“Besides, whether you trust me or not makes no difference to me,” I said, at last. “I am going to rip my brother to pieces either way.”
At the bottom of the stairs, when we were all still cloaked in the darkness of the stairwell, I pinched Akos’s sleeve to hold him back. It wasn’t so dark that I couldn’t see his look of confusion. I waited until Isae and Cisi were out of hearing distance before I stepped back, releasing him, letting the currentshadows build between us like smoke.
“Something wrong?” he said.
“No,” I said. “Just . . . give me a moment.”
I closed my eyes. Ever since I had woken up after the interrogation with shadow on top of my skin instead of beneath it, I had been thinking of Dr. Fadlan’s office, of how my gift came to be. It seemed, like most things in my life, tied to Ryzek. Ryzek feared pain, so the current had given me a gift he would fear, maybe the only gift that could truly protect me from him.
The current had not given me a curse. And I had become strong under its teaching. But there was no denying another thing Dr. Fadlan had said—that on some level, I felt like I, and everyone else, deserved pain. One thing I knew, deep in my bones, was that Akos Kereseth did not deserve it. Holding on to that thought, I reached for him, and touched my hand to his chest, feeling fabric.
I opened my eyes. The shadows were still traveling over my body, since I wasn’t touching his skin, but my entire left arm, from shoulder to the fingertips that touched him, was bare. Even if he had been able to feel my currentgift, I still would not have been hurting him.
Akos’s eyes, usually so wary, were wide with wonder.
“When I kill people with a touch, it’s because I decide to give them all the pain and keep none of it for myself. It’s because I get so tired of bearing it that all I want to do is set it down for a while,” I said. “But during the interrogation, it occurred to me that maybe I was strong enough to bear it all myself. That maybe no one else but me could. And I never would have thought of that without you.”
I blinked tears from my eyes.
“You saw me as someone better than I was,” I said. “You told me that I could choose to be different than I had been, that my condition was not permanent. And I began to believe you. Taking in all the pain nearly killed me, but when I woke up again, the gift was different. It doesn’t hurt as much. Sometimes I can control it.”
I took my hand away.
“I don’t know what you want to call it, what we are to each other now,” I said. “But I wanted you to know that your friendship has . . . quite literally altered me.”
For a few long seconds, he just stared at me. There were new things to discover in his face still, even after so long spent in close company. Faint shadows under his cheekbones. The scar that ran through his eyebrow.
“You don’t know what to call it?” he said, when he finally spoke again.
His armor hit the ground with a clatter, and he reached for me. Wrapped an arm around my waist. Pulled me against him. Whispered against my mouth: “Sivbarat. Zethetet.”
One Shotet word, one Thuvhesit. Sivbarat referred to a person’s dearest friend, someone so close that to lose them would be like losing a limb. And the Thuvhesit word, I had never heard before.
We didn’t quite know how to fit together, lips too wet, teeth where they didn’t belong. But that was all right; we tried again, and this time it was like the spark that came from friction, a jolt of energy through my body.
He clutched at my sides, pulled my shirt into his fists. His hands were deft from handling carving knives and powders, and he smelled like it, too, like herbs and potions and vapor.
I pressed into him, feeling the rough stairwell wall against my hands, and his quick, hot breaths against my neck. I had wondered, I had wondered what it was like to go through life without feeling pain, but this was not the absence of pain I had always craved, it was the opposite, it was pure sensation. Soft, warm, aching, heavy, everything, everything.
I heard, echoing through the safe house, a kind of commotion. But before I let myself pull away so we could see what it was, I asked him quietly, “What does it mean, ‘zethetet’?”
He looked away, like he was embarrassed. I caught sight of that creeping blush around the collar of his shirt.
“Beloved,” he said softly. He kissed me again, then picked up his armor and led the way toward the renegades.
I couldn’t stop smiling.
The commotion was that someone was landing a floater in our safe house, ripping right through the fabric that shielded us. The band of light around its middle was dark purple, and it was splattered with mud.
I froze, terrified of the dark shape descending, but then I saw unfamiliar words on the underside of the rotund ship: Passenger Craft #6734.
Written in Thuvhesit.
CHAPTER 32: AKOS
THE SHIP THAT HAD busted through the roof covering was a fat passenger floater, only big enough to hold a couple of people. Tattered bits of the fabric it had torn through floated down after it, catching the breeze. The now-visible sky was dark blue, starless, and the currentstream, rippling across it, was purple red.
The renegades surrounded the floater, weapons drawn. The hatch on its side opened, and a woman descended, showing her palms. She was older, with streaks of gray in her hair, and the look in her eye was anything but surrender.
“Mom?” Cisi said.
Cisi ran at her, wrapping her in a hug. Their mom hugged her back, but scanned the renegades over Cisi’s shoulder. Then her stare fixed on Akos.