Page 73 of Fable for the End of the World

The memory of it—that horrible, clenching pressure—is as distant as a dream. All I know now is the softness of her touch. The warmth of her body, her lips.

“Oh,” I say. “I was just afraid you would hate me for being a terrible kisser.”

She laughs. I think it surprises us both, how easily the sound slips out. It’s low and breathy, but it’s real, and threaded with affection.

“No,” she says. “But I’m easy to impress. I’ve never kissed anyone before.”

I laugh, too. A dark-gold, molten feeling pools at the bottom of my belly.

“Well,” I say, “you’re the first person I’ve wanted to.”

Jacob doesn’t count. Neither does Adrian Pietersen, or the handful of other boys who awkwardly stuck their tongues down my throat while I stood there, still and cold as a fish. With Melinoë holding me, I feel as new and alive as shoots of green showing themselves in the earth.

I reach for her again. Cupping her face, my thumbs brush her cheekbones. Her dark eyes are like pools under the new moon, showing me my own reflection. I remember how I once cowered under her gaze, the prosthetic staring down at me, depthless and inhuman. With her so fragile now, stripped in every sense of the word, the eye becomes a lovely thing, as precious as a rare jewel.

“You’re so beautiful,” I whisper.

That faint purple flush comes over her. “It’s just the surgeries. It’s not real.”

“You feel real to me.”

Our lips meet again, with more insistence this time. She pushes herself up on her knees, and I can only imagine how much it hurts, with her legs as blistered as they are—but if she feels any pain, she doesn’t let me know. She just holds me tighter, so that her bones are pressed against my bones, her bare skin against the fabric of my clothes, and I want to wrap her up, envelop her, keep her safe from the danger and the cold.

The air is still sooty with the remains of the fire, smoldering to ashes outside the door. There are holes in the wood where the light spills in, bright white as it reflects off the snow. It could be a dream: the outlying Counties of New Amsterdam, covered in a layer of impossible frost.

I know it will melt. Already water is dripping from the leaves and the branches, and the ice is draining into the dirt. But beneath the surface, there is a metamorphosis taking place, in the mud and the flower buds, just curling out of their seed hulls. The earth doesn’t remember snow, either. To the soil and the seeds, all of this is new, too. How could anyone expect it to stay the same?

We lie facing each other in the bed, close enough for our noses to brush. Our hair streams over our bare shoulders, tangling like a nexus of tree roots. Light braiding with dark. Melinoë closes her eyes, breathing softly.

I remember the tug of jealousy I felt when she told me she hadslept in the same bed as Keres. Now I have to bite my lip to keep from smiling, because I’m the one who gets to hold her, to touch her. To kiss her. I trace my thumb along her collarbone. Her lashes flutter.

“Can I tell you something?” I whisper.

She opens her eyes. Nods.

“I think you were wrong.”

“About what?”

“About people.” I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. There’s a scar just by her ear, too, a very faint one, half hidden beneath the soft fuzz on her temple. That’s where they must have implanted her comms chip. “There’s lots of reasons to have faith in them.”

A small furrow appears between her brows. She’s quiet, but after a moment, she replies, “Maybe just a single reason. Maybe just a single person.”

I slow my breathing until it matches hers. “Sometimes all you need is one.”

Twenty-Eight

Melinoë

Sleep finds Inesa quickly, but it can’t seem to get a hold on me.The pain has receded into the background, just nipping at me lightly when I move too quickly or too suddenly. It’s more the opposite sensation that keeps me awake: the way my skin is still warm and humming with the memory of her touch. The way my lips are swollen, throbbing with the echoes of pleasure. I touch them and feel the pulse of my own heartbeat, dragging and low.

When I do close my eyes, the world behind them explodes with color. Bright white and deep green. Even with the more-than-perfect vision my prosthetic grants me, it all feels new. Shades I’ve never seen before. Hues I didn’t believe were real. Extinct colors, long-erased from the City, from the world Caerus built, but springing quietly back to life out here.

Inesa’s bare shoulders rise and fall with her breathing. The bruises I left on her neck have nearly faded, but there’s a smaller one blooming up in its place, violet and tender, in the shape of my mouth. I want to kiss her again. I want to touch her. I want to fallasleep next to her and know nothing will wake me.

But I remember it all now. Azrael jerking me out of Keres’s bed. The icy fury in his eyes. I extricate myself from the blankets, taking care not to disturb Inesa. When I rise from the bed and put my weight gingerly on my feet, pain shoots up my legs and jolts my heart. I have to bite my lip to keep from making a sound.

I wait until the pain returns to its bearable equilibrium, and then I walk over to the table. My hunting suit still lies puddled on the floor, torn and charred. Streaks of my blood are drying on the wood. The jagged holes in the wall and the door where the Dogs clawed their way in are exposing planks of shivery light. The woodstove is cold.

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