Page 58

Unless, I supposed, you knew where the tunnels were.

I walked a narrow path to the top of a hill, where it seemed many had come to contemplate. The grass made way for me, well acquainted with visitors.

The earth felt different in this place. I could feel a subtle shift beneath my feet. It was minute—a warning of something bigger. Greater. I wondered if there were tunnels beneath this exact place, if the disturbance I felt was not intuitive but mechanical, man-made.

In my schooling, I’d learned that earth differed wherever one walked. Sometimes it slid underfoot where one couldn’t see it, the silt beneath the surface forever rearranging where the seawater and wind persuaded it. In the city, the earth hummed, magnetic and pulsing. Here, though, in the brink, the trench bowled out into widespread land, and the earth was ravenous. Every now and then, it opened its jaw and swallowed men whole.

I sat on the hill’s peak, but I did not look out into the wide-open spaces and marvel at the trench. Instead, I turned my body toward the town of Kenton proper and shook my head in disbelief. I wondered what my professors would say to this.

The wind responded, colder than I’d expected, harsher, blowing through the stalks and sending ripples over the ground. The seasons were colliding. I closed my eyes, tipped my head back.

How I hated the quiet. The solitude. Seven years, and it clung to me still. I wanted volume and laughter and the tinkling of many voices talking at once. I wanted meals in the company of others whose elbows rested alongside mine. I wanted to reclaim familiarity with someone who knew who I was. I wanted and wanted and wanted but had learned to ignore it.

Hiding was safe.

I was made of both parts that were logical, careful, and parts that clamored to be something loud and brilliant, and even after all this time, Ihadn’t learned to reconcile them. The two sides parried in my mind in an endless loop.

No one can be trusted. Don’t get close. Run.

Listen to the ground. Can you hear it? Why does it tremble?

Heavy panting mercifully broke the quiet. A great shaggy head appeared over the cusp of the hill.

And I smiled, despite myself. “Hello, Isaiah,” I said.

The great dog bounded to me, his tongue dripping into my hand as he sniffed. He galloped away again just as fast, returning to the man who appeared ten paces behind, his peaked cap hiding his face.

I didn’t bother to stand. I squinted at him instead. “Patrick,” I said evenly. It was difficult to restrain inflection. I wanted so badly to be indifferent to him, unintimidated. Unafraid. Once, he’d only been a brash boy with a double-looped belt.

The scowl failed to mar his features. Cold eyes and all, he’d grown to be as finely carved as a sculpture. Tall, imposing, and wholly masculine.

He came to a standstill, breathing heavily, then raised his eyebrows as though I should be the one to speak next. The sun broke through and kissed his tanned skin, the two of them old friends.

“A walk?” he asked. It was that same flat tenor he’d used in the tunnel, the one that resonated all the way to my bones. “You wanted to take a walk?”

“I did,” I smiled sweetly. If it irritated him more, then good. He’d tried to lock me up by myself inside a dark room, after all.

“Your lodgings not to your likin’?” he asked. Isaiah begged at his feet.

“They’re lovely,” I said. “But I do like to walk.”

“Alone, apparently.”

“Ah.” I nodded. “I didwantto stay with the boy, but he’s awfully skittish. Kept insisting we return.”

Patrick hissed something through his teeth, then took a flask from his waistcoat and unscrewed the top. He seemed irritable. Heated. It amused me, though I couldn’t explain why. “Seems a little early for liquor.”

“No it fuckin’ ain’t,” he murmured, and brought the flask to his lips.Patrick had a long swig, then took his time stashing it away. All the while, he stared at me with a puzzling expression. It was not a friendly one.

He clicked his tongue, then said, “Well, shall I throw you over my shoulder and drag you back? I’ll confess, it’s what I fantasized doing on the way over here.”

Confidence fled. I swallowed.

“Your cheeks have gone red,” he said blandly, shaking his head. “God. That school turn you chaste?”

“It’s resentment.” I quickly turned my eyes away, tried to banish the heat in my face. “I don’t take well to kidnapping.” I wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t, in fact, drag me back to that room with its damned cherry blossom walls. I curled my fingers into the grass.

He stalked toward me then, curved over me, eclipsing the sky, and a thrill fluttered through me. But instead of hauling me upward, he gave a resigned sigh and took the space next to me on the ground, resting an arm on one knee. Isaiah settled in front of him with his head on Patrick’s shoe.