Chapter Twelve
I couldn’t put what we’d done out of my mind as Ezra walked me back to the Mission. My lips were warm and a little swollen. I still felt hot and cold as if struck with a fever.
Yet Ezra made his way with an easy gait like nothing had happened.
“Do you do that a lot?” I found myself asking without thinking.
He moved a branch out of the way for me and asked, “Do what?”
It was an opportunity to backtrack, but I was too fuzzy from his touch to come up with a good diversion from my question. I ducked under the branch and responded, “You know what I mean.” My voice was a touch too sharp.
His breath huffed with amusement. “Honestly, Jo, I don’t know if you mean the magic or what we just did.”
My words came out like a quiet landslide. “What we just did.”
“Oh. I don’t kiss people a lot. My first kiss was the train engineer’s son. Then the engineer stopped bringing him along on trips through Frostbrook.”
“On account of the kissing?” I asked, imagining a scandal. Engineers had excellent prospects, and an engineer’s child would naturally be set up for a future of higher education and strategic marriage.
“I don’t think so. He was beginning university soon, outside Sterling City. And that was that.”
Though I’d braced myself for jealousy, none came. Instead, I ached at the thought of finding someone to kiss only for that person to leave and never come back. “Did you love him?”
Ezra’s deep laugh startled me. “No. Haven’t you kissed someone you didn’t love?”
Every bit of blood in my body rushed to my face. “Of course,” I sputtered. “I kissed plenty of girls at the House. I wasn’t allowed to love them. I’m not allowed to love anyone.”
In truth, I had only kissed Gertrude.
And maybe, in our own way, we had loved each other.
The realization made me ache. I’d never get to ask her what the shape of her feelings had been, or if she’d ever allowed herself to wonder.
We’d been so cruel to each other. Now that I’d let someone touch me like a precious thing, I understood that our cruelty had been armor against growing closer.
Otherwise, we’d have destroyed ourselves.
Ezra had gone quiet. He looked at me strangely. “They really teach you that there, don’t they?” He sighed sharply. “No wonder.”
“No wonder what?”
He glanced aside at me with a sad sort of smile. “Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything.”
There were no barbs to his words, but they lanced me anyway. My feet caught on a loose tree root, and I stumbled, catching his arm to keep from falling. And that made it even worse.
Did he mean that what we’d done didn’t mean anything? If so, why did that bother me so terribly much? I was duty bound for it to mean nothing at all.
I felt sick.
“Careful,” he said, gaze catching on my face. My fingers tightened around his arm. “Are you all right?”
I shook him off as if he’d grabbed me and not the other way round. “Yes. I told you I didn’t sleep last night. That’s all.” My sharpness returned.
He nodded, his smile fading to something thinner.
We walked in silence once more. But this time it didn’t feel easy or good.
My belly churned with prickly feelings that surfaced and dissipated too quickly to be named.
This had to be why we were so steadfastly discouraged from things like kissing or caring.
If asked to conduct radiance right now, I’d likely burn the forest down or scorch my own sleeves.
Soon, we approached the clearing around the Mission.
I’d never been so relieved to see the high walls.
We were on the opposite side of the work site, and though I could hear the clatter and clang of construction, it was private here.
Wild grass rose as high as my knees, with patches of lavender striped through it like vivid purple paint.
“It’s beautiful here.” My body ached with exhaustion. I let my fingertips skim the tips of the grass. It wasn’t as soft as I’d expected.
He sighed quietly and followed a tramped-down path from the edge of the woods toward the wide gravel road that led to the front courtyard. “I know.”
My chest had a wounded sort of feeling that made it hard to fully catch my breath.
I’d done something foolish. Multiple foolish things, if I counted my candid conversation with Julian the night before.
Whatever grip I’d had on being the best apprentice possible had loosened so much, it felt like I was trying to catch water in my fingers.
But maybe that didn’t matter. As long as I could be good enough to satisfy Julian, I’d have a long tenure ahead of me in Frostbrook.
We reached the courtyard. The pack mule that normally stood lazily in the small paddock nosing at a bag of feed was nowhere to be found.
That meant Julian was out doing work that required the mule to carry supplies.
A little thrill of excitement formed beneath my ribs.
The Mission wasn’t technically mine, but right now I was in charge of it.
