Page 106 of Lana Pecherczyk

“But Ravi also said they got it wrong,” Blake mumbled, twirling her hair. “Maybe we shouldn’t risk it if you’re not one hundred percent sure. Right?”

Intense blue eyes stared into her soul, to all the secret, hidden places she never dared examine before. Just when she thought he’d deny her suggestion, he flashed a heart-stopping grin and said, “Maybe.”

She exhaled.

“Okay, good.” She joined him at the table and picked up the bottle of ink.

The brush of his fingers on her jaw lifted her gaze to his.

“You’re really okay with this, aren’t you?” Wonder threaded through his voice.

“I am.”

“Hungry?”

“Not for food,” she teased.

He groaned and palmed his face.

“River?”

“I’m trying to be good,” he mumbled through his fingers, then glared down his body, “but this fucking bastard won’t shut up.”

“Your penis talks to you?”

He shot her an apologetic look. “He’s just angry that he waited so long.”

“Five days?”

He froze, eyes wide. “Um … so, have you had a tattoo before?”

“No.”

A certainsomeonein her old life thought they looked cheap. He mistook her angst and dipped to meet her eyes. “You afraid?”

Glass bottles tinkled as the caravan went over a bump. Blake looked around, noticing more jiggling things. They weren’t traveling at breakneck speed, but still…

“It’s just, these aren’t the conditions I imagined getting one in.”

“Mm,” he agreed, scowling at their surroundings and flicking beads irritably. He picked up the letter again. “Let me go over that challenge.”

“Three is a mark of feathered kin,” she recited, not needing to read. “Family crests must be etched within the skin with sacred ink that binds and burns, as each other’s loyalty is earned.” She pointed to the book. “Do you want the page numbers your parents referred to in their notes?”

He blinked. “And I thought crows had good memories.”

“Maybe I’m part magpie,” she joked, snorting.

“Those docile things?”

“Docile!” she scoffed. “Mate, I don’t know what you call a magpie, but in Australia, they’re about as vicious and territorial as you can get.” Remembering her old friend, she added, “To be fair, they usually have a good reason.”

“Oh yeah?”

“They’re protecting their nests.”

“Sounds fair.”

As they finished unpacking supplies, she told him the story about Scarface. When she was done, hiding the melancholy in her soul was hard. She’d lost so much of her world in the nuclear winter.