Page 75 of Last of Her Name

I swallow the melted snow, shivering as it races down my throat. “Oh. It was nothing.”

“But it wasn’tnothing, was it?”

“Pol …” I look down, frowning at my boots.

“How long are we going to avoid talking about it?”

Heat rushes to my cheeks. “There’s nothing to say! We … we were caught up in the Trying ceremony, and I’d thought you were dead just days before. Anyway, you’re the one who started it, not me.”

“So therewasan ‘it’?”

“Ugh! That’s not what I meant.” I turn away, pressing my hands to my flushed face. I stare across the dark mountains, trying to calm my quickening pulse. I can feel Pol’s eyes following me.

“You’re right, you know,” he says. “I did start it.”

I look back at him. “What’s that? Did Pol Androsthenes honestly admitIwasright?”

He frowns. “I’m not joking, Stace. Not now.”

I don’t like the way he’s looking at me. I don’t like the way my heart is jumping at the memory of my hand pressed to his chest, our skin separated only by a thin layer of paint.

“We should go back inside,” I say, turning and walking past him, toward the lift, but stop when he begins to speak.

“Do you remember back when I was thirteen,” he says quietly, “and you were twelve, and we found out the mantibu ranch across town was selling all its elderly animals to a slaughterhouse?”

I turn back to him, eyebrows rising. “We ran all the way there, as fast as we could. I was crying the whole way, I was so angry.”

“You made me pretend my leg was broken so the ranchers would be distracted while you opened the barn. You chased those mantibu so deep into the hills the ranchers gave up looking.”

I snort. “Dad was furious with me. He made me scrub every vat in the winery twice, as punishment.”

“And you conned me into doing the workforyou.”

I give him a sheepish grin. “I’d forgotten all about that day.”

“I hadn’t.” He stares straight into my eyes. “Because that was the day I fell in love with you.”

I stop breathing.

Pol steps closer, his eyes burning into mine, his cheeks flushed from the cold. I’m pinned beneath that gaze, my body turned to stone.

This cannot be happening.

These words can’t be coming from his lips.

I stare at him, snow swirling around him, the stars shining above him, everything about this moment impossible.

“My dad figured it out by the time I was twelve,” he continues. “And that’s why he told me the truth about you and our family’s history. Because he wanted me to understand why you could never be mine. And so I tried to forget what I felt. I really did. Especially since you never seemed to see me the same way.”

I turn away from him, my chest pressing tight. I hold a hand to it as my mind spins. “Why are you telling me all this?”

Pol lowers his hood, as if shedding a lifelong disguise. “Because you told me you couldn’t trust me anymore. So I’m done lying. Maybe you’ll never trust me again, and maybe I deserve that, but I’ll still keep trying. Till the day I die, Stace, I’ll be trying to earn your trust back.”

“I can’t … I can’t think about this right now. Pol, I …”

I turn around, and he’s there, his hands sliding up my arms. Somehow my fingers find his waist, and I grip the cloth of his cloak.

My eyes meet his—my head tilted back, his bent toward mine. Snowflakes dance around him, melting on his hair, turning to water that slides down his temple and cheeks. The wind ruffles the fur lining of his cloak; it brushes against his jaw. His horns shine silver in the starlight.