Infinite (24 page)

There was nothing I could do for his grief. Instead, I took his hand and guided him into the darksoul house before anyone came looking for us.

THE DARKSOUL HOUSE was filthy, heavy with dust and neglect and age. I didn’t know who’d lived here before, but only memories occupied this space now.

My lungs still felt choked with smoke as I helped Sam onto a musty sofa. He collapsed over his knees, face buried in his arms. His sobs were quiet, broken, so I pushed down my grief and moved through the house to make sure we were alone. Maybe there was something useful.

The house was laid out a lot like Sam’s house, with a large portion of the first floor dedicated to art. Canvases covered the walls, while statues and wood carvings filled the main floor. Blankets protected the hardwood, though now the wool was tattered and gray.

In the kitchen, I found an old block of cheese. I cut off the mold and put the rest on a plate to take to Sam. There was bread on the counter, but it looked more like a compost pile than food.

I added a slab of dried venison to the plate and poured two cups of water. It wasn’t much of a meal, but it was better than nothing.

“Start eating.” I left the food by Sam and headed upstairs, where I found clean clothes inside cedar chests, and a cabinet full of painkillers and burn ointments. My arm and fingers throbbed where I’d been shot, but I’d been burned worse.

I took a few painkillers and brought some down to Sam, who was slowly cutting the cheese into slices.

“Here.” I handed him a few pills and finished slicing.

We ate without conversation. The food tasted old, sort of dusty, but it was better than starving, and it gave me the energy to check the windows for signs of anyone after us.

“This was Vic’s house,” Sam said after a few minutes. “He built most of the statues around the market field and carved the relief on top of the Councilhouse. Lots of other things, too, but those were the projects everyone talked about.”

“Is he the one who taught you carving?” Outside, the trees were white and motionless. “Like at your cottage and the shelves in your house?” Sam’s graveyard had been filled with beautiful statues of animals and people playing music. Even the benches had been art. And inside, the wall of bookshelves had creatures of Range etched into the edges. Herons, bears, elk, wolves, shrikes.

“Yeah.” Sam finished his water and stood. “He carved some of them, and taught me how to do it myself. I was never as good as him, and I had to be careful of my hands, but we became friends. I wanted you to learn from him, too.”

I moved away from the window and took in Sam’s wrecked appearance. Smoke stains clung to his shirt and trousers, and his hair hung in black mats. We both needed to shower, and there were enough of Vic’s old clothes upstairs we could surely find something to fit.

“Come on.” I motioned toward the stairway. “We’ve got a few hours.”

While he showered, I checked outside again. Nothing. No sylph. No Sarit.

She’d said she would follow.

But she hadn’t believed it. She’d known, then. She’d known she wouldn’t make it.

I slumped to the end of the bed and checked for messages that wouldn’t be there. Nothing from Stef. She was dead. Nothing from Sarit. She was dead, too.

My best friend was dead.

A sob burst from me as I fumbled for the message function on my SED. My thumbs slipped over the letters as I typed.

My chest ached as I sent the message she’d never receive.

Her image smiled at me from the screen. Sarit with her bees. Sarit and me, sitting in the market field with cups of coffee. Sarit dressed as an exotic bird for the masquerade last year.

Tears blurred the pictures, and I let my SED drop to my lap.

When Sam finished showering, I hurried to wash the stink off me, but there was no washing away the ache of loss. Sorrow saturated every bit of me like acid.

Dry and dressed, I found Sam sitting on the foot of the bed, listening to music.

“Let me treat your burns.” I sat next to him, but he stopped me before I opened the tube.

“I don’t want—” He touched my cheek and let his fingertips trail down my neck and shoulder, and suddenly I was too conscious of the way my borrowed clothes were too big and hung off my shoulders and hips. “Later,” he said. “The burns aren’t going anywhere.”

The burn cream and other medical supplies dropped to the floor with soft thuds.

