Reign of Shadows (Reign of Shadows, #1)(29)

His stare crawled over my face, and I sensed his unwillingness to answer the question. Waves of frustration poured off him and I wasn’t certain whether it was a result of me or himself, but I had the distinct feeling that he wouldn’t mind giving me a good shake.

I pushed another question at him: “Do you remember life before the dwellers?” He had mentioned that there was no lovely place since the dwellers came. “They’ve been here for seventeen years,” I added unnecessarily.

I knew nothing of life without dwellers. Nothing of the time when my parents lived and ruled a kingdom awash in sunlight, where the forests ran thick with game and the fields yielded a bounty of crops.

I heard the rustling of his clothing. “Enough. Let’s move.”

My shoulders slumped with the slightest disappointment. I lowered my face, unwilling to let him read my expression if he was even still looking at me.

Sivo and Perla rarely discussed life before the eclipse with me—only as much as they felt I needed to know about life in the capital and Cullan.

He started walking again. I fell into place beside him.

“I was two years old when the eclipse happened,” he confessed.

My head snapped in his direction at these words.

“So you don’t remember anything then?” Two years old was hardly an age to hold on to many memories.

“I remember sunlight. Once it turned my skin red. I stayed out too long and it burned my face. Lasted a week until it faded. A few days later the skin peeled off in flakes.”

I shook my head slightly, trying to imagine that. Trying to imagine the taste of warm sun on my skin so strong it could burn.

He continued softly, “Grass so thick under your feet it was like a lush rug. There was none of this barren landscape. There was color everywhere—” He stopped at this, clearly realizing I didn’t see colors—that colors would be something I would miss.

“No withered trees and plants,” he added after several moments. “It didn’t smell of rot or decay. It smelled like . . . life.”

I listened, hanging on to his every word. I wanted to ask more from him, wanted to keep him talking. I wanted to paint a picture in my head with his words. “And?” I prompted.

“And—” He stopped abruptly. “And nothing. I don’t remember anything else.”

He was lying. I heard it in his voice. He remembered more. He simply didn’t want to share it with me.

This shouldn’t have hurt. It was nothing Perla hadn’t done before. Talk of the past, of the way things had been before, was too much for her.

He increased his pace again, marching off ahead of me, extinguishing our fleeting conversation as effectively as the snuffing of a flame. Thunder rumbled in the distance and I looked up to the skies as though I could see the rain there, waiting to drop down on us in a deluge.

Perfect.

I had smelled the rain on the air for the last several hours, but hoped we would somehow skirt the storm.

Sighing, I followed after Fowler, stepping over a bit of fallen log, rotted and decaying as he had just mentioned.

The first droplet landed on my nose, followed in quick succession by more. A steady patter soon filled my ears as rain pelted down, soaking me to the bone through my garments. The wet added to the chill and I was soon shivering. Fowler did not ease his stride. I struggled after him, the sodden earth sucking at my boots.

After several moments, I began talking again, needing to focus on something other than my misery. I stayed close enough so that I didn’t need to project my voice over the rain.

I probably appeared mad, muttering to myself, trudging across the bleak landscape after Fowler, two little ants amid a vast, pitiless quagmire.

As I hurried to keep up with him, ignoring the burn in my thighs and the way my sopping wet clothes stuck to my skin, the sounds of the forest suddenly stopped.

I fell silent, too.

My steps slowed and I cocked my head, listening over the beat of water. I reached out a hand to touch Fowler’s arm. He was right beside me. His forearm tensed instantly, all tightly corded sinew and strength beneath my fingers.

“To the trees,” he mouthed against my ear, grabbing hold of my hand.

He ushered me to the closest semblance of shelter. A tree amid a dense thicket of dripping wet brush. He directed me to climb it and followed right behind me.

Of course, hiding in a tree offered its own misery. Stuck on a branch, water rolling down my face and dripping off the end of my nose, I had little to focus on except how cold and wet I was.

My teeth chattered and I contemplated reaching inside my pack for my cloak, but then that seemed pointless. It would only soon be as soaked as the rest of me.

I crossed my arms tightly over my chest and blew out a puff of breath, trying to warm myself—helplessly pressed up against Fowler when he clearly didn’t want to be stuck with me. It made me long for home.

It made the ache in my heart that much worse.

I settled back against the hard scratch of bark, Fowler’s arm aligned to the right side of my body. Another branch hemmed me in on the left. He’d positioned me to be secure even if it meant we had to sit plastered together side by side.

His breath fell beside me, slow and steady. A dweller cried out, closer now. The sound echoed long and thin through the woods. Moments later an answering call followed, much farther in the distance.

“Good,” Fowler declared softly, the word a warm breath on my cheek. I shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with him. “Maybe the first one will head after that one.”