Something stops me from agreeing. Another tug, deeper inside. Somewhere I can’t name.
“Should we?” I whisper, expecting the rain to swallow my voice.
His arms tighten around me. He didn’t miss a word.
The trees are new growth, their leaves and branches not splayed wide enough to offer total cover from the sky. But enough from the street. My shirt goes first, landing in mud. I toss his into the muck too, just so we’re even. Rain pelts down in fat drops, each one a cold surprise to run down my nose or spine or my arms wrapped around his neck. Warm hands do battle across my back, a delightful opposite to the water. His fingers walk the length of my spine, pressing into each vertebra. I do the same, counting his ribs. He shivers, and not from the rain, as my nails scrape along his side. Cal responds with teeth. They graze the length of my jaw before finding my ear. I shut my eyes for a second, unable to do anything but feel. Every sensation is a firework, a thunderbolt, an explosion.
The thunder gets closer. As if drawn to us.
I run my fingers through his hair, using it to pull him closer. Closer. Closer. Closer. He tastes like salt and smoke. Closer. I can’t seem to get close enough. “Have you done this before?” I should be afraid, but only the cold makes me shiver.
He tips his head back, and I almost whine in protest. “No,” he whispers, looking away. Dark lashes drip rain. His jaw tightens, as if ashamed.
So like Cal, to feel embarrassment for something like this. He likes to know the end of a path, the answer to a question before asking. I almost laugh.
This is a different kind of battle. There’s no training. And instead of donning armor, we throw the rest of our clothes away.
After six months of sitting by his brother’s side, lending my entire being to an evil cause, I have no fear of giving my body to a person I love. Even in the mud. Lightning flashes overhead and behind my eyes. Every nerve sparks to life. It takes all my concentration to keep Cal from feeling the wrong end of such things.
His chest flushes beneath my palms, rising with reckless heat. His skin looks even paler next to mine. Using his teeth, he unlatches his flamemaker bracelets and tosses them into the undergrowth.
“Thank my colors for the rain,” he murmurs.
I feel the opposite. I want to burn.
I refuse to go back to the row house covered in mud, and due to Cal’s oh-so-inconvenient living quarters, I can’t clean off at his barracks unless I feel like sharing the showers with a dozen other soldiers. He picks leaves out of my hair as we walk toward the base hospital, a squat building overgrown with ivy.
“You look like a shrub,” he says, sporting an almost-manic smile.
“That’s exactly what you’re supposed to say.”
Cal nearly giggles. “How would you know?”
“I—ugh,” I deflect, ducking into the entrance.
The hospital is nearly deserted at this hour, staffed with a few nurses and doctors to oversee next to no patients. Healers make them mostly irrelevant, needed only for lengthy diseases or extremely complicated injuries. We walk the cinder-block halls alone, under harsh fluorescent lights and easy silence. My cheeks still burn as my mind does war with itself. Instinct makes me want to shove Cal into the nearest room and lock the door behind us. Sense tells me I cannot.
I thought it would be different. I thought I would feel different. Cal’s touch has not erased Maven’s. My memories are still there, still just as painful as they were yesterday. And as much as I try, I have not forgotten the canyon that will always stretch between us. No kind of love can erase his faults, just like none can erase mine.
A nurse with an armful of blankets rounds the corner ahead, her feet a blur over the tiled floor. She stops at the sight of us, almost dropping the linens. “Oh!” she says. “You’re fast, Miss Barrow!”
My flush intensifies as Cal quickly turns a laugh into a cough. “Excuse me?”
She grins. “We just sent a message to your home.”
“Uh . . . ?”
“Follow me, sweetie; I’ll take you to her.” The nurse beckons, shifting the linens to her hip. Cal and I trade confused glances. He shrugs and trots after her, oddly carefree. His army-trained caution seems far away.
The nurse chatters excitedly as we walk in her wake. Her accent is Piedmontese, making the words slower and sweeter. “Shouldn’t take long. She’s progressing quickly. Soldier to the bone, I suppose. Doesn’t want to waste any time.”
Our hallway dead-ends into a larger ward, much busier than the rest of the hospital. Wide windows look out on yet another garden, now dark and lashed with rain. Piedmont certainly has a thing for flowers. Several doors branch off on either side, leading to empty rooms and empty beds. One of them is open, and more nurses flit in and out. An armed Scarlet Guard soldier keeps watch, although he doesn’t look very alert. It’s still early, and he blinks slowly, numbed by the quiet efficiency of the ward.