“I just want you. I want you forever, and I’m afraid—” His hands closed over mine. “I want a life with you. I’d give anything to go back and start this one over, to be reborn into this lifetime. I wouldn’t waste it. I’d find you sooner. I’d take you somewhere safe. I’d show you music and love and life every day so you were never alone, never afraid. If I could start over knowing what I know now—” He released a desperate laugh. “I know how this sounds.”

“It’s okay.” My words were a breath, a gasp.

He squeezed my hands. “I’m afraid, Ana. I’m afraid, and I feel like if I don’t kiss you right now, I’ll break apart.”

The music ended. Silence tugged through the room. All I could hear was Sam’s shallow breathing. All I could feel was the pounding of my heartbeat.

He wanted this now? After everything that had happened? Before everything we were about to do? How could anyone—

No, I understood. A heavy desire for
him
wove through me. We’d lost so much, and we were about to lose even more. If we survived Soul Night, maybe we could have a life together.

But victory seemed an unattainable goal, and right now we had each other.

I wouldn’t waste our chance by hesitating.

“You won’t break apart,” I said. “I won’t let you.” I watched his mouth, the curve of his lips and the creases and the gentle parting between from the way he might have been about to respond but couldn’t seem to find words. The seconds spun longer as I caressed his cheeks and through his hair, all shaggy from weeks without cutting. Then I kissed him.

He let out a relieved groan and pulled me in, his mouth warm and firm against mine. Jaw muscles worked beneath my palms. Stubble scraped my skin. I didn’t care. I wanted only to drown in this kiss.

His hands slid down my sides and settled on my hips. I looped my arms around his shoulders and let him lay me onto my back, damp hair haloed around me. He kissed my throat and shoulders, gasped for breath over my collarbone.

I couldn’t think. I could only feel the way his hands glided over my stomach and down my legs. Emotions caught up and tangled in my throat as he helped me out of my shirt and trousers, leaving only a thin silk camisole and leggings beneath. I shivered in the cool air.

“Is this all right?” he whispered. “If you don’t want to, that’s okay.”

“I want to.” I sat up and stretched to pull his shirt over his head. In the dim room, his skin was dark and I couldn’t see the burns, just shadows and planes of muscle that shifted beneath my hands. “I’ve loved you my entire life. From the moment I first heard music, to when I saw your name inside a book, to the night you saved me from the water. No one has ever made me feel like you do: like I’m wanted; like I matter.”

He kissed me, long and beautiful and desperate, and he didn’t resist when I pulled him down on top of me, trying to draw him impossibly close.

But our lives were made of impossible things. I’d known him at the masquerade. We’d danced as though we’d been dancing for years and centuries and millennia. And when we’d kissed for the first time, we’d become a song with one breath, one voice, and infinite melodies. It was music, the way he touched me, the way our bodies fit together.

He caressed my ribs and hips and legs, then kissed trails of fire down my throat. The heat of his body over mine made me yearn for something deeper, but I let him set our pace as he kissed me, hungry and desperate, firm and fierce, and gentle as though I was the most precious thing in the world to him.

He drew off my camisole, making my whole body hum with anticipation and desire. The last of our clothes dropped to the floor with a soft
whumph
.

My heart filled up as he showed me a thousand ways he loved me, and in these glorious moments of peace, there was no fear or mourning or despair. There was only this boy. This body entwined with mine. This soul I’d always known.

Questions hovered in the gasp-filled inches between us, but I was too dizzy to think. I touched his face, his hair, smoothed back the black strands while I waited for him to say something. If we should say anything. A thread of awkwardness coiled inside me as the waiting grew longer.

Sam kissed me again, and in the dimness, he looked my age. Really my age, not the illusion of reincarnation. He looked like I felt: excited and hopeful, a little nervous. “I hope that was—”

“Wonderful.” Did I speak too quickly? My voice was high and giddy. I hardly sounded like myself. “It was wonderful.”

“Oh, good.” Relief echoed in his words. “Good.”

The idea of him being worried about it made me giggle, and then he laughed, too, until we couldn’t breathe anymore and had to resort to shallow gasping that turned into kissing. I wanted this to go on forever.

