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

Chapter Twenty-Two

Aris's hands anchored to my shoulders and forced me to face him. "No, no, no, Sevastyan. You can't do that, you can't allow yourself to hesitate. They'll see it, and they'll see right through it."

Katya finally spoke, her voice cool and careful. "Is it the truth, Sevastyan? Did you really hold back because you were afraid?"

Eliza turned on her. "Of course he was. We both were, and not only for the lynch mob, but for the eyes watching us that we couldn't see. I remember. He was afraid of whatever was controlling us, afraid they'd find out that he was immune, and that he'd vanish like the others who had disappeared for breaking such a ridiculous rule like not showering. He was afraid they'd take him, and then he'd be unable to help anyone." She folded her arms and straightened her spine. "All he's been doing is trying to get us help, trying to get us a way out. It simply hasn't been all that easy. Right, Sev?"

I should have blurted 'yes' without thinking. I should have insisted she'd spoken the absolute truth, and I should have left not a fraction of doubt. I should have thrown myself onto my feet and stood tall, shoulders back and chest out, proud even if I needed to depend on a third leg.

But I couldn't.

"If it had been about survival, you would have taken Elizaveta and been gone from here long ago."

No words left my lips.

"You needed to know why."

The effect carried like rocks spilling down a mountain, gathering momentum, gaining force and speed. Each of their faces changed into something unfamiliar as I couldn't muster a response, and I had to look away from them. The shame devoured my insides and shredded me apart, piece by piece. Aris's hands slipped from my shoulders, leaving me so much colder without the flames in his skin.

Eliza grabbed my arm instead, yanking. "Sev! Tell them! You know what the truth is, what's going on with you?"

I didn't know anymore.

What was real and what wasn't? Who was I? Was I the pictures that had been on the fence, or the pictures that had covered them up? Was I the serpent with prey in my claws?

My gaze shifted past Aris to Lazar, and I remembered how he had pulled me from the razor teeth of the mob, not just today, but when I was face-down on the concrete and at the mercy of everyone. He had swept in and pulled me out, and he took me to safety, and he sat with me and told me he wanted to believe me.

Did he want to believe me now? His face had turned to stone. Unreadable.

I turned from him, from all of them, sliding my arm free of Eliza's grip. Air came in shallow, sharp gasps to my chest. My head swam. I grabbed the cane and shoved myself to my feet. I limped, one slow step at a time, toward the fence. I needed to see my previous drawings.

The rain had diminished the vibrancy, streaking the face of Aris and the figures of our old clan, Katya and Ivan and Maksim unknowingly included. The villages we had crossed, the forests and the mountains and the smooth undulations of grassy terrain. The ocean. The sunsets.

Mother Earth. Her flesh as dark as the soil that had encased my parents' graves, her head bowed and the smooth lids of her eyes shut in reverence as she glowed in a halo of every element, every color. The sinews of her hair twisted to form the white-water rivers, violet mountains bleeding red at sunset, shocks of lightning in the sky, blinding rays of the sun, and dusty coils of wind. When I had drawn her, Eliza fell in love. The drawing had been the inspiration to her previous song, because she had forgotten Mother Earth.

She had forgotten what it had meant to listen to Mother Earth.

I couldn't forget because she was on every wall in every village. She had hand-carved statues of cedar and bronze and even jade from the far south. She had trinkets and an altar where the ground had been worn smooth and compacted, forming the countless hands and knees that had come to her and put their lips to the ground. The dirt beneath my palm when I rested it where a thousand mouths and whispered prayers had been before carried a different texture. A strange sensation on my fingertips.