Author: Jodi Meadows

“Here.” I slid one of the books toward him and grabbed a pencil. “Watch.” Lightly, so I could erase later, I traced a spiral under the text, starting from the center.

“Oh.” Sam glanced at the other books and flipped a few pages, just as I had done. “That’s incredible. I don’t suppose you’ve translated everything but the crescendo symbol, hmm?”

“No, unfortunately.” I leaned back in my chair, stretching cramped muscles. “But I’ve looked at these things how many times? I’m glad for any progress.”

“I’ve no doubt.” He picked up the rose, which I’d left on the edge of my desk. It was tiny in his hands, delicate, and the way he gazed at it was more mysterious than the books. “What else are you looking at here? I see the size changes from the center to the outside.”

“It does, and I couldn’t tell you if you read it outside to inside, or inside to outside. Or why anyone would write in a spiral, making you have to turn the book around.”

“It does seem like a lot of trouble.”

“I’ve tried to write down when I see symbols in patterns, but it’s hard to tell when I’m not even sure of the direction of the text.” I spun my notebook to face him. “Does anything else look familiar?” Maybe if more were music symbols, that would offer a place to start. But he shook his head.

“Not yet.”

I let my thoughts wander through all the information I’d learned about Heart, its history, and where people had come from. He’d told me about tribes, people discovering Heart already built.

“Once, you told me you’d found bones in the agricultural quarter?” I watched him from the corner of my eye. “They might have been from a civilization before you.”

He wore caution like a mask. “That was a long time ago.”

I refused to be discouraged. “If people lived in Heart before you, perhaps these were their books.”

“Perhaps.”

How unhelpful. I tried again. “Do you remember anything? Any writing on rocks or trees? Anything like this?” Knowing who wrote it might give clues to what it said.

“Ana, that was a long time ago.” His gaze dropped toward the rose bloom, cupped in his hand like a puddle of twilight. “And it wasn’t my specialty. I avoided the agricultural quarter whenever I could. The only thing I wanted to do then was carve whistles that sounded like my favorite birds.”

“Whose specialty was it? We can look at their early diaries. Or just ask.” People expected me to be interested in strange things, and as long as I wasn’t rescuing sylph, I doubted anyone would mind.

Of course, after the sylph incident, they probably minded when I breathed.

Sam avoided my eyes. “We’d have to talk to Cris.”

“I thought he grew roses.” I nodded toward the one Sam held.

“He does. They’ve always been his love, like music is for me, but his talent was more practical in the earlier generations.”

I supposed no one cared which animal hide made a better drum skin if they really wanted to use it as clothes. I managed a smile and nod, because I knew how it felt to be useless.

Sam gazed through me, though. He had that familiar somewhen-else expression. “Cris had a way of making things grow, and finding the right spot to plant crops, which can be difficult over the caldera. The ground isn’t always thick enough to support anything with roots deeper than grass.”

That fit with what I knew of all attempts to dig beneath Heart. The sewer had been especially tricky.

“Cris was the first to find skeletons in the ground. It’s possible he saw something else while clearing farmland. An object with one of these symbols on it.” Sam came back to himself, back to the present. “Something you could use for reference.”

Something I could use for reference?

I didn’t want to be the one who figured things out. Everyone else was so old and experienced. Why couldn’t they do it? Why couldn’t I just focus on music and making the city safe for newsouls?

“Ana?” His voice was soft.

Without even realizing, I had hunched over the notebook, buried my face in my arms.

He touched the base of my neck, caressed all the way down my spine. He was solid and warm, and I wished things were the same as before we’d come back to Heart. Life hadn’t been perfect then, but I hadn’t felt this rift.

Chasm. Fissure. Canyon. Even with his palm on the small of my back, I felt like the entire Range caldera stretched between us.

I pulled away. “Let’s call him for a gardening lesson. Tomorrow afternoon, if he can fit us in.” I copied several symbols onto a fresh sheet of paper. “I’ll ask if he’s seen any of these and say”—I bit my lip—“I caught you doodling, but you couldn’t remember where you’d seen them before.”

“Okay.” His features twisted into a mask of uncertainty.

I started closing the books, but paused when I remembered the look between Armande and Sam when he’d discovered the rose. And the awkwardness between Sam and Cris in Purple Rose Cottage. I hadn’t thought much about it then, but…then there was the Blue Rose Serenade. “Did you want to ask?”

He cocked his head and searched me, as though I wore the correct answer on my face. “I’d rather not,” he said after a moment.

Because he thought that was what I wanted to hear?

No. As I studied him, his expression shifted like shadows on darkness. Memory. “What happened? Did he do something to you?”

“No.” Sam laid the rose back on the desk, voice deepening. “He’s never done anything awful to me, or to anyone else. He’s one of the best souls in Heart.”

“So what is it?” Maybe I didn’t want to know, but the question was out.

Sam strode toward the window, where he did not answer me, just gazed outside like he’d rather be anywhere else.