But as my love deepened and spilled through me like music, pieces of me dreaded what would come next. We’d already lived through terrible things, terrible losses. And what happened tonight would only be worse.

Two hours before sunset, we took our things and started west, toward the temple and Councilhouse. I’d seen no sign of the sylph, but we couldn’t wait. Using Stef’s program, I’d tracked SED conversations about the fire and what was to happen tonight. Most people only speculated on how Janan would return, and what would happen with the phoenix trapped inside the cage.

Deborl had put out a warning about the escaped prisoners, as well as Sam and me, reminding everyone that I was an exile and Janan might not reward them if they didn’t find and capture me. Or kill me. Killing was better.

I kept that to myself as Sam and I crept through the northeastern residential quarter, cutting through yards, hiding inside houses and behind trees whenever we heard voices. The sun stretched lower toward the city wall, silhouetting the temple in the center of the city.

“Do you think the dragons will really come?” Sam asked.

“I think they will.”

“Because they want me dead.”

“They want the threat of the phoenix song gone.”

“It’s hard to believe this is something they’re trying to destroy me for. Not just one lifetime, but all of them.”

Mysterious as it was, the phoenix song was as much a part of him as his soul. A year ago, Councilor Sine had called music a “passion of the soul,” which had resonated with me. After years of being called “nosoul,” I’d still been accepting that I had a soul, and hearing that poetry or music or art could be tied to the soul had made me glow with happiness. But with Sam, it seemed music was literally part of him, something so intrinsic to his soul he’d be a wholly different person without it.

Yet he still didn’t know how to use it.

Well, he wasn’t a phoenix.

We came to the edge of the market field with an hour to spare. Our goal had been to get here early to give us time to wait on top of the Councilhouse for the dragons, but we hadn’t anticipated all of Heart getting here early, too.

From behind heavy underbrush, we spied thousands of people in the market field, closing in on the industrial quarter where the cage was. Bright lights hung from poles, the white beams focused on the cage and the cloth-covered lump inside it. Could there really be a phoenix in there? It didn’t look as if it had moved in the days since Merton had paraded it into the city—not that I had a good view from here.

“We have to cross the market field,” Sam muttered.

“Yeah.” Maybe we should have come much earlier, but then we’d have been waiting on the roof for hours, possibly getting seen. . . . “Let’s go north, then around. Most people will be heading south, so we only need to wait for the market field to clear on that side before we climb up.”

Sam’s expression darkened, but he nodded and we crept north and east along the edge of the market field, hiding in brush and trees whenever voices came too close, but never forgetting that time was limited. If we were too late—

We wouldn’t be too late.

As evening deepened, the temple seemed to shine brighter, a fallen star in the center of our city.
Their
city. I was an exile.

It seemed like forever before the flow of people on this side of the market field stopped. Their voices toward the industrial quarter were a low roar, and I could just hear someone speaking above the crowd.

“Janan, who gave us life!” The voice sounded like Deborl. “Janan, who gave us souls!”

A cheer rose up at his lies. They’d all been living and soul-filled long before Janan began reincarnating them. I wanted to believe there was
something
out there giving life and souls, but I
knew
it wasn’t Janan.

“Let’s go,” I muttered to Sam, and together, we trotted across the market field. I strained my ears for any sounds besides ours, but I heard only the steady
thump, thump
of our boots hitting the cobblestones.

I checked over my shoulder, hyperaware and paranoid that someone was watching us, but I didn’t see anyone in the gloaming, only shadows. The temple lit our path, too brilliant to look at directly. I kept my eyes down as we approached and veered toward the Councilhouse, which was fused to the temple.

Half an hour until sundown.

At the base of the Councilhouse, Sam and I pulled off our backpacks and removed Stef’s last gift: gloves and boot covers.

We were going to scale the exterior wall of the Councilhouse.

The gloves and boot covers were inside out to keep the adhesive fresh, and to keep them from sticking to everything else we owned. As quickly as we could, we stepped into the boot covers and pulled on the gloves, carefully tightening all the straps so they wouldn’t slip off.

“Ready?” I glanced at Sam.