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.