“Maybe,” Mal said.
Suddenly, he reached out and took hold of my hand. I tried to ignore the little jolt that went through me. “This time tomorrow, we’ll be sitting in the harbor at Os Kervo, looking out at the ocean and drinking kvas.”
I glanced at Dubrov weaving back and forth and smiled. “Is Dubrov buying?”
“Just you and me,” Mal said.
“Really?”
“It’s always just you and me, Alina.”
For a moment, it seemed like it was true. The world was this step, this circle of lamplight, the two of us suspended in the dark.
“Come on!” bellowed Mikhael from the path.
Mal started like a man waking from a dream. He gave my hand a last squeeze before he dropped it. “Gotta go,” he said, his brash grin sliding back into place. “Try to get some sleep.”
He hopped lightly from the stairs and jogged off to join his friends. “Wish me luck!” he called over his shoulder.
“Good luck,” I said automatically and then wanted to kick myself. Good luck? Have a lovely time, Mal. Hope you find a pretty Grisha, fall deeply in love, and make lots of gorgeous, disgustingly talented babies together.
I sat frozen on the steps, watching them disappear down the path, still feeling the warm pressure of Mal’s hand in mine. Oh well, I thought as I got to my feet. Maybe he’ll fall into a ditch on his way there.
I edged back into the barracks, closed the door tightly behind me, and gratefully snuggled into my bedroll.
Would that black-haired Grisha girl sneak out of the pavilion to meet Mal? I pushed the thought away. It was none of my business, and really, I didn’t want to know. Mal had never looked at me the way he’d looked at that girl or even the way he looked at Ruby, and he never would. But the fact that we were still friends was more important than any of that.
For how long? said a nagging voice in my head. Alexei was right: things change. Mal had changed for the better. He’d gotten handsomer, braver, cockier. And I’d gotten…taller. I sighed and rolled onto my side. I wanted to believe that Mal and I would always be friends, but I had to face the fact that we were on different paths. Lying in the dark, waiting for sleep, I wondered if those paths would just keep taking us further and further apart, and if a day might come when we would be strangers to each other once again.
The day Rance Ridley kissed a girl for the first time, his father revealed the exact date of the end of the world.
The girl’s name was Olivia.
Later, Rance wondered if his father would have seen “the end” if he hadn’t caught his son lying in the field with Olivia, her lips kissed to the color of crushed strawberries.
The two of them were thirteen. They’d known each other since they were babies, born only two days apart in the compound of the Church of Light. But Olivia’s mother abandoned her before she was weaned, disappearing from the compound as suddenly as she had appeared back when she was pregnant and destitute. Rance’s mother took Olivia in and acted as wet nurse to the baby girl, raised her as Rance’s sister. Perhaps that was why his father’s face turned red with fury when he found them and saw the way Olivia’s demure white blouse was unbuttoned, pulled loose from her long skirt. Or perhaps it was simply because Prophet Ram Ridley claimed that a kiss shared before marriage was an affront to the Almighty and should be punished accordingly.
The prophet caught Olivia by her hair and Rance by the back of his neck, and held them apart. Olivia’s wheat-colored eyes were huge with fear, and Rance knew his father was hurting her as he wrapped her endless hair in his fist, reeling her in. Olivia’s shirt hung open, revealing most of one small, white breast.
“My own son,” the prophet sputtered, his face now the color of a bruise. “You defile the purity of this child.”
“Father, we were only––” Rance began to say, but the prophet yanked Olivia’s hair so violently a sob flew from her throat. Rance hadn’t seen Olivia cry since she was a little girl. She had always been strong. It was one of the things Rance loved about her. One of the many things.
“I taught you better than this,” the prophet said to his son. “What will your punishment be, eh? The belt? Or shall it be the cellar this time?”