Tough. Surely I deserved some answers. I followed him, but paused when I noticed him leaning his forehead on the exterior wall. Paintings and furniture covered most of it, but here by the window was a clear spot. And he’d touched it. For comfort? Revulsion shuddered through me, and his worn expression made me bite back my questions about his relationship with Cris. For now.

“If Cris can’t help me with some of these symbols,” I said, “I have to go back into the temple and look for clues. Maybe Janan will answer me.”

“No.” Sam gripped my arm.

I looked up so sharply my neck stung.

“Ana.” His jaw clenched and his voice pulled taut. “Don’t you understand that I love you?”

I recoiled. Why would he ask that? “Apparently I’m too stupid to understand.”

“You’ve told me how terrible it was in there and—” He paused, looking frantic while he searched for memories. He had enough difficulty remembering I’d been in there; anything more was almost impossible. “You can’t even bear this wall, let alone standing next to the temple. How would you manage inside?”

Confusion flashed in his eyes—perhaps the question of how I would get in, because he couldn’t remember the key I carried—and his grip tightened painfully around my arm. I wrenched myself away.

He must have realized he’d hurt me, because he held his hands before him in surrender. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” He said it as a lament, breathing hard and staring at his hands like he didn’t know whose they were. “If you want to go, I can’t stop you. I won’t try. But I will go with you.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. I had never imagined anyone could feel that strongly about me. “Because I’d rather not go alone.”

He lifted one hand, hesitated, and caught my chin to tilt up my face.

Our eyes met, and everything inside of me twisted.

His thumb slid along my jaw while his forefinger held me up. If I spoke, I’d nudge his hand off me. I closed my eyes and let my head drop back as he slid his palms across my cheeks and into my hair.

His mouth was warm and soft. We kissed like a bow and violin strings. I wasn’t sure who was which, but we made a melody that lasted only a breath.

He pulled away a fraction. “I didn’t mean to start fights.”

“I know.” I kissed him again, my fingertips grazing the smooth skin of his jaw. His cheeks, his throat, his ears. Barely-there touches that made him shiver and sigh.

“I lived ten lifetimes in that kiss, and it still wasn’t enough.” He tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “I was weak in the Council chamber, after you left. They knew just how to exploit all my insecurities.”

“Is that an excuse?”

“No.” He retreated to sit on the corner of my bed. “Yes, it is an excuse, but it shouldn’t be. I’m sorry, Ana.”

Sorry because something terrible happened? Sorry because the Council had pressured and he’d slipped, telling them about Menehem’s lab? Something worse? I could imagine a thousand horrible things he might apologize for.

“Why?” I couldn’t stop the shaking in my voice.

“For letting their talk get to me and”—he slumped, elbows braced on his knees—“I don’t know. I’m angry about Templedark. It hurts thinking about the darksouls.” He buried his face in his hands. “When I see Menehem again, I can’t say what I’ll do.”

He wasn’t the only one to feel like that, either, but at least he didn’t want to punish me for what Menehem had done.

Sam met my eyes, apology in his expression. “But I wouldn’t want to undo anything that allowed you to be with us. Lidea feels the same about Anid.” He looked so torn. “No matter how horrible Templedark was, it allowed for newsouls and you’re right. That’s better than no one being born at all.”

I flashed a tight smile. He’d been right, too: I couldn’t feel the same pain he did. That didn’t make my caring any less, though.

“Sometimes good things come from unexpected places. Life out of death. No scars after a sylph burn.” I showed him my pale, pencil-smudged hands. “And roses that taught me how to care for things, even though no one else thought the roses’ color was good enough.”

Sam glanced past me, toward the bloom on the desk. “How did you get so wise, Ana?”

“Someone strong and patient showed me.” I sat next to him, looping my arm with his. “Will you say it again? The thing you said that night at Menehem’s lab.” It probably wasn’t fair to ask him to say it when I couldn’t say it back, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to hear it more.

He must have caught the tension in my voice, because he twisted to face me, expression anxious. “You don’t think I’d stop loving you, do you? Or change my mind?”

“No.” Maybe a little.

“We might fight or disagree sometimes, but that doesn’t change that I love you.”

What a powerful feeling, love, able to withstand time and distance and disagreements. No wonder I wanted it so badly. “I haven’t forgotten what Li told you,” he said, “that nosouls can’t love.” He lifted our hands to his chest, fingers knotted with mine. “I haven’t forgotten the way you tried to run away when you accidentally said the word ‘love’ that day in the cabin.”

I couldn’t forget it either, when he’d asked what made me happy and I’d answered, Music. I’d slipped, used a word I knew I shouldn’t.

Love. I’d said I loved Dossam, his music.

I hadn’t known Sam was Dossam then.

He kissed my fingers. “You may think you aren’t capable of love, but I feel you are. I know you are.” His breath came warm against my skin. “But don’t feel rushed or pressured. I can wait if you need time.”