Chapter Twenty-One
After sleeping for a day on a cot at the back of the general store, I sat on the dusty front porch, my hands bandaged and my heart bruised.
Upon waking, we’d agreed to make our way to Nikola as soon as we could.
Julian was eager to help her continue her work—and more than that, he clearly wanted to protect her.
Together, they would prepare for next year’s Continental Exposition.
In a way, they’d be safer once they debuted synthetic radiance.
Thousands of people would see their work.
The House of Industry couldn’t silence that many people.
Though I planned on making Julian teach me what he had been studying all this time, I couldn’t help but think of Maggie Taylor’s final words. Was I meant to help build something new?
Or was I meant to tear everything down to make space for Julian’s vision of the future?
“Hey. Have another bite,” Ezra said. Frustratingly tender, he’d been feeding me pieces of warm biscuits and honey between remarks on the frailty of my city-dweller skin.
“We can’t all be ferrymen,” I said, cross. “My calluses happen to be quite specialized.”
“I told you, knowing how to operate a raft doesn’t make me a ferryman.”
“Is that why we ended up nearly drowning in the Dry Bone?” I asked with my mouth full. “We should have had a proper ferryman at the helm.”
He rolled his eyes and gave me a big enough bite to silence me for quite some time. I appreciated the meal and the rest. We had a long journey ahead to find Nikola in Sterling City.
Across the street, Julian was helping a farmer repair the gears on a grain drill.
He had his sleeves rolled up and his vest hung up on a rail.
In a steady, patient voice, he explained what he was doing to the children who had gathered to watch.
Even without using radiance, he managed to diagnose why the gears had been sticking.
“He enjoys a problem,” I observed.
Ezra followed my gaze. “So do you, it seems.”
I turned back to him, frowning. “What?”
“You look at him a certain way.”
My frown deepened to something hot and annoyed. “What way is that, exactly?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I said ‘a certain way.’” Ezra held up more biscuit, and I jerked my head away with a small growl.
“Don’t try to shut me up. What are you trying to say?”
“Only that it seems to me you’re sweet on him. And he doesn’t like girls. And he’s insufferable. Thus, you enjoy a problem.”
“That’s quite an observation from you. Someone who hatched a plan to thoroughly humiliate me!” I shouted.
Everyone across the street had paused, though only a few dared to glance over at us. I ducked my chin, mortification flashing cold-hot through me over the way I’d raised my voice. I saw Julian’s head shake ever so slightly before he resumed working.
“Be quiet,” I whispered to Ezra impatiently.
“I am not the one shouting,” Ezra pointed out. “And I don’t care who you’re sweet on.”
Resisting the urge to shove the biscuits down Ezra’s throat until he choked, I took a deep, slow breath. “Is that so?”
His gaze lowered as he set the tin plate of biscuits aside and absently licked honey from his fingers. “No, it isn’t so. I suppose what I mean is if you’re sweet on him, that’s all right.”
“I do care for him,” I admitted, my head spinning with the effort to try to explain my tangled feelings. “It’s different from the way I feel about you. I don’t … well, I don’t want to kiss him. But that doesn’t mean I care less, does it?”
Ezra smiled to himself. “I don’t think it means you care less. I think you’re asking yourself the right questions. You’re learning how your heart works.”
“Then stop carrying on about problems,” I said with a huff.
“The real problem with Julian is that you think you dislike him tremendously up until you don’t,” Ezra mused, looking across the street at him.
Irritated, I pushed to my feet. “Come with me.”
Ezra watched me warily. “Where?”
The look I gave him left no room for argument.
Looking appropriately concerned, Ezra picked himself up and followed me around the back of the general store.
Here, we stood in a dirt lot surrounded by a few empty troughs and no onlookers.
I found myself breathless with frustration, not at Ezra but at how difficult it was to understand my own mind.
Sometimes simply looking at Ezra made me angry, angry at how much I—
I didn’t want to give the feeling a name.
“You’re rather scary sometimes,” Ezra said, scratching his neck. He wore a borrowed shirt that didn’t fit him right. It should have looked ridiculous. Instead, I wanted to get close to him, touch him where it clung to his skin.
Infuriating.
I pressed against him, pushing up on my toes. “How dare you demand to know what’s in my heart when I’ve got no idea what’s in yours?”
He opened his mouth to respond, but I wasn’t finished.
