“Why?” Cricket lifts a hand in the air, her mouth turned down in disbelief.
But Noah’s jaw sets in place, letting his gaze slip over me, like he’s trying to remember the reasons, trying to recall why he won’t just hand me over to those men. “You know why,” he says to her, breathing deep through his nose, a thousand hidden thoughts behind his eyes.
“You’re going to get yourself killed.”
His mouth stays flat, formless, as if her words mean nothing, unimportant. As if death is not the worst thing waiting for us out there.
A fattened bee swerves past my shoulder, doubled wings slow and lazy, searching for pollen it won’t find in the cave, before it veers away up into the sky. “Do you know where it is?” I risk to ask, stepping out from the shadow of the cave. “Do you know how to get to the sea?” I direct my eyes on Noah, but it’s Cricket who answers.
“Of course he does,” she snaps, giving me a cutting look. “Now that August is dead…” Her voice falters, then finds itself again. “… Noah is the last Architect.”
The blood in my ears begins to thunder like a storm, sparks of lightning breaking across my eyes. I suck in a shaky breath, and watch as Noah reaches into his dark coat and pulls something out. Something that just barely catches the moonlight.
The silver signet ring.August’s ring.
It hangs from the chain around his neck.
He had kept it hidden, maybe because he didn’t want Cricket to see, because the ring means that August is truly dead—taken from around his lifeless neck. And now he tucks it back beneath his coat, against his chest—as if it’s right where it belongs. Where it was always destined to be, eventually. But his eyes falter a moment, like the weight of the ring is greater than its actual size.
The duty and responsibility it brings.
It’s no simple thing to take over the role that’s been handed to you, that’s been passed down for generations. The weight heavier each time.I would know.
But now: Noah is the last Architect.
Mom always said that if the Architect died, there would be another to take his place—someone who would know theway. To the edge of everything. And now… my eyes scrape over to Noah, feeling as if my mind is a storm of stars, reconfiguring, settling into a whole new pattern—Noah is the Architect—but he won’t look at me. A heaviness in his shaded eyes. A hundred years of waiting in them. He looks raw, vulnerable—different. A boy splintered by grief, then reassembled with the sliding of a ring around his neck.
August’s life, his purpose, held in the palm of Noah’s hand.
He is the last one. Just like me.
I want to speak, say something to him to ease whatever he feels, but all the words are tangled up in my chest like a bird’s nest destroyed by the wind.
Cricket paces to one side of the cave, bringing her hands behind her neck, looking down the ravine to the river. “If she’s really her,” Cricket says now, speaking only to Noah, “if she’s the last Astronomer, it won’t just be the Theorists looking for her, it’ll be everyone.”She drops her arms, eyes unblinking. “She’s dangerous, Noah. If word gets out that the Astronomer has really been found, just being with her puts our lives at risk. Are you willing to die for her?” She saysherlike I am not even worth the word.
Noah breathes, and I suddenly feel afraid, my ears starting to ring, the breath becoming short and quick in my lungs—maybe he will think she’s right, that I’m not worth dying for. Maybe it’s not duty he feels but doubt.
This is the fear that Mom spoke about on nights when she couldn’t sleep, when she watched the ridge above the river for signs of someone coming. She was terrified that someday we’d be found. I never truly understood the panic she felt—the sharpness at the back of the neck when you know you’re being hunted. But now I do.
I clear my throat, and Cricket’s eyes drag over to me. “Death is coming for all of us—” I say, keeping my voice level, a sureness in each word. “Sooner for some, if we don’t reach the sea…” I need them to know, to understand that there’s no turning back now. If Noah can take me to the sea, I can’t allow him to give up.I need him. And in ways he doesn’t yet understand, he also needs me.
Cricket snorts, blowing out a gust of air. Like she doesn’t believe me… and doesn’t want to.
But Noah’s eyes flatten, deep and fervent, his head tilting, jaw tensed, like he’s trying to see the truth in my face. See if he trusts me. It reminds me of theneedI saw in the faces of those crowded around me at the saloon. But there is no fear in my gut when Noah looks at me; theneedin his gaze is different, tenuous, near breaking, like he wants to step closer, fold his fingers through mine, tightly, desperately, like he won’t ever let go. But he keeps himself planted where he stands.
Still, it sends a shiver, knife-sharp, down to my tailbone.
“I won’t leave her,” he says to Cricket, his eyes still on me. “I’ve spent most of my life waiting for her—” He blinks, mouth parted, caught on a thought, then breathes before continuing. “August said there was nothing more important than this, than protecting the Astronomer…” He blinks. “… than protectingher. And if she asked me to, I would take her to the sea.” His eyes are lit from within, jaw contracting in little pulses. “Is that what you want?” he asks, shadows strung across his face, lidded eyes and half-open mouth.
My body is trembling, the light through the trees seeming to sway outward. He’s offering himself to me. He’s giving me a choice. A promise.A vow. If I ask him to, he will stay with me until the end. And something in me wants to cry.I’m no longer alone. I have found the Architect, as Mom said I would, and I’m starting to believe—I need to believe—that we will make it to the sea. That we will get there in time, and we will survive. “Yes,” I say, a lightness in my voice, suspended in my eyes.
Noah looks at me like he sees every thought strumming through me, like he understands what lies before us, but he feels the fullness of our story weaving itself together. He blinks once, twice, then nods back at me—like the pact has been made. And it can’t be undone.
But Cricket shakes her head, eyebrows stuffed together, shadows beneath both her aqua eyes, like Noah has betrayed her in some way. Like she wants to grab him by the throat and drag him back to the barn, far away from me. “Dammit, Noah,” she mutters.
At last he pulls eyes away from me to glance at Cricket. “It’s what August wanted—” he says, then turns to walk back to the edgeof the cave, the morning light winking through the trees across his determined face. “And you know it.”
Cricket’s mouth pinches flat, but there is a change in her eyes, in her tilted chin. “Fine,” she answers brusquely. “But you’ll need someone who’s better with a knife than your clumsy ass.” She flashes Noah a look.
