Page 63 of The Last One
“Crimson ink,” he whispers. “A circle filled in. A smaller circle connected to it by a tendril? And something else.” He leans in even more.
My knees are almost pulp now—he’s so close to me. “What?” I whisper, my neck tingling. My arms drop, perfectly still, no longer hiding my bandeau from his gaze.
“Letters,” he whispers. “Or symbols? I don’t know what they are. There’s another, but it’s hidden mostly beneath your chest wrap. You’d have to move it down some if you want me to see all of it.”
I reach back to unclasp my bandeau. “Is it ugly?” I ask, my head lolling to the right.
“On you?” His breath teases my shoulder. “I don’t think anything would look ugly on you.”
My heartbeat quickens, my limbs too heavy to move.
Then he says, “Do you know what it means?” His breath licks the nape of my neck.
I shudder and shake my head. “No.” Eyes closed, I imagine his hand coaxing me back…back…until I’m firm against him, immovable. I draw in a shaking breath, and just as I prepare to drop my bandeau to let him see everything, he takes a step back and then another step back.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, confusion replacing heat.
“The sunabi—” He’s looking down at the corpses on the floor.
Desire no longer floods my veins because, across the sitting room, the sunabi have begun to shrivel. I pull on Jadon’s white tunic and wander over to the drying pools of sunabi blood. Cold, damp air pushes up from the hole the creatures dug to breach the parlor floor. I crouch and swipe a finger through the clotted green goop.
With a rush, a vision flashes behind my eyes. A white sunabi, its birch-branch skin luminescent, bares its jagged teeth, glares at me even without eyes. A lake behind it, its glassy surface still and glowing a malignant green.Devour. It must be. I look beyond that glowing sunabi and see waves of sunabi and waves of cursuflies. I spin around, and behind me, rising in a red ash sky, high in the clouds, are mountains of silver rock. I turn back, wanting to rush forward and begin my assault of the attacking otherworldly, but smoky tendrils drifting from that mountain hold me back.
“What is it?” Jadon whispers from behind me.
“I’m remembering something,” I say, staring at my soiled fingers, “but I can’t quite describe it out loud. I don’t think it would make sense.” It seemed unreal, but my trembling is not.
“I’ll listen when you’re ready,” Jadon says. “I’ll always listen. Know that.”
I nod, pulling my attention from the blood on my finger to his sincere gaze, and my trembling fades.
“How’s that cut?” He touches his own collarbone.
I look down at the wound made by that shard of steel. “It doesn’t hurt that much.”
“You sure?” He stares at the bloody mark, then takes a step toward me.
My muscles tighten and heat—my body remembers.Come closer.I want him near. I want his touch. I want his comfort. I want more.
He doesn’t come closer, but he doesn’t move away, either, as the air between us sizzles.
As if on cue, Olivia hurries back into the cottage, Philia in tow. “If I’m coming with you,” she says, “Phily needs to come, too.”
“I didn’t know you were coming,” I say, pulling my gaze from Jadon’s face.
“Of course I am.” Olivia produces her precious book from where it was hidden beneath her shirt. “You’ll need this. It could give us some clues about what’s happening. And I don’t go anywhere without it.” She dashes to the back rooms.
“Are you sure about coming?” I ask Philia. “We’re heading west, toward Pethorp. And we’ll be moving fast. It won’t be easy.”
The young woman’s lip quivers. “I-I have no one now. My brothers and my mother—” A strangled noise comes from her throat, and she whispers, “They’re dead now. And my uncle…” She clamps her lips, shrugs, and shakes her head.
I pause, then touch my heart. “I’m sorry. Really, I am.”
Copperhair nods, relief in her relaxing facial muscles. “I know it wasn’t all your fault,” she says. “That woman, Elyn—she was terrifying. I don’t blame you for hiding from her.”
“Take this and let’s go.” Jadon hands me a sword and the bag he’s prepared for me. He slings his knapsack over his shoulders as well as a sack full of other weaponry.
“I’ve never in my life seen things like that before,” Olivia calls from the bedroom as she finishes packing. “But she flicked them away like fleas, Phily.” She returns to the sitting room with two bags filled with who-knows-what and puffs of tulle. She tosses me a bag.
