The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(32)

“So,” she said, after I had folded the dough over itself and slammed it down again. “Do you come home often?”

“No,” I said, and I was surprised by how sharp the answer came out. Normally my gift didn’t let me talk that way to people.

“Any particular reason?”

I paused. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to answer her question. Most people didn’t really want to hear about my troubles, even if they asked, which meant I literally couldn’t talk about them. Grief had a way of doing that, making people uncomfortable.

“Too many shadows in this house,” I said, inching toward the subject slowly.

“Ah,” Isae said. And then—to my surprise—she said, “Want to tell me about them?”

I laughed. “You want to hear about them?”

She shrugged. “We don’t seem to be good at talking about the more casual stuff, and I don’t have the time for that anyway. So. Yeah. I want to hear about them.”

I nodded, and slapped the dough ball down on the counter. I licked some of the raw dough off my fingers before washing them in the sink and wiping them dry on a cloth. Then I led her to the living room. The whole house smelled yeasty and spiced from the bread. My pants were still marked with flour fingerprints.

I pointed to a part of the living room floor that looked just like every other part of the floor, worn and wooden.

“There,” I said. “That’s where his body fell.”

Isae didn’t ask me who I was talking about. She knew the story— everyone in Thuvhe knew the story. Instead, she crouched next to the spot where my father died, and ran her fingers over the rough grain.

I just stood there, frozen. And then I started to talk.

“I sat with his body for hours before I cleaned it up,” I said. “Part of me expected . . . I don’t know. For him to wake up, maybe. Or for me to wake up from the nightmare.” I let out a little sound. Something small and pained. “Then I had to deal with it. Wrap up his body. Find a bucket and fill it with warm water. Get a bunch of old rags. Imagine standing there at the linen closet trying to figure out how many rags you need to clean up your father’s blood.”

I choked, but not from my currentgift this time—on tears. I hadn’t cried around another person since my currentgift developed. I had thought it was just out of the question for me now, like asking people rude questions or laughing when someone took a spill on an icy road.

Isae began to mouth a prayer. Only it wasn’t one of comfort or even the one a person said when someone died. It was a blessing, for a sacred place.

Isae thought the place where my father died was sacred.

I knelt next to her, wanting to hear her voice as it shaped the words. Her hand wrapped around mine, and it was more than strange, touching someone who I didn’t even know, didn’t even like. But she squeezed tight, so I wouldn’t let go, and finished up the prayer quietly.

I still didn’t let go.

“I’ve never been able to tell someone that before,” I said. “It makes people too uncomfortable.”

“Takes more than that to make me uncomfortable,” she said.

Her cool fingers sweep over my cheekbone, catching tears. She tucks a curl behind my ear.

“Your definition of a good memory needs work,” she says, softly, the very gentlest of jokes.

“I hadn’t cried in seasons, unless I was alone,” I say. “No one was ever there to comfort me, not even my mother. All the tragedies of my life, they’re too hard for most people to handle. But you could handle it. You could handle whatever I told you.”

Her hand is still behind my ear.

Then it’s in my hair, twisting the curls around her fingers.

And I kiss her. Once: soft, brief.

Again, harder, with her kissing me back.

Again, like we can’t stand to be apart.

My rough hands find the back of her neck, and we’re pressed together, fitted together, tangled together.

We bury ourselves as deep in this little pocket of happiness as we can get.





CHAPTER 13: AKOS


THE EXILES FIT THEM into temporary housing all stacked on top of each other, the beds dug right into the wall in metal-lined slots. It wasn’t a permanent arrangement, but it would do for a few days—that’s what the exile who showed them their beds had said, anyway.

Cyra took the topmost bed—they weren’t wide enough to fit two people, so there was no chance of sharing—because she was a good climber, and Teka, equally nimble, took the second highest. Sifa and Eijeh took the lower two beds in the stack, so Akos found himself right in the middle. Between two Thuvhesits and two Shotet. It was like fate had given up on subtlety and had decided to just start poking at him.

Even though there was a sheet of metal separating him from Teka’s bed, he still heard the slide of sheets as she tossed and turned all night. He woke to the woman who slept in the next column over dropping to a half crouch below him. There was something about the way she moved, the way her legs bent, that he recognized.

“Must be losing my touch if I can rouse you,” the woman said, roughly, as she pulled on a pair of pants. She glanced up at him.

“I know you from somewhere,” he said, swinging his legs over the edge of his bed and dropping to the floor. He curled his toes against the cold of the ground.