Page 8

The guards walk slowly, dragging their heavy boots along the cobblestones, passing the mouth of our alley without looking in. Eventually, their footsteps fade. Not gone, but they’re growing fainter.

Arlo exhales and tugs my hand gently, nodding toward the other end of the alley. We crouch low, stepping carefully between the crates and the wall.

A sharp tug at my left side pulls my cloak taut against my ribs, and when I glance back, I see the expensive fabric caught on a rusted nail protruding from a crate.

I pull, and the crate shifts.

“Ali—” Arlo whispers.

I pull harder until the nail tears through the fabric with a ripping sound, and the crate I’m caught on slides sideways, toppling into the crate beside it. Agonizing seconds pass as the stack wobbles, but then gravity wins.

The noise is so loud it seems to fill the entire street. Guards shouting and their heavy boots thundering against the ground.

Arlo grabs my hand, and we tear down the alley at a dead sprint. My boots slip on the frost-slicked stones, and I almost go down, but Arlo’s grip holds me up. We take a sharp left at the end of the alley, slide through a gap in a fence, and cross a narrow courtyard where laundry hangs stiff with ice. The lycan guards’ voices are behind us, closer than they should be, moving faster than humans could ever move.

Arlo yanks me sideways toward the smallest gap between two buildings. The space is no wider than my shoulders, but Arlo shoves me in first and presses in after me.

There is no room. My back hits a cold wall. Arlo’s chest presses against mine. We are face-to-face, bodies flush in a space so narrow that neither of us can move any farther. His hands are flat on the wall on either side of my head, and his face is inches from mine, our breath mingling.

Footsteps get closer, and I stop breathing. As the guards pass the gap, one pauses right at the opening, and his large shadow blocks the thin strip of light. My fingers curl into the front of Arlo’s shirt as the guard sniffs the air.

I count in my head, three, four, five seconds before he moves on. The footsteps fade again, farther this time, turning down another street. Arlo lets out a breath, his exhale warming my face, and I become aware with a sudden clarity of every point where his body is touching mine. His chest right next to my face. His thighs against my hips. His arms above my head caging me in.

“That,” he breathes, “was close.”

“I know.”

The guards are gone, and there’s no reason to stay pressed together in a gap between two buildings like we’ve been stitched into each other’s skin, but he doesn’t step back, and I don’t push him away.

His eyes drop to my mouth. It’s a small movement, barely anything, but I feel it everywhere. In my stomach. In my chest. In the hollow space behind my ribs. I’ve been telling myself for years that there’s no room for this in our world.

He leans closer, his face tilting down to mine, one hand moving to angle my face toward his. His restraint is slipping.

My restraint is slipping.

I can taste his breath as he’s closing in, and just as my eyes flutter closed and my body finally melts into the moment, the sound of a cart rattling over cobblestones sends a jolt of reality down my spine.

I pull back just before everything between us changes. His face falls, as does his hands, and he slides past me to the gap entrance. His whole body looks rigid. I wish he understood that I’m trying to protect both of us.

My legs feel unsteady as I follow, and when the cold air hits my flushed face, I’m grateful. By the time we reach the edge of the main street, the market is just waking up.

A crooked row of stalls stretches along the pier where the auctions are usually held for the flesh markets. The vendors are setting out their meager wares under weather-worn awnings that sag with snow and ice.

We have no money, and if anyone on the farm found a way to earn coin outside Crawly’s rusted gate, it was a heavily guarded secret. His rules are so strict to keep us dependent on what he provides. Without the means to pay their own debt, feed themselves, or find shelter, his servants can’t leave.

Crawly used to pay for Angie’s heart medicine before the freeze, but now he says that it’s time to let nature run its course because she’ll never be better. Since then, Arlo and his mother have to barter here with scavenged items to pay for her medication. Every month gets harder for them to cover the cost, and I’ve seen the way Crawly has been watching Angie, waiting for her health to decline. He’s going to figure it out soon.

A few vendors glance up as we walk through the stalls, looking for something useful to help our sisters. With only a bag full of copper wires and fittings from the plane, I don’t know if anyone will be willing to trade.

Near the end of the row is an herb stall. It’s larger than the others, and the tabletop is crowded with glass jars, clay pots, and bundles of dried herbs hanging from the awning poles. An older woman sits behind it, her weathered hands sorting bottles into rows. Tinctures. Salves. Ointments. Remedies I can’t afford.

I slow down to look at the row of brown jars labeled with cramped handwriting. A jar of camphor sits near the edge. Beside it, several small bottles of cough medicine, the labels faded but legible. Then Arlo stumbles into me.

His shoulder connects with mine, and the impact sends me lurching sideways into the display table. My hip catches the edge. A basket of glass jars tips and rolls, bottles clinking against each other, one of them tumbling off the table toward the ground.

I catch it before it shatters.

The stall owner’s head snaps up. “Careful!” she barks. “You break it, you pay for it, and I promise you can’t afford it.”