Before She Ignites (Fallen Isles Trilogy #1)(47)

Oh, Darina and Damyan, how I wished for Doctor Chilikoba and her amber bottle of pills. Without it, I was at the mercy of my own tempestuous mind.

::You don’t like it.:: He peered at me through the hole.

“Of course not.” My voice cracked. On top of everything, my voice cracked.

Speaking of cracks, maybe one would open in the floor and I’d fall in.

::Then I will not ask about it again.::

Gratitude warred with the humiliation. Of course, he was just being nice because we were trapped here together, but I wouldn’t turn down that courtesy. ::Thank you,:: I tapped.

He was so kind. Thoughtful. For a moment, I closed my eyes and recalled how he’d given me water, and the gentle way he’d held his hand above mine. Close enough to touch, but light enough not to crush. Maybe it had been nothing for him—he seemed like the kind of person who’d have saved anyone—but I wanted to replay those memories over and over, polishing them like a pretty stone, until they became a safe place to go when the panic loomed around me.

::What do you like?:: he asked.

That was a question you asked someone you wanted to be friends with, not what you asked the girl you were stuck with. So why had he asked me?

Mother would warn me it wasn’t because he wanted my friendship as badly as I wanted his. He was from Idris—therefore not from Damina and not to be trusted. (Hristo wasn’t technically from Damina, either, but she trusted him because he’d lived most of his life on Damina and had already nearly died for me.)

Hristo would tell me to be cautious, but Ilina would suggest Aaru’s interest could be genuine.

Krasimir was always telling me to be bold—to be myself, counting and all. I wasn’t bold, though, and I didn’t want to count. Or, rather, I wanted to be able to make it stop.

I searched my mind for another absent person’s advice, but I couldn’t guess what Father would say. He was never around to say much. And Zara? She’d stopped voluntarily speaking to me three years ago.

That was it. For one of the most famous people in Damina—maybe in the Fallen Isles—I was really, pathetically, alone. At least when it came to people I took advice from.

I came back to myself. Back to the gloomy space beneath the bed. Back to the boy waiting on the other side of the hole.

Aaru hadn’t moved. He didn’t ask again, or make impatient motions, or fall asleep. He just . . . waited, giving me time and space to consider my answer. What did I like?

::Why do you ask?:: My throat would have closed against that question and made my voice sound pitiful. But with the quiet code . . . He couldn’t tell how much I dreaded the inevitable answer: that he’d asked simply to be polite, because we were allies and if I ever escaped, so would he.

Our hands were close together. I hadn’t realized it before, but now, he reached out and, with a breath-light touch, stroked down my smallest finger. It was a tiny thing, but it sent warm thrills through me. And then he whispered, “I want to know you.”

Five words. They destroyed me. They destroyed everything I thought I’d understood about why he was nice to me. He wanted to know me.

In the same way I wanted to know him?

But why? He couldn’t see my face. All he’d witnessed of me were my fumbling attempts to befriend him, and crying, and near death.

He was so unlike all the boys on Damina. The outgoing boys who could charm a rock. The polished boys with perfect manners and practiced smiles. The boys who always knew exactly the right thing to say.

No, Aaru wasn’t like them. He was quiet. Mysterious. Patient. Achingly generous. Without ulterior motive. I liked the way he spoke—with careful deliberation, as though every word mattered as much as the last. I liked the way he touched my hand, and the flutter of yearning it ignited deep inside me.

Why would he want to know me? I was nothing.

No, his wanting had to be different. His wanting was yet another effort of his Idrisi upbringing. He was kind. He was considerate. He’d have saved anyone’s life. We were allies.

There. That was better. Safer.

That left two choices: give him the truth, or give him one of the manufactured answers Mother and Father had designed for me, because the truth was not appropriate for parties and important social functions. The truth drew curiosity, making people ask me questions when it was my duty to encourage them to talk. After all, they were much smarter and more interesting.

But we weren’t at a party now. Or an important social function. Here, I wasn’t the Hopebearer who needed to dazzle. No. We were in a deep-underground nightmare, and Aaru already knew my most secret shame. He promised not to speak of it again, and I believed him; he was filled with such ardent silence and mystery. Maybe, with him, I didn’t have to hide the parts of me that had always been deemed unacceptable.

Here I was just an anonymous girl who liked the same thing a thousand other girls liked.

::Dragons,:: I said at last. ::I like dragons.::





BEFORE





Nine Years Ago


MY EIGHTH BIRTHDAY WAS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE.

Mother told Sylva to put me in a silk dress as gold as the sun, and put my hair into an elaborate braided bun. Then Father gave me a wrapped box to hold the whole carriage ride out of Crescent Prominence. Hristo sat across from me, already my constant shadow.

It didn’t take long before I realized where we were going: the Luminary Department of Drakontos Examination.