The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [54]
“Good luck,” I say, and as I pass him he shifts ever so slightly so that the knuckles of my hand brush against his. My step falters as I try to figure out if he did it on purpose. Unable to know, I push forward out into the freezing afternoon, letting the snow cool the heat of my face.
Once outside I pause, trying to get my bearings. I have no idea where I’m supposed to be—where I’m allowed—and so I go back to the one place I know: the map room.
It’s empty, the lanterns Ox lit still burning, and I stare at the walls. Black pin after black pin of hopelessness. Places that used to be. My head pounds and I realize my stomach’s empty—I’m exhausted.
I lean against the wall and slide until I’m sitting on the floor surrounded by a world that once was. Ox’s warning that we’re all that’s left circles my head, but I’m not sure I’m ready to believe that yet.
I’m not sure I ever will be. I close my eyes and remember what I can about the village I grew up in. It was so long ago, and my memories are mere suggestions of colors and scents and sounds.
The smell of the charred remains of the Cathedral that burned long before I was born, the sound of my sister giggling as we fell asleep at night, her hot sweaty hand resting on my arm. The grassy hill we used to climb so that we could stare over the treetops.
I shove my fists against my eyes as images from the past roll over me. The stupid fences that we felt the need to sneak past. The stupid stone my sister tripped over. The stupid me who chose to leave her there alone, preferring to follow Elias on more adventures that only got us lost.
Curling into a ball, back pressed into the corner of the room, I cover my head with my arms to block out the maps and the light and the thoughts of things past. But there’s one memory that won’t stop spinning through me and I grit my teeth as it unfolds, hating myself even as I relive it over and over again.
Once we escaped from the Forest and found our way to the Dark City, Elias began to call me his sister—it was easier for people to believe we were siblings who’d lost their parents to the Unconsecrated. People asked fewer questions and for the longest time it felt so natural that I began to believe it.
But in the months before Elias left for the Recruiters, something began to change in me. I started feeling embarrassed when he was in the room while I had to change. It was hard to sleep, I was hyperaware of the sound of his breathing at night, his shifting under the worn quilts. I started caring more about the scars running along my face and body, trying any concoction I could get my hands on in the black market to make them fade.
One night Elias teased me about the smell in the flat. I confessed it was a cream I’d traded for in the Neverlands to lessen the scars. He turned to me in the dim light, the moon somehow reflecting deep enough in the alley to illuminate us both.
“Oh, Annah,” he said, his voice a whisper filled with an emotion that I couldn’t identify but that made my stomach drop.
He reached out and with one finger he traced along the scars. The feel so different from anything else between us before. He started at my face, drawing his finger along each one, trailing down my neck. Pushing aside the collar of my nightshirt so that he could reach my shoulder, along my arm and down my side.
I tried to hold my breath but I couldn’t; it came out shaking. So much building inside me, my skin so alive under his touch that I thought I would combust. Every time he reached the barrier of my clothes I thought he’d stop. I thought it must be some sort of dream. But he kept going. Along my hip, down my thigh. Curling around my calf and out to the very tip of my little toe, my feet arching under his touch.
By this time I was gasping and he was trembling. He pulled back and looked at me, the air so charged between us I felt like everyone in the world must be feeling this heat.
“You’re so