An Ember in the Ashes (Ember Quartet #1)(109)

I want to defy all of them—the Empire, the Commandant, the Resistance. I wonder where such defiance comes from, and my armlet feels hot suddenly. Perhaps there’s more of my mother in me than I thought.

“Maybe we don’t have to be Scholar slave and Mask.” I drop the dagger. “For tonight, maybe we can just be Laia and Elias.”

Emboldened, I reach out and pull at the edge of his mask, which has never seemed like a part of him. It resists, but now I want it off. I want to see the face of the boy I’ve been speaking to all night, not the Mask I always thought he was. So I pull harder, and the mask falls into my hands with a hiss. The back is bent into sharp spikes wet with blood. The tattoo on his neck glistens with a dozen small wounds.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize . . . ”

He looks into my eyes, and something undefined burns in his gaze, a flash of emotion that brings a different sort of fire to my skin.

“I’m glad you took it off.”

I should look away. I cannot. His eyes are nothing like his mother’s. Hers are the brittle gray of broken glass, but Elias’s, with their ring of dark lashes, are a deeper hue, like the thick heart of a storm cloud. They draw me in, mesmerize me, refuse to release me. I lift tentative fingers to his skin. The stubble of his cheek is rough beneath my palm.

Keenan’s face flashes through my mind and fades as quickly. He is far away, distant, dedicated utterly to the Resistance. Elias is here, before me, warm and beautiful and broken.

He’s a Martial. A Mask.

But not here. Not tonight, in this room. Here, now, he is just Elias and I am just Laia, and we are, both of us, drowning.

“Laia . . . ”

There is a plea in his voice, in his eyes. What does it mean? Does he want me to back away? Does he want me to come closer?

I lift myself up on my toes, and his face comes down at the same time. His lips are soft, softer than I could have imagined, but there is a hard desperation behind them, a need. The kiss speaks. It begs. Let me forget, forget, forget.

His cloak falls away from me, and my body is against his. He pulls me to his chest, his hands running down my back, clasping my thigh, drawing me closer, closer. I arch into him, reveling in his strength, his fire, the alchemy between us twisting and burning and melding until it feels like gold.

Then he breaks away, his hands held out before him.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m a Mask and you’re a slave, and I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s all right.” My lips burn. “I’m the one who . . . started it.”

We stare at each other, and he looks so confused, so angry at himself that I smile, sadness and embarrassment and desire coursing through me. He picks his cloak up from the floor and holds it out to me, averting his eyes.

“Will you sit?” I ask tentatively, covering myself once more. “Tomorrow I’ll be a slave and you’ll be a Mask, and we can hate each other like we’re supposed to. But for now . . . ”

He eases down next to me, keeping a careful distance between us. That alchemy lures, beckons, burns. But his jaw is clenched, and his hands are fisted together like each is a lifeline for the other. Reluctantly, I put a few more inches between us.

“Tell me more,” I say. “What was it like as a Fiver? Were you happy to leave Blackcliff?”

He relaxes a little, and I coax the memories from him like Pop used to with frightened patients. The night passes, filled with his stories of Blackcliff and the Tribes, and my tales of patients and the Quarter. We do not speak again of the raid or the Trials. We do not speak of the kiss or the sparks still dancing between us.

Before I know it, the sky begins to lighten.

“Dawn,” he says. “Time to start hating each other again.”

He puts on his mask, his face going still as it digs into him, and then pulls me to my feet. I stare at our hands, at my slim fingers entwined in his larger ones, at the veined muscles of his forearm, the slight bones of my wrist, the warmth of our skin meeting. It seems somehow significant, my hand in his. I look up into his face, surprised at how near he is to me, at the fire in his gaze, the life, and my pulse quickens. But then he drops my hand and steps away.

I offer him back his cloak, along with the dagger, but he shakes his head.

“Keep them. You still have to walk back through the school and—” His eyes drop to my ripped dress, my bare skin, and he jerks them up again. “Keep the knife too. A Scholar girl should always carry a weapon, no matter what the rules say.” He pulls a leather strap from his bureau. “Thigh sheath. It’ll keep the blade safe and out of sight.”

I regard him anew, at last seeing him for what he is. “If you could just be who you are in here”—I place my palm over his heart—“instead of who they made you, then you would be a great Emperor.” I feel his pulse thud against my fingers. “But they won’t let you, will they? They won’t let you have compassion or kindness. They won’t let you keep your soul.”

“My soul’s gone.” He looks away. “I killed it dead on that battlefield yesterday.”

I think of Spiro Teluman then. Of what he said to me the last time I saw him. “There are two kinds of guilt,” I say softly. “The kind that’s a burden and the kind that gives you purpose. Let your guilt be your fuel. Let it remind you of who you want to be. Draw a line in your mind. Never cross it again. You have a soul. It’s damaged, but it’s there. Don’t let them take it from you, Elias.”