A Web of Steam & Puppet Strings (Sevastyan #1)

Chapter Ten

CHAPTER TEN

Sleep was not on my side these days. It didn't help that I was still rattled, still on edge, ready for guards to blast open the Doors and drag me away while everyone slept soundly.

Eventually, the thousand fingers of the shadows crushing my body finally shattered my resolve to pass out.

I pushed myself out of my bed and left the bunk. The corridor was pitch black, like swimming in ink, but the vibrations of my feet described the floor and the walls and even the indentations of the doors. It was like using the air to describe Isidora's hidden study: I couldn't make out many details, or colors or textures, but I understood the path ahead.

In the bathroom, I only bothered to wash off my eye makeup and scrape the dull blade at the bristle along my jaw. After dabbing my face dry, I replaced the towel in my cubby. A real shower was in the not so distant future.

Outside in the Playground, the air permeated with the crisp, flesh-piercing chill of a dying winter. The smell of it was musty, an aroma of decay with a tickle of sweet growth and mulch and pollen. Fog hovered close to the ground, rising in plumes, the pungent soil wet with dew. Steam whispered off my skin as I wandered my way over to one of the rickety benches beneath the sickly tree and collapsed.

I was tired. No use in denying it. My body would soon fall apart at the joints like a broken doll. Despite my exhaustion, the fire in my blood never abated. My racing pulse refused to allow me reprieve.

Too exhausted to think, too on edge to sleep.

Movement caught my attention. A puff of white perched on a branch high above. A northern snowy owl. It preened its dense, lightly peppered feathers, either oblivious to me or apathetic.

A gust overtook the bird and it drove its claws deeper into the naked branch, plumage puffed out like a wad of unrefined cotton. The feathers around its feet and tail were clumped together, wet. It must have been fishing in the port.

I smoothed back my hair from my face. Its head rotated on the ball socket of its neck, yellow orb eyes settling on me. Sensing no danger, or perhaps still apathetic, it looked away. Then its wings lifted, spreading wide and fanning out before it took off into the wind, a white star shooting soundlessly across the sky, disappearing beyond the fence.

One day I'd know the feeling as well.

The brittle light of morning crept into the sky by the time the shivers wracked my bones and my skin was numb enough that I couldn't feel my own touch. I finally returned to the bunkers and collapsed onto my cot. Surprisingly, I went out like a cinder.

There was no singing this time. No piano. Nothing but the breeze flowing in from the windows, a murmur in my ears as I stared at the back of his head, his short hair as rich as the rare cocoa bean of a luxurious world I'd forgotten. I still remembered the shape of his body, specifically his back, since I'd seen it so often. I remembered the bands of muscle stretching into his shoulders, swelling at his biceps. I'd learned a great deal about musculature, watching him heave his way into broken and charred houses in search of sustenance and worthwhile goods.

We never occupied one skeleton village for too long. A hunting and gathering way of life required much less time than I thought, but we stayed long enough for me to scrounge up some tools for drawing on the walls of the abandoned homes and structures. I'd test my new knowledge and paint his body in the form of flesh inside trees, or the raw power of the ocean, or the grace of the wind, or the wild dance of flames. I'd try to see his body in every element, in everything.