“Do you have food in there or just strange machines from the big city?” Ezra asked abruptly.
My stomach panged, but not with hunger. “Of course. Are you … are you struggling to get enough to eat?”
Ezra laughed. “Don’t look so horrified. I’m not starving to death.” He sobered as his gaze shifted to the Mission walls. “I was only thinking we could share a meal like proper friends,” he added, almost absently.
Proper friends. Somehow, that sounded like even more of a commitment than crushing our mouths together in the woods.
“I’m not sure if it’s permitted,” I murmured, thinking aloud. We’d never discussed visitors, but they were probably forbidden, considering we weren’t even supposed to socialize with the townspeople.
“Ah. Of course.” Ezra didn’t mask his disappointment. “More rules. Well, I’ll leave you to your important work, Apprentice.”
Irritation welled in me like blood from a wound. “I’m considering it! Quit that pouting and give me a moment to decide.” The last thing I wanted to do was prove that I followed rules blindly.
Ezra crossed his arms and stared in an obnoxious show of waiting for me to make up my mind.
I already felt half-sick for spending the afternoon in his arms. What was one more transgression? “A quick meal,” I said stiffly. “It’s the least I can offer for your help with the bandits, or whoever they were.”
“I don’t recall helping so much as dragging you off to—”
“Ezra!” It was one thing to talk about kissing in the woods. It was another thing to talk about kissing at my place of employment. I pushed him and immediately regretted it when my body responded to the feel of his sun-warmed skin through his shirt.
“To hide!” he said, playing at flinching away from me. “What did you think I was going to say?”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed his hand, refusing to give in to the grin that twitched at my lips. “Come on.”
After only a few steps, Ezra slowed. I let go of his hand so I wasn’t tugging him. Frowning, he stared up at the high windows and then at the heavy door. Impressed was not how I’d characterize his expression.
He looked worried. Were the imposing walls unsettling to him after spending most of his life outdoors?
Maybe it was only hunger pinching his features.
“The door is always locked,” I explained.
“With a radiance lock.” He nodded. “Like the conduction box.”
“This one is a bit more complicated.” The door smelled like fresh-cut wood.
I inhaled deeply, loving the way it took me back to the forest. Radiance rose in me easily, as sure as my breath.
I placed my hand gently against the lock and coaxed threads of it into the gears.
Manipulating fine gearwork had been our first task at the House of Industry, one that took most children years to master.
It had come relatively easily to me, and I’d asked my instructor if I could spend my free time afterward learning how to use radiance to fight.
She’d stiffened and quickly reminded me that only those chosen to be Transistors could fight with radiance.
I’d have been good at it. I knew that in my bones.
My life would have been different if I’d been tapped to serve as a Transistor, assigned to a Mission not to help administrate it but to protect it from theft or resistors.
I would have been called on to hurt people—maybe even kill them—in the name of Progress.
A traitorous thought made itself known: Was I hurting people anyway?
“Does it always take this long?” Ezra’s voice startled me, soft at my ear. The gears crunched audibly, and I winced.
“No. I’m tired.” I closed my eyes and finished the lock, mortified to have let my mind drift so far from my task. The mechanism gave a loud click as the latch inside opened.
“After you,” Ezra said, holding the door for me.
We walked in, and he paused in the doorway, looking back over his shoulder. “Did you hear that?”
I flailed out into the courtyard in an anxious rush to make sure Julian or the mule or a worker or even an observant squirrel wasn’t watching me let Ezra into the Mission without asking permission. “Hear what?”
“I thought I heard something like a tree falling.”
My panic subsided. I turned back to him, putting my hands on my hips like Professor Dunn when someone asked her an ignorant question. “They’re still building the Mission. Right over there? It’s pretty loud.”
He leaned against the doorway, his mouth forming a sheepish expression. “I guess I’m jumpy. I don’t suppose Julian would appreciate me being here.”
“Why do you say his name like that?” I asked, my heart galloping from the thought of Julian catching me sneaking a boy in.
“Like what?”
“Like you know him. If you knew him, you wouldn’t say it all … familiar like that. You’d hate him.”
“Why is that?” Ezra asked, clearly trying not to laugh.
I took his sleeve and pulled him inside. The door shut gently behind us, not as noisily as it usually did. The frame must not have settled into place. “He’s … stuffy. And cross. And inflexible.”