I heard his sigh and felt his withdrawal the moment before he slipped his hand out from mine.
I reached for him. Instinct drove me. I took his face in both hands, exploring his features, feeling the aquiline nose, the broad cheekbones, and the slash of his eyebrows over deeply set eyes.
“I’ve wanted to do this since almost the beginning.”
“Do what?” he asked.
“Touch your face. Since I first heard your voice . . . I wanted to trace your features. Etch them into myself.” My fingers moved as I spoke. A single fingertip slid over the slope of his nose, across his forehead, and then back down to the corner of his mouth.
“What color are your eyes?”
“They’re green.”
“Green,” I whispered.
“Like the grass,” he supplied. “Green is how it smells right after a rain, when everything is lush and thriving.”
I smiled. Again, he was able to help me understand color.
“And this . . .” I stroked his mouth, running my fingers over the bottom lip and then the upper, feeling his breath quicken against me as I touched the center of his lip where it dipped down like an arrow’s head. Something fluttered inside my stomach, tightened and clenched. “Does it have a color?”
A beat of silence fell. He moved in, closing that small space between us. There was a slight rustling as his body inched in, the breadth of his chest like an encroaching wall. His warm breath fanned my lips.
I jerked as a dweller cried out, its eerie shriek threading through the trees.
He pulled back, tugging my hands down from his face. “That’s not important.”
He moved away, leaving me with my heart beating like a wild drum in my chest. I wrapped my arms around myself, needing something to do with them, feeling crushed at his sudden departure. A firebug landed on my cheek.
This time I didn’t lift a finger to brush it away.
EIGHTEEN
Fowler
WHEN WE LEFT the Black Woods, it was like stepping out from a dream. There were trees, but fewer and more spread out. There was also the occasional fallow field and forgotten cottage. With less foliage obscuring the sky, it actually seemed brighter. Moonlight dappled the land. I could see farther, but of course that meant we could be seen, too.
Luna seemed to sense the change, too, and not simply in the terrain. She sensed it in me. Her expression became more pensive and her face repeatedly turned in my direction as though she was seeking something from me—something I couldn’t give her.
More than once, she had made me feel like who I used to be. I couldn’t be that person anymore. I couldn’t get lost in her smiles or her voice or her touch on my skin. I definitely couldn’t get lost in her lips. Not if I wanted to keep us both alive.
A bat swell passed, obscuring the sky for a few moments, hiding the glow of the moon.
Luna didn’t even glance up to the sky. She simply kept moving.
I frowned. She was different from that girl I first met in the tower. It was bound to happen. Out here, no one went untouched.
She fell in beside me and I spared her a glance. I reached out as though to touch her, but stopped short. There was no need. I didn’t want to witness her break. I didn’t want her to turn into this twisted, hardened scrap of what she used to be.
I didn’t want her to be me.
“We’ve left the forest,” she stated more than asked, biting her lip. It was a nervous habit of hers. She did it often, drawing my stare to her mouth. I dragged my gaze away and scrubbed a hand over my face. That mouth was my hell. I’d almost kissed it. Her. Or perhaps she had almost kissed me. Whoever was to blame, it had almost happened. And it couldn’t happen again.
Together like this, fighting for our lives, it was a natural urge, but one that would only prove distracting. The last thing I wanted was to give her a false idea of what we were to each other. She was the kind of girl who believed in love even in this bleak life.
“Yes, we have,” I answered, my voice curt even to my own ears.
“It smells differently,” she whispered.
I hesitated before asking, “How so?”
“Cleaner somehow.”
“Less rotting vegetation. And greater winds.”
Things weren’t going to be as simple anymore. The risks and dangers were greater now. With the Black Woods behind us, there would be more dwellers and more people. The wind howled in the vastness, and the lack of any other sound made my skin prickle. Even the smallest animal knew to make itself scarce out here, or at least the art of making itself invisible and unheard.
Another light rain started, drumming all around us as we moved forward in the gloom. It didn’t leave us soaking wet, but the clammy damp of our clothes sticking to skin could hardly be called comfortable.