Vanish (Firelight #2)(21)

Damn him for getting in my head. For maybe being right.

The red-gold beams of fading dusk filter down through the mist. The fiery light touches my skin in flashes, gilding me here and there, reminding me of how I look in full manifest—of what I am. What I will always be. The desert hadn’t killed it. Nothing can.

I feel certain of that now. My draki will never fade. Maybe it’s all I know anymore.

I survived my mother’s attempt to kill off my draki. I survived the desert, hunters all around me with their hungry gazes, the fear so thick I could taste it in my mouth. After all that, I know my draki is here to stay. I don’t have to worry about losing that part of myself anymore. I should be happy. Relieved.

Except I’m not. My eyes sting and I blink them rapidly.

Inhaling deeply, I move. My chest rises, fills with the aroma of sweet, arable earth. I’m sustained here. Even if my soul yearns for more. For Will.

Anger surges through me. I’m crazy to yearn for a boy lost to me forever. Why can’t I move on and find what happiness I can with the pride?

Then I see it sketched against the hazy twilight. The dilapidated tower stretches up through the fog like an ancient, twisting tree covered in thick, wiry vines. It’s not as tall as the other three watchtowers strategically positioned throughout the township, but it’s the oldest, the first, built back when the idea of existing without a shader seemed impossible, a reality for which we needn’t prepare.

Time changed that attitude. As Nidia aged and no other shader manifested, fear set in that the next generation of draki would be without a shader. The other towers were built then, stronger—taller than before—in preparation for the days to come when we would have to rely on ourselves to safeguard the township.

I stop at the base and look up. Watchtowers are always camouflaged with vines and bramble, the better to blend them with the natural landscape, but this one looks more natural than the others. And I love that. Love the wildness of it as it returns to nature. It hasn’t been used in years, since before I was born, but I remember this forgotten tower well, my childhood haunt.

I lay my hand on a weathered rung and begin to climb. An animal, startled by my intrusion, scurries up the twisted beams as I ascend.

I push through the congestion of leaves. Wiry branches poke me, grab my hair like sharp fingers as I climb higher and higher. Rotting wood creaks beneath me. I reach the top and drop onto my back on the moss-speckled wood with a sigh.

I splay a hand over my stomach, feel myself breathe in and out, my lungs expanding. And it all comes back to me. My love for this place. A place I can safely exist. Where I can be me. Away from prying eyes.

A canopy of green covers me. I spot the sky drifting overhead through gaps in the wood and foliage. Sitting up, I cross my legs and stare out at the vast, pulsing green world spread below. The pride is there. The green-tiled roofs peep out through Nidia’s mist.

Mist curls between the houses and buildings, covering the fields, crawling over the township’s walls and spreading across the land like a living thing, settling thickly into the valleys and over the lesser hills and mountains in a foamy white. Only the tallest treetops poke through the mantle of fog.

“Thought I’d find you here.”

I shrink into myself, pulling my knees close to my chest as Cassian’s dark head emerges, followed by the rest of him. He lowers down beside me, the wood groaning in protest.

“This is probably a deathtrap, you know. It should have been torn down a long time ago.”

“It would be sacrilege. There are too many memories attached to it,” I say. “No one can do it.”

He reaches down and strokes a moss-lined board. “Yeah. That’s the truth. Wonder how many first kisses were stolen up here.”

Something tightens a little inside me at this. My first kiss wasn’t here. It was with Will. Out there. My gaze drifts to the vast world spread out below me, so different from the desert where my heart found Will. It probably should have been here. It probably would have been here if I hadn’t left.

I inhale cool, damp air through my nostrils. “Why did you follow me?”

Cassian’s voice rumbles on air as dense as the drape of night closing around us, sealing us in. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

I say nothing. He stares at me with his impenetrable gaze. Rain starts to fall in earnest then, the patter amplifying the stretch of silence between us. The water finds its way through the holes and cracks in the canopy above us and drops coldly upon my hair. I don’t mind. I’ve never minded the cold.

Cassian angles his head, water sitting on the sleek, dark strands like beads of crystal. “You really think I wouldn’t care if you were dead?”

I pull back, remembering that I had accused him of not caring what happened to me.

“I’ve been avoiding you because I’m just so damn annoyed. . . .” He shakes his head, sloshing water. The strands brush his shoulders rhythmically. “I don’t want you risking yourself again. The human world . . . Will. It’s too dangerous.” Cassian takes my hand. I feel his heartbeat through the simple touch, the thud of his life meeting with mine. “You dead . . . it would break me.” His voice whips sharply over the drum of rainfall. “Everything I ever said to you was the truth. My feelings haven’t changed for you, Jacinda. Even if you do drive me crazy, here, in the pride . . . you’re still that single bright light for me.”