Page 11 of Ashes of Gold
“You okay?” Jhamal asks.
I blink and the images disappear. “Yes.”
I still can’t remember how I got in here or fully grasp why there’s a person with long eyelashes haunting me like a ghost in my memory. His curly smile, his touch. Blips of the foggy memory have returned over the months, but in bits, a wisp. That’s been my life for however many months. Sleep, eat, practice, and fight off broken pieces of memories.
My stomach hovers in the back of my throat.Up, I have to get up.But my brooding pins me to the ground like a weighted blanket. How is guilt like that? So heavy you can almostactuallyfeel it.
Focus, Rue.But my father’s dying stutter rings in my head. I grab the metal bars I sleep beside and shake them to drown out the sound. Metal rattles down the orb-lit passageway between cells.
“Let me out of here,” I want to scream, but no one ever answers. The bars are cold and heavy and I’m woozy for a second, holding the actual lead in my hands, against my skin. I let go and the light-headedness lifts. The cells around us have all emptied. I shudder to think of where they’ve gone.
“Morning, sunshine.” Jhamal stands, his warmth sweeping away. And just like that I’m cold all over.
I turn to him and he smiles. I smile back. At least I’m not in here alone. At least he’s been by my side. For all of it.
The familiar knot in the back of my neck, from sleeping on a bed as soft as rocks for months, aches. A clanging rattle and muffled footsteps somewhere above us urge me to my feet. We have minutes, no more.
Breakfast Lady drops food at the same time every day. The sun twinkles through a fissure in the cavernous ceiling. The lunch and dinner meals come heavily provisioned, flanked with armed Patrol on either side. But she’s always alone and never armed from what I can tell. Still, she’s nice and all, letting us borrow books. But today she’s my ticket to freedom. If I can take her unawares and convince her to give me the key to this cell, we’re out of here.
My fingers reach almost instinctively for the blade I fashioned from a fork the Breakfast Lady gave me weeks ago. I had to swear I’d never received one. I thought for sure a guard or the Chancellor himself would come cut off my head right then. But she believed me. And turns out, rubbing it back and forth against rock works well to sharpen it.
I scurry up and press into a wall of the cell so that she won’t be able to see me right away.
“Over here, hurry.” I wave at Jhamal. “Before she comes.”
“Jelani.” He pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Shut up.” I’d told him this plan last night before we fell asleep. He laughed then and I see his opinion of it hasn’t changed.
Black moons hang beneath his naturally sculpted brows. So beautiful they put mine to shame. His cheekbones push up, his lips purse in a smile. “We will not get out of here this way.”
“It’s going to work.”
“It will not. The server is not as naive as you think, Jelani. Shemight sneak us a spell book or two, but she won’t let us out of here. I—”
“I thought I was your Queen?” A joke. I’m no one’s royalty.
“You are.” He sighs, pressing into the shadow behind me. He’s a wall at my back.
“Mhmm,” I say, turning backward to look at him, and he does this thing with his lips and something below my navel twinges, but I shove it away. We’ve been close. Together. Alone. Relying on each other in this destitute cell for months. He sleeps next to me, his smiles start each of my days, and we rehearse my magic. I’ve watched lines hug his eyes that were never there before. His frame is leaner than it was months ago. His hair has grown out. But what’s grown the most is the longing in his eyes. We are all we’ve had… for so long.
He leans into my ear as I strain to hear how close the server is. “You should kiss me every morning, you know,” he says. “We could die in here.”
I laugh nervously. I can’t pretend I don’t remember how I shuddered with passion when my lips were pressed to his forever ago. But now the space where I’d carved out something for him is flooded with grief and shame. I can’t. I just can’t be that person to him. Not right now. Not after what I’ve done. Not with so many unknowns of what lies ahead. I gaze down at my feet, unable to meet his eyes, before turning back around. As much as Jhamal is comfort, help—the one who put me back together—he is also a reminder of how I failed.
I step forward to put a little more distance between us to keep my mind clear. I can’t let him cloud my focus. We’re getting out of here today.
He clears his throat and I know that are-you-serious-look he’s making. That same look when I’d had the idea to dig our way out.
“There’s a hole in the ceiling. If we could just…,” I’d began.
He’d actually laughed at that one. And I mean, sure, it was ridiculous. Not one of my best ideas, but I hadn’t eaten in long while, and, well, I’d seen it on some old movie. I turn and sure enough his lips are pushed sideways.
“You think I’m joking?” I shove him off. “This plan will work.”
“Fine, I’ll go along. But—” He taps his cheek.
I roll my eyes and his hint of a smile dissolves.