“And!” I exhaled raggedly. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you still fancy Julian as much as I do.”
Ezra’s lips squirmed. With a blinding sort of indignation, I realized he was trying not to smile. “So?” he asked, ill-contained laughter a tremble in his voice. “Does that mean you still fancy me?”
I launched at him, more of a flail than anything else, and he caught my wrists easily and held me as I breathed raggedly.
“You’ll hurt yourself,” he whispered, the amusement on his face replaced by something else. Something that made his eyes darken.
“I don’t care.”
Then my wrists were free, and he was lifting me at the waist, and our mouths crushed together. I let out a wet gasp when my back thudded against the wall.
“Ezra,” I said—a warning. We’d be seen. We’d embarrass ourselves.
I’d burn up.
I’d burn to pieces.
He exhaled my name with a low rumble, his mouth against my throat, hot as a brand, his sweaty hair tickling my jaw.
Heedless of my bandaged fingers, I pawed at him, pulled his shirt, scratched at his ribs until his mouth found mine once more and we made a messy attempt at kissing.
My head knocked back against the boards behind me, and he winced when my thighs tightened around his waist. I’d never done anything—never felt anything—like this.
“What are you doing?”
Ezra froze, his forehead pressing against my shoulder. His chest heaved against me. Pinned like that, I forced myself to look for the source of the question.
Julian stared at us with a nauseating mix of anger and hurt. He held a greasy rag in his hand, twisted it. “Have you no shame whatsoever?”
Gently released, I slid down the wall and ducked out of Ezra’s arms, leaving him leaning against the back of the general store, collecting himself. “Julian,” I tried to say, wiping my mouth self-consciously and running my fingers over the disarray of my curls.
Julian’s gaze shifted from us to the wall beside us, his expression faltering.
I craned to see what he was staring at. Pasted over layers of sun-weathered posters, a newer one depicted a drawing of a grave beneath a dead tree.
Conduction lines crisscrossed the top of the poster. The words were large and bold.
RESIST THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY PROGRESS IS POISON
“Concise,” Ezra remarked weakly. “Compelling. It’s a good thing no one knows where the two of you came from. I’d rather none of us have our throats slit in our sleep.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Julian spoke stiffly, his words clipped and quiet. “There’s a private coach willing to take us as far as the train station in Grandville. We leave in an hour. Do try to be prepared.”
With that, he turned on his heel and left us in the shade of the store.
Sinking to sit at Ezra’s feet, I buried my face in my hands. For once, a flush didn’t overtake me. Instead, I felt as if Julian’s scathing stare had drained every bit of blood from my body. I wasn’t ashamed of kissing Ezra, of our helpless expression of anger and grief and want.
I was ashamed of the way we’d added to the pain lining Julian’s face and the way I wasn’t sure exactly what we’d done wrong. His expression had been more than simple disapproval or disappointment.
Ezra’s body made a scraping sound against the boards as he sank beside me, his thigh too warm against mine, too familiar and too close.
“Why aren’t you lovers anymore?” I dared to ask, my pulse erratic and thunderous in my ears.
He sighed with longing that echoed in me like the ache of an old bruise. “Because I didn’t believe in him.”
I wasn’t sure that was the whole truth. But at least we’d have days trapped in a stagecoach together to figure it out.
As if reading my mind, Ezra lifted his face to the sky and whispered, “Fuck.”
I’d traveled by coach only twice—on the way to the train station from the House of Industry in Sterling City, and to the House of Industry as a small child.
I had faint memories of riding in the back of wagons or on horseback before that, scrabbling for purchase around the waist of an adult.
I couldn’t recall if it had been my mother or father or someone else, but in the memories, I’d laughed, unconcerned.
The interior was much, much smaller than I remembered.
Climbing in first, I could scarcely imagine both Julian and Ezra fitting inside with me.
For multiple days. Nevertheless, they followed, Ezra immediately hitting his head on the roof and Julian’s gaze shuttering to something distant and icy the moment he surveyed the threadbare interior.
“Surely it’s better than walking,” I offered as they shifted around, struggling to find a way to sit across from each other.
They couldn’t manage it without their legs tangled and touching.
I ended up crammed beside Julian, my feet tucked close to the bench on account of all the legginess they contributed to our painfully close quarters.
Julian held a spare cushion like a shield.