“I had to,” the girl says. “They were chasing us.”
The boy rubs a broad hand across his neck. “Shit.” Then his eyes flick back to me, peering straight through me, like he could read the truth of who I am in the slope of my mouth, my eyes, as if it were all there, exposed and raw for him to see. I swallow stiffly, holding in a breath, not because his stare is like a cold winter storm—magnetic, hard to look away from—but because he makes me uneasy. Because I sense that whatever comes next, whatever happens to me, is in his hands.
“You’re the one who was asking about the Architect, back in Fort Bell?” he asks, as if verifying I’m therightgirl, while keeping his gaze trained on me, every blink of his eyelashes like a sharp wind, like he’s thinking of ways to cut me apart and bury me out here so I’m no longer a problem.
I glance to the younger boy beside him, the one who traded for the postcard, and I realize he must have told them that I was asking about the Architect. Told them about a girl at the market, a stranger, who was asking things she shouldn’t be asking.
When the girl beside me strode into the saloon, she was looking for me. She was there forme.
But all the words feel tangled in my throat. Too many thoughts slamming together in my mind.
The boy with impossibly green eyes steps closer to me. “Why are you asking about the Architect?” His jaw is locked in place, temple pulsing.
I try to clear my throat but can’t; it’s too clotted with dust. But Imeet his steely eyes—I don’t look away, even when a twinge catches in my chest, even when I feel afraid. “Do you know who he is?” My voice a croak.
His eyes only narrow, and he shifts even closer, like I’m a threat, like he will kill me right here for even asking the question. “Who are you?” he asks, tilting his head, mouth still open. My throat quivers in a way that makes no sense, a feeling that is mixed with gut-hard fear.
But before I can sort through the words crashing through my mind, figure out what to say, how to reply with a lie that he will believe, the girl nudges me in the arm. “Show him,” she prods, dipping her head toward me. “It’s okay.”
I frown at her, but then she taps a finger against the back of her own neck.
My eyes flick back to the boy, and I harden my jaw. I won’t show him my tattoo. I’ve already screwed up once tonight back at the saloon—I’m not about to let anyone else see the marks that I should have kept hidden. Protected. Safe. I don’t want to see the same hunger in the eyes of this boy, of any of them. “No,” I say flatly.
The boy’s watchful eyes shiver with something, fury or fascination, and he steps even closer—only a foot away now. But he doesn’t reach for me, doesn’t touch me; he just stares, like he’s trying to read something in my face.
“Trust me,” the girl whispers, reaching out to touch my forearm. “We’re not going to hurt you. He just needs to see the marks.”
I have no reason to trust this girl, or any of them. But my head throbs, I’m in the middle of a barren stretch of uninhabitable land, too exhausted and too desperate for water to turn and run. One wayor another, they will find a way to see the tattoo. I don’t have much of a choice.
And maybe,maybe, they have their own secrets. Maybe… they know where to find the Architect. So I drop my eyes to the ground, hands shaking, and I pull my hair forward, letting it fall over my shoulders. I hear the boy inch closer to me, and I swear I can feel his shaded green eyes peering at my skin, the weight of his stare on the exposed part of myself that no one is allowed to see. I feel his soft exhale on my neck, and after a second that feels too long, a flutter and pulse in my rib cage, he finally steps back.
The air slips from my throat. The blood rushes back down my veins.
“Who else saw the marks?” he asks.
I drop my hair and spin back around, every part of me raw, stripped bare. I crave things that are too far away now—the cool river, the safe walls of the cabin, a time when Mom was still alive.
“At the saloon,” the girl replies, clenching her jaw. “Theorists—” She gives the boy a look, a silent understanding passing between them. “They saw it.”
The boy nods. “They’ll be hunting you,” he says, turning back to face me. “They’re probably not far off. We need to leave now.”
I look back across the desert, through the miles of scrub brush and blowing wind, and I wonder if they’re still out there. Following our tracks, getting closer. “The Architect,” I say, my eyes blurring with thirst, but managing to meet the boy’s eyes again, sensing that he knows more than he’s saying. “I need to find him.”
He looks to the girl, but neither speaks.
“I’m not going with you, unless you tell me where he is.”
The boy pushes up his sleeves, the heat of the sun on his skin, and my eyes catch on the black tattoos weaving from his hands up to his elbows. Strange dark markings and shaded lines. Nothing like the delicate marks on my neck, his are broad and deep black and remind me of ash from a campfire. His contain no hidden messages, no secret meanings. They seem like the marks of late nights spent pushing ink into skin to pass the time, marks that are meant to intimidate, to show bravery and fearlessness. To show his grit. “If you want to survive, you’ll come with us,” he says, revealing nothing. “But we need to go now.” Yet in his knife-sharp eyes, I think I see a hint of something. The truth he’s hiding. And I know he’s my only option. I can’t go back to Fort Bell—there’s only forward now.
I might not trust him, but I need to go with him.
I swallow dryly, lifting my chin, and I nod.
Quickly he turns to the girl. “Cricket, you’ll come with us.”Her name is Cricket.
She gives me a little wink, like everything’s going to be okay.
But as we start off through the desert, away from the water tower and Fort Bell and the men following me, a thought begins tapping on the inside of my skull, a tiny little knocking: What if every moment forward is a step deeper into a place I can’t return from? The shadows slipping over my past, making the way home impossible to see, to navigate.
