I slammed another cupboard. ‘Have you been?’
I meant it as a challenge. But the question somehow felt more dangerous than it should have. We’d been separated by everyone else for the last month, in a house too crowded to ever find privacy. It was only then that I realised Jin and I were alone for the first time in as long as I could remember.
And now here he was asking me about sleeping. Because we’d been sleeping separately. Which put into my head thoughts of sleeping … not separately. Which was ridiculous. We were both trapped in the middle of something bigger than what was between us. So all-consuming it didn’t leave a whole lot of room for each other. But still, we’d been inching closer and closer to something more lately. Towards unknown waters – or unknown to me. And I knew that of the two of us, I was the one keeping us docked.
‘No,’ Jin replied even as I stilled. He seemed to read what I was thinking and suddenly it was as if the kitchen had been emptied of air and I couldn’t breathe for wanting to reach out for him. ‘I haven’t been.’
I moved first but he was quicker. It took only a few steps for him to reach me, backing me up against the table. But he stopped just before we touched. I didn’t move either. I could tell he was being careful with me. Everything felt more fragile lately. He was close enough that I could feel the warmth from him even in the kitchen. I tilted my head back, finding the corner of his mouth with mine. Jin’s hands had dropped to my waist, something solid to hang on to. His hands curled around the dusty shirt I hadn’t had a chance to change out of, tugging it up just enough so that I felt his thumb graze over skin, sending a trail of heat behind it. He hadn’t shaved today, and I found myself grazing my lips over the stubble at his jaw. The coarseness sent a shiver through my body.
Jin let out a breath that sounded like surrender a second before his arms went fully around me, lifting me to sit on the table as if I were light as anything. My shirt bunched under his arms, riding most of the way up my spine, his hands following my skin further up, grazing the bottom of my shoulder blades, making me shiver all over again.
‘You need to shave.’ I broke away from him, breathless, rubbing one hand along his jaw. We were face to face like this, with me sitting and him standing. Eye to eye. But it was hard for me to look him straight on – it was too much, and if I did, everything I’d been holding back for weeks would rush into my blood and burn me alive from the inside. I might as well try to stare into the midday sun.
Jin grinned wryly against my hand on his jaw. ‘Later,’ he said, before claiming another kiss from me.
Without thinking I wrapped my legs around his middle, pulling him closer.
‘And here I thought the rumours that Sara was running a brothel out of here were supposed to be false.’ The bitterness in Hala’s voice split Jin and me apart.
‘I’m no expert, but I figure doors in brothels have locks. So people have to knock,’ I retorted. Jin hadn’t let me go, and with his back to Hala I was the only one who could see the smile that danced over his face before he stepped away, leaving me to get my feet back on solid ground.
She was leaning in the doorway, flanked by the twins. They were wrapped in robes, their blue and black tousled hair sticking up at strange angles, but grinning at the spectacle all the same.
‘Is this you two coming up with a plan?’ Hala asked, rolling her eyes and pushing into the kitchen.
‘I have a plan.’ I could feel my face still flushed with heat as I straightened my shirt. ‘We don’t return Leyla, we save the girls instead.’
‘Good plan,’ Izz chimed in cheerfully.
‘Great plan,’ Maz chorused. ‘I love that plan.’
‘Yes, wonderful, what else could we possibly need other than a vague statement.’ Hala looked annoyed. ‘That’s not a plan; it’s barely an idea. Besides, what makes you think we can save anyone else when you couldn’t even save Imin?’ That blow was meant to sting and it did, but I wasn’t going to stand here and argue with Hala. She couldn’t be argued with lately; all she did was spit back the grief over losing Imin like poison.
‘That’s why you’re here,’ I said, turning towards everyone. ‘To hash out the details.’ Night had fallen outside, and the only light in the kitchen was from the embers of the fire that cast everyone in a half-light, making them look like they were only half there. I needed to draw them back. ‘Now do you want to help, or do you want to just let them die?’
Nobody wanted to see anyone else die.
We put together something that was about halfway between a vague idea and a real plan with a few hours left to go until sunrise. A few precious hours in which we agreed we all ought to try to get some sleep. The Hidden House was quiet when we left the kitchen. Hala and I retreated to Sara’s room through darkened hallways while the boys went the other way.
We were about midway up the many flights of stairs when I noticed light flooding from under one door: Tamid, reading late into the night.
My old friend wasn’t a true rebel. He just had nowhere else to go after Leyla betrayed us. He’d claimed a whole room to himself, which most thought was petty when space was so valuable. But I’d allowed it because he had a job to do, burning oil between dusk and dawn as he searched for the words to free Fereshteh’s energy and disable the Sultan’s machine. And I’d allowed it because I didn’t need to give him more reasons to despise me.
I paused on the landing that headed towards his room. Hala stopped climbing when she realised I wasn’t beside her any more. She gave me a withering look from three steps above me. ‘He doesn’t want to talk to you,’ she told me, not for the first time. I knew that. Hala had revelled in telling me that, since he did want to talk to her.
Tamid and I hadn’t spoken in weeks, and I’d steered clear of his room. But this was different. This wasn’t about what either of us wanted. It was about what we needed to do.
‘Get some sleep,’ I said to Hala by way of dismissal.
She looked like she might say something else for a moment, then she threw her hands up above her head as if to say she couldn’t help it if I was going to do something stupid, and she left me.
When I couldn’t hear her footsteps, I rapped gently at the door. ‘Come in,’ Tamid’s voice said sharply from the other side, seeming unsurprised by a visitor in the middle of the night. Still, when I pushed the door open, I could see all over his face that he hadn’t expected me.
He’d probably thought the knock was Hala bringing him more books to study. The collection she’d already acquired for him was strewn around the room. I could barely see the floor under stacks of open tomes piled one on top of another, or discarded in frustration in a corner. The books were lifted from libraries at the university or from the vaults of prayer houses. Hala’s Demdji gift meant she could walk out of any building in Izman with a pile of books in her arms without drawing so much as a glance her way. And she’d been putting it to good use, with minimal complaining. I reckoned she just liked being kept busy. Or she half enjoyed the possibility that she was walking into peril. It distracted her from her grief.