Storm of Ash. Michelle Kenney

from the top of a sun-drenched mountain.

       ‘Lia and Eli … they wouldn’t want us to give up Tal.’

       His raw dark blues were emptying into mine, saying everything in case there was never another time.

       I nodded again, a rock in my throat, as he gently traced the exact spot, his touch somehow relieving the constriction. And for the first time since leaving the Dead City, I allowed my thoughts to settle on home and whether I would ever see Mum again. The thought raked through what was left inside, making it soft and raw.

       ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

       His whisper burned through me, like the first sun on ice-white snow. I opened my mouth but my voice, like my grief, was empty. And that was the moment. The moment I was guilty of wanting to forget – more than being unable to forget.

       I slipped my fingers inside his open tunic collar, and let them rest against his insignia, burned into his golden skin. Her mark, just tangible beneath his warm skin, the ring of jellyfish protein that announced his modified DNA status to the world. It was his gateway into Octavia’s elite club, and the mark of the damned. And yet he couldn’t be any less hers now.

       ‘We have a saying in Arafel,’ I whispered, ‘that one feral heart can only be well met—’

       His lips were against mine before I