeth tearing through. . . . “Nothing. I just had a bad dream.”
He sits for a second, peering at me through the darkness. I can’t look at him, as if my dream could somehow reach out and destroy Howl, too, giving the one person I’ve decided to trust sharp teeth and an appetite for flesh. His hand brushes my cheek, and the awful image goes away, leaving only my friend. Howl is safe.
“Want to talk about it?” he asks.
I shake my head, taking a deep, shuddering breath that sends darts of pain through ribs I thought were starting to mend. “No. I don’t even want to think about it.”
“Okay.” He doesn’t climb back down, tracing the pattern quilted into my sleeping bag with one finger. “Do you need anything?”
I shake my head.
“I’ll come up.” He climbs over me and slips in between me and June. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and June will fall off.” He smiles to belie the joke.
I smile back, glad that he doesn’t mean it. It’s odd, but having Howl right beside me does make things seem less frightening. I sleep, and this time the dreams stay far away.
CHAPTER 14
THE MORNING FEELS MUCH LIGHTER. Howl shoots me a smile before climbing a tree to gauge how close we are to our mountain destination. He doesn’t mind when I follow him up, noting that the craggy, sheer side of the mountain we’ve been crawling toward is no more than a two-day walk away if we go fast. When I smile back, it’s genuine.