Her eyes went wide. Then she said breathlessly, “And if it hurts?” And smiled a little. “Life is full of hurt anyway.”
Akos’s breaths shuddered as he pressed his mouth to hers. He wasn’t sure what it would be like, kissing her this way, not because she surprised him and he didn’t think to pull away, but because he just wanted to. She tasted malty and spiced from the painkiller she had swallowed, and she was a little hesitant, like she was afraid to hurt him. But kissing her was touching match to kindling. He burned for her.
The ship jerked, making all the bowls and cups clatter against each other. They were landing.
CHAPTER 31: CYRA
I FINALLY LET MYSELF think it: he was beautiful. His gray eyes reminded me of the stormy waters of Pitha. When he reached for my cheek, there was a crease along his arm where one wiry muscle met another. His deft, sensitive fingers moved over my cheekbone. His fingernails were stained with yellow powder—from jealousy flowers, I was sure. I was breathless to think of him touching me just because he wanted to.
I sat up, slowly, bringing a hand to the silverskin behind my ear. Soon it would adhere to the nerves in what was left of my scalp, and I would be able to feel it like it was my own skin, though it would never grow hair again. I wondered how I looked now, with a little more than half a head of hair. It didn’t really matter.
He wanted to touch me.
“What?” he said. “You’re giving me a weird look.”
“Nothing,” I said. “You just . . . look nice.”
It was a silly thing to say. He was dusty, sweaty, and smeared with my blood. His hair and clothes were mussed. Nice wasn’t exactly the word for it, but the other ones I thought of were too much, too soon.
Still, he smiled as if he understood. “You do, too.”
“I look filthy,” I said. “But thank you for lying about it.”
I braced myself on the edge of the table, and pushed to standing. At first I teetered, unsure of my footing.
“Need me to carry you again?” he said.
“That was humiliating and will never happen again.”
“Humiliating? Some people might use another word,” he said. “Like . . . gallant.”
“Tell you what,” I said. “Someday I’ll carry you around like a baby in front of people whose respect you’re trying to earn, and you can let me know how much you like it.”
He grinned. “Deal.”
“I’ll consent to let you help me walk,” I said. “And don’t think I didn’t notice the chancellor of Thuvhe standing in the next room.” I shook my head. “I’d love to know the principle of elmetahak that sanctions bringing your chancellor to the country of her enemies.”
“I think it falls under ‘hulyetahak,’” he said with a sigh. “School of the stupid.”
I held tight to his arm and walked—shuffled, really—into the main deck. The transport vessel was small, with a wide observation window at one end. Through it I saw Voa from above, surrounded on three sides by sheer cliffs and on one by the ocean, forests spread over the distant hills as far as I could see. Trains, powered largely by wind coming off the water, wrapped around the city’s circumference and traveled into its center like spokes in a wheel. I had never ridden in one.
“How has Ryzek not found us?” I asked.
“Hologram cloak,” Teka said from the captain’s chair. “Makes us look like just another Shotet army transport. I designed it myself.”
The ship dipped down, sinking through a hole in the rotten roof of some building on the fringes of Voa. Ryzek didn’t know this part of the city—no one bothered to, really. It was clear that this building in particular had once been an apartment complex, hollowed out by some kind of destructive event, maybe a near demolition, abandoned halfway through. As the ship sank, I saw into half a dozen lives: a bed with mismatched pillowcases in a ripped-apart bedroom; half a kitchen counter dangling from a precipice; red cushions coated in dust and bits of rubble from a destroyed living room.
We touched down, and some of the others used a rope rigged to a pulley near the ceiling to cover the hole there with a huge piece of fabric. Light still came through it—making the ship almost glow, from the warmth of its patchwork metals—but it was harder, now, to see into the apartments that had been. The space we were in was half packed dirt, half dust-streaked tile. Growing in the cracks of the broken floor were fragile Shotet flowers in gray, blue, and purple.
And at the bottom of the steps that had unfolded from the ship’s hold, with the angular eyes I remembered from the footage Akos and I had watched together, was Isae Benesit. She was scarred in a way I hadn’t imagined, scarred by a Shotet blade.
“Hello,” I said to her. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
She said, “Likewise.”