It turns out not to matter, because Roan has already made the decision. He leans down, closing the distance between us, and before I can move, before I can even think, his lips find mine.
I gasp against his mouth. For a moment, I’m frozen, stiff—then a private war erupts across every cell in my body, starting from my chest and moving outward, until every part of me is screaming simultaneously to pull away and to press closer. And the latter side is winning, rapidly. Roan threads his fingers through my hair, tilting my face back to meet his; and in response, as if of their own accord, my arms come up around his waist, and I pull him against me. The desire—not just for Roan himself but to be wanted, to be loved the way I loved him when I was young, to belong, for some wholeness in my childhood to be restored, to be true—rushes through me, carrying away all the dark discoveries of the night.
Roan trails a hand down my cheek, cups the side of my neck, his touch sending off waves of chills all over my body. Someone’s pulse is fluttering where his hand rests on my neck—I can’t tell if it’s his or mine. Everything is riotous, hands and breath and lips. It’s only when we pause to draw breath that I realize that everything has fallen silent.
I hadn’t really heard the sounds of the garden until they vanished—now, their absence rings much louder than the sounds themselves. The world is silent around us.
No.
Roan has felt me stiffen. He pulls back, looks questioningly into my eyes, a slight smile on his mouth. Then the absence of sound seems to register for him too. He glances around, and his brow furrows.
I can tell exactly what he’s thinking, because I see now what’s happened. Nothing looks wrong—but complete stillness is more conspicuous to the eye than gentle motion, and I see the confusion on Roan’s face as he realizes the tree branches aren’t swaying, that two birds bathing in a nearby fountain have frozen midsplash, that the thin clouds aren’t scudding across the sky, but hanging in place like in a painting.
I’ve frozen time again. And this time, another person is here with me. Roan looks down at me, and I watch the expression in his blue eyes turn slowly from confusion to fear. Hurt stabs through me.
The stretched-out instant doesn’t last long. The silence is split by the bang of a slamming door—someone from outside the stillness I had cast over the garden—and a shouted oath. “There she is!” a man yells.
The sounds of the garden, returning, are immediately drowned out by heavy, running footsteps. I step away from Roan, and we both turn to see three Everless guards sprinting toward us. I’m too shocked to move, as the fastest of them seizes me by the arm.
“What—what’s the meaning of this?” Roan sounds weakly. He looks pale, badly shaken. Then his eyes widen. “Liam!”
I whip back around to see Liam striding into the garden, a black cloak swirling behind him, all ice and sharp angles where Roan is color and life.
“Step back, Roan,” Liam says coolly, as if he’s not surprised at all to see his brother here next to me. “Miss Ember’s arrest doesn’t concern you.”
My breath catches in my throat, while Roan takes a step forward, his hands curling into fists at his sides. “Arrest? What could possibly warrant that?”
But the words die in the air around us as a guard pulls off my gloves—exposing my hands, stained a deep, wine-dark red. He has his answer.
Liam cuts his eyes toward me, and my heart turns to ice. He is all malice, his mouth a cruel slash and his eyes bottomlessly dark, unreadable. He gestures fluidly to his guards. “Take her away.”
Roan stands motionless as the guards drag me from the gardens, two of them gripping my forearms with bruising strength. I stare at him, willing him to say something, to stop this, but he doesn’t. He just watches them pull me away. Disappointment makes my mouth taste bitter—disappointment not so much at Roan as at myself, for pouring so many dreams into the hands of a boy who can’t even open his mouth to save me.
Liam walks apace with the guards, his stride easy and his eyes forward.
“Don’t scream,” he says to me.
I grit my teeth in rage as we emerge from the gardens into an empty courtyard, where a nondescript, windowless carriage is waiting, its back doors hanging open.
Unceremoniously, the guards heave me up and inside, and I land heavily on my back. I scramble upright, grabbing at the wall for balance, but it’s too late—the doors are already closing, locking me in darkness. The last thing I see before the daylight disappears is Liam pulling his hood up to hide his face.
27
We ride for what seems like hours, until the frantic racing of my mind congeals into a slow dread. When I left Briarsmoor, I was so close to the truth that I could feel it buzzing in my bones. Now it seems that I will never learn it—that I’ll end up like Papa, bled of my time and dying alone in the cold.
At some point, I notice that the steady rattling of the carriage over the road has given way to a slower, bumpier pace—like we’re moving over grass. And then the carriage shudders to a halt. All at once, the doors fly open and light floods in, dazzling me. I scramble into a sitting position, shading my eyes until the figure in the doorway resolves into Liam, standing with one foot propped up on the edge of the carriage. Behind him is what looks like an open field, with no road in sight.
Acidic hatred shoots through me even as the terror roars back. Has he taken me out to the middle of nowhere to kill me?
Liam regards me for a long moment without speaking. Loathing for him throbs through me, pushing at the inside of my skin. I imagine it breaking away from me, an amorphous mass of black smoke, and wrapping itself around Liam’s throat.
But I know if I tried to enact the scene, the sword hanging loosely at Liam’s side would find my heart in seconds.
“Look out here,” Liam says. He steps aside so I can see out the back of the carriage, and points at something. At first, I think he’s showing me his three guards, who are standing at intervals a little away from us—out of hearing range, but well within shooting if I try to run.
Then my gaze travels further. In the direction of Liam’s finger is a wide smudge of gray on the horizon, a series of small dark shapes, some puffing threads of smoke into the sky. A city, one much bigger than Crofton or Laista. I level my gaze at Liam.
“It’s Ambergris,” he says. “A dock city on Hunt’s Bay. Have you been there before?”
I cross my arms over my chest.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Liam says after a moment. “Anyway, there are over a hundred thousand people there. You’ll be able to disappear.” There’s no malice in his voice—it’s low, clear, direct, as if he’s trying to persuade me of something. “Create a new name, a new life.”