This is a different kind of battle. There’s no training. And instead of donning armor, we throw the rest of our clothes away.
After six months of sitting by his brother’s side, lending my entire being to an evil cause, I have no fear of giving my body to a person I love. Even in the mud. Lightning flashes overhead and behind my eyes. Every nerve sparks to life. It takes all my concentration to keep Cal from feeling the wrong end of such things.
His chest flushes beneath my palms, rising with reckless heat. His skin looks even paler next to mine. Using his teeth, he unlatches his flamemaker bracelets and tosses them into the undergrowth.
“Thank my colors for the rain,” he murmurs.
I feel the opposite. I want to burn.
I refuse to go back to the row house covered in mud, and due to Cal’s oh-so-inconvenient living quarters, I can’t clean off at his barracks unless I feel like sharing the showers with a dozen other soldiers. He picks leaves out of my hair as we walk toward the base hospital, a squat building overgrown with ivy.
“You look like a shrub,” he says, sporting an almost-manic smile.
“That’s exactly what you’re supposed to say.”
Cal nearly giggles. “How would you know?”
“I—ugh,” I deflect, ducking into the entrance.
The hospital is nearly deserted at this hour, staffed with a few nurses and doctors to oversee next to no patients. Healers make them mostly irrelevant, needed only for lengthy diseases or extremely complicated injuries. We walk the cinder-block halls alone, under harsh fluorescent lights and easy silence. My cheeks still burn as my mind does war with itself. Instinct makes me want to shove Cal into the nearest room and lock the door behind us. Sense tells me I cannot.
I thought it would be different. I thought I would feel different. Cal’s touch has not erased Maven’s. My memories are still there, still just as painful as they were yesterday. And as much as I try, I have not forgotten the canyon that will always stretch between us. No kind of love can erase his faults, just like none can erase mine.
A nurse with an armful of blankets rounds the corner ahead, her feet a blur over the tiled floor. She stops at the sight of us, almost dropping the linens. “Oh!” she says. “You’re fast, Miss Barrow!”
My flush intensifies as Cal quickly turns a laugh into a cough. “Excuse me?”
She grins. “We just sent a message to your home.”
“Uh . . . ?”
“Follow me, sweetie; I’ll take you to her.” The nurse beckons, shifting the linens to her hip. Cal and I trade confused glances. He shrugs and trots after her, oddly carefree. His army-trained caution seems far away.
The nurse chatters excitedly as we walk in her wake. Her accent is Piedmontese, making the words slower and sweeter. “Shouldn’t take long. She’s progressing quickly. Soldier to the bone, I suppose. Doesn’t want to waste any time.”
Our hallway dead-ends into a larger ward, much busier than the rest of the hospital. Wide windows look out on yet another garden, now dark and lashed with rain. Piedmont certainly has a thing for flowers. Several doors branch off on either side, leading to empty rooms and empty beds. One of them is open, and more nurses flit in and out. An armed Scarlet Guard soldier keeps watch, although he doesn’t look very alert. It’s still early, and he blinks slowly, numbed by the quiet efficiency of the ward.
Sara Skonos looks awake enough for the two of them. Before I can call to her, she raises her head, eyes gray as the storm clouds outside.
Julian was right. She has a lovely voice.
“Good morning,” she says. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard her speak.
I don’t know her very well, but we embrace anyway. Her hands graze my bare arms, sending shooting stars of relief into overworked muscles. When she leans back, she pulls another leaf out of my hair, then demurely brushes mud from the back of my shoulder. Her eyes flicker, noting the mud streaking Cal’s limbs. Next to the sterile atmosphere of the hospital, with its gleaming surfaces and bright lights, we stick out like a pair of very sore and dirty thumbs.
Her lips twist into the slightest smirk. “I hope you enjoyed your morning run.”
Cal clears his throat and his face flushes. He wipes a hand on his pants, but only succeeds in spreading the incriminating mud even more. “Yeah.”
“Each of these rooms is equipped with a bathroom, including a shower. I can arrange for changes of clothes as well.” Sara points with her chin. “If you like.”
The prince ducks his face to hide his flush as it deepens. He slinks away, leaving a trail of wet footprints in his wake.
I remain, letting him go on ahead. Even though she can speak again, her tongue returned by another skin healer, I assume, Sara doesn’t talk much. She has more meaningful ways to communicate.
She touches my arm again, gently pushing me toward the open door. With Cal out of sight, I can think a little more clearly. The dots connect, one by one. Something tightens in my chest, an equal twist of sadness and excitement. I wish Shade were here.
Farley sits up in the bed, her face red and swollen, a sheen of sweat across her brow. The thunder outside is gone, melting to a downpour of endless rain weeping down the windows. She barks out a laugh at the sight of me, then winces at the sudden action. Sara moves quickly to her side, putting soothing hands to Farley’s cheeks. Another nurse idles against the wall, waiting to be useful.
“Did you run here or crawl through a sewer?” Farley asks over Sara’s fussing.
I move deeper into the room, careful not to get anything else dirty. “Got caught in the storm.”
“Right.” She sounds entirely unconvinced. “Was that Cal outside?”
My blush suddenly matches hers. “Yes.”
“Right,” she says again, drawing out the word.
Her eyes tick over me, as if she can read the last half hour on my skin. I fight the urge to check myself for any suspicious handprints. Then she reaches out, gesturing for the nurse. She leans down and Farley whispers in her ear, her words too fast and low for me to catch. The nurse nods, scurrying off to procure whatever Farley wants. She gives me a tight smile as she goes.
“You can come closer. I’m not going to explode.” She glances up at Sara. “Yet.”
The skin healer offers a well-practiced, obliging smile. “It won’t be long now.”
Tentative, I take a few steps forward, until I can reach out and take Farley’s hand if I want to. A few machines blink at the side of her bed, pulsing slowly and quietly. They pull me in, hypnotic in their even rhythm. The ache for Shade multiplies. We’re going to get a piece of him soon, but he’s never coming back. Not even in a baby with his eyes, his name, his smile. A baby he will never get to love.
“I thought about Madeline.”
Her voice snaps me out of the spiral. “What?”
Farley picks at her white bedspread. “That was my sister’s name.”
“Oh.”
Last year, I found a photo of her family in the Colonel’s office. It was taken years ago, but Farley and her father were unmistakable, posing next to her equally blond mother and sister. All of them had a similar look. Broad-shouldered, athletic, their eyes blue and steely. Farley’s sister was the smallest of them all, still growing into her features.
“Or Clara. After my mother.”
If she wants to keep talking, I’m here to listen. But I won’t pry. So I keep quiet, waiting, letting her lead the conversation. “They died a few years ago. Back in the Lakelands, at home. The Scarlet Guard wasn’t so careful then, and one of our operatives was caught knowing too much.” Pain flickers across her face now and then, both from the memory and her current state. “Our village was small, overlooked, unimportant. The perfect place for something like the Guard to grow. Until one man breathed its name under torture. The king of the Lakelands punished us himself.”