Scavenge the Stars (Scavenge the Stars #1)(74)

“Oh.” She tilted her head, as if seeing it at another angle would throw it into sharper clarity. “I think I see it now.”

“Don’t you dare make fun.”

“No, no, I think it’s quite good. Is the mermaid supposed to be part manatee?”

Cayo threw the rest of his clay at her. She jumped back, but the clay hit her dress, a splatter of red and brown.

Cayo’s eyes widened. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”

She immediately retaliated, throwing a handful of clay at his coat. It hit his shoulder and splattered on the side of his face.

“All right,” he growled, gathering more clay. “Now it’s war.”

They threw and dodged and yelled, hurling insults at each other as they launched clay from their hands and ran from the other’s counterattacks. When Amaya proved to be too good at dodging, Cayo changed his strategy and came straight at her, his hands full.

She shrieked in a way she hadn’t done since she was a child, being chased by her father in the backyard as he pretended to be a monster. She ran from one side of the bridge to the next, but Cayo eventually cornered her and grabbed her arms, the clay squishing between them.

“Nooo,” she groaned around a laugh as he smeared it all up and down her sleeves. Liesl was going to have a conniption, but in that moment, Amaya didn’t care. She scraped some clay off her sleeve and rubbed it against Cayo’s cheek.

“Agh!” He reached for her face to retaliate, then hesitated. The sudden stillness between them made her highly aware of their heavy breathing, the way her chest moved so close to his.

Swallowing, Cayo reached up and touched her cheek. Slowly he began to draw, and even without a mirror she could tell what it was: Trickster’s symbol, the diamond with the forked line. She stared at him the whole time, invested in the concentration on his face, the solemn line of his mouth. Although her body was cold from the rain and mud, the skin under his fingers flared with heat, purling through her limbs and diving down into her chest as if she had taken a sip of warmed wine.

When he was done, they shared another moment of stillness. Then she reached for the hollow of his throat, the triangle of skin revealed above his shirt where he hadn’t done up the last button.

She had touched him before, at Laelia’s. She had forced herself to do so, uncomfortable with her skin meeting his, this stranger full of secrets and tied to the man she detested most.

But Cayo no longer felt like a stranger. Their words had built a bridge between them, one that Amaya thought she could finally cross, a small step at a time.

She placed her fingertips on the space between his collarbones. He shivered beneath her touch, and it intensified the heat in her chest, made her as drunk as the wine would have. She didn’t dare look at his face; everything would shatter if she did. Instead, she focused on crafting the symbol at the base of his throat, the traditional Kharian design that meant protection.

What she was protecting him from, she wasn’t entirely sure. His father, perhaps. The Slum King.

Herself.

When had he gotten so close? She dropped her fingers and finally looked up at him, the rawness in his expression beckoning her to cross the bridge between them faster, to meet him in the middle.

Before she could, a shout emerged from the rain.

“Move it, vandals! I’ll drag you home to your parents if I have to!”

Cayo’s eyes widened. “Shit,” he hissed before he took her hand, and they ran back out into the rain.

“The city guard patrols even during a storm?” she called as they ran deeper into the park.

“I didn’t think they got paid enough for that,” he called back with a sheepish laugh.

They didn’t stop until they were hidden in a copse of aloe trees, rain sliding down the long, thin leaves. Amaya held her palms out and let the water wash away most of the clay.

“I guess they really do hate vandalism,” she said.

Cayo laughed again, but it was quiet. He nervously shifted on his feet, lifting a hand to run it through his hair, but winced at the motion.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

“It’s nothing.” He rubbed his shoulder. “Some old man clobbered me with his walking stick yesterday. Must have been in a bad mood.”

Amaya’s lips parted. Yesterday, Weevil had come back to the estate with a bruise on the side of his head, a hand curled protectively around his stomach. When she had demanded to know what happened, he’d admitted to scouting the Business Sector for easy targets.

“I was just going to pick a couple of pockets,” he’d murmured into the tea that Cicada had made for him. “I didn’t know that old man was strong enough to wallop me.”

Amaya had pinched the bridge of her nose. “You don’t have to resort to thieving like you did on the Brackish, Matthieu. I told you, once this job is over, all the Bugs will have enough money to get home.”

“How’d you even get away without getting arrested?” Cricket had asked Weevil.

He’d sniffed, his nose running from the steam of the tea. “A man stood in front of me. Got walloped for his trouble, too. If he hadn’t done that, I’d likely be scraps on the street.”

Amaya stared at Cayo, her lips still parted. His eyebrows lowered in confusion.

“It was you,” she said softly. “You helped Wee—I mean, Matthieu.”