Page 67 of Still the Sun

“Can I ... touch it?”

Heartwood sits by Machine Three, his back to me, his shirt pulled down to his elbows, his hair pulled over one shoulder. First sun breaks through the mists outside, illuminating the raised scars on his back, forking out like the branches of the trees I’ve seen in his eyes.

The subtlest dip of his head grants me permission. Gingerly, with one finger, then two, I touch one of the slimmer branches near his shoulders. It doesn’tfeellike a scar, merely healthy, raised flesh. Like the Well of Creation simply made him this way, just as it made me with two arms and two legs and a dimple on my left cheek.

I trace the branch down to the tip of his shoulder blade, where it merges with others. I run my hand down the length of another, to the center of his back. He shudders.

Pulling back, I ask, “Does it ... hurt?”

He shakes his head. So I follow another branch up to his opposite shoulder where, reaching back, he grasps my hand, knitting his fingers together with mine.

I tighten the belt, hoping that will help the rest of the mechanism turn a little better. I’m pulling back from Machine Three when I hear the ladder shift against the hole in the floor. I wait for a white head to pop up, but whether it will be Heartwood or Moseus—

Heartwood.

I ease myself down from the machine. He’s gone hunting again, knowing I like meat (and Salki likes meat, though he’s yet to meet her), and has been gone four full cycles. If he caught anything, he must have left it on the first floor.

He grins as I untangle myself from the machine and mutter chastisements at him. I told him it doesn’t matter, and Moseus won’t like it, but Heartwood is who he is, and I love him for it. I find my way into his arms and stay there a long moment, debating whether or not to apologize for the grease I’m undoubtedly smearing on his fancy-god leathers.

He’s about to say something, but I hear Moseus approaching from below, so, interrupting as I do, I whisper, “Do you think you could come to Emgarden again? When the mists are high?”

His brow furrows. “Why?” He smooths a loose lock of hair from my face, only to have it fall right back. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong,” I promise, splaying my hands over his chest. “I just need to see you. Away from here. Away from him.”

He runs the pad of his thumb over my cheekbone, then kisses me chastely. “I will always come when you ask, Nophe. Always.”

My lungs empty as I arch into him, desperate to be closer. My hands run down his bare shoulders and over the prints of his godhood, memorizing every dip and facet as he murmurs my name into my hair. Together we are everything, heaven and creation and hell, and I know in the deepest recesses of my mind, heart, and body that I will never be the same.

Chapter 22

Tears stream from my eyes like they are two broken wells. I lift dust-covered hands and press them to my mouth, stifling clipped breaths. My throat aches and swells. My fingers tremble.

Oh gods, Heartwood.I forgot him. I don’t know how, or why, but I lost all of it. It’s been ... a year? Since that last memory. And all this time he stayed cooped up in that tower, while I went about business as though he never existed. As thoughwenever existed.

I stand, dizzy from the blood pooling in my feet.Why didn’t you come to me?Would I have accepted his explanation?No.I know I wouldn’t have. But he could have tried! Why didn’t he try?

You betrayed us.

“But I didn’t,” I croak, and the tears wash anew. I have no recollection of betrayal. If I stole something critical, I hid it somewhere even I cannot find it. And if I stole something critical, how do the machines work?

But they don’t work. Not yet.But I would remember dismantling the power sources for five behemoth machines and then patching up the work to make it look like they never had them. I’m no blacksmith, no welder. I couldn’t have possibly—

The deep hollowness in my chest echoes so emphatically that I gasp and press both palms over it.Heartwood.I would have been so miserable, to be cut off so cleanly. Shattered. If he forgot me, us—

I have to see him.Now.I have to fix this.

I love him.

Surely it isn’t too late,I think as I sprint through the mist to the tower. His coolness toward me, his aloofness, hispainmakes so much sense now. Bearing my presence when I could not fathom his. Sucking it up, in part for Moseus’s sake, no doubt. Our story closed half-unwritten, with Heartwood’s part left to wander between the lines that once were.

Machine Three. Heartwood said it had something to do with Machine Three. But what did the Ancients hide there? What did Heartwood and Moseus awaken when they opened that hole through the floor to reach it? And why hasn’t it affected them in a similar manner?

Because they’re gods.My lungs start to sting. I force deeper breaths as I run, refusing to slow.

I remember it all. Heartwood and Moseus had been alone for some time before reaching out to me. Heartwood is a passionate creature by nature; he took an interest in me from the start, albeit not a romantic one. I sensed he was lonely. Made an effort to speak to him, though it was awkward at first. Heartwood conversed with me like a toddler learning to walk. I would have given up on him, if not for the work.

He became my sounding board. Every problem, every frustration, I took to Heartwood. We butted heads often. We were so very different. Weareso very different. And yet his genuine nature and honesty drew me to him. His openness, his willingness to help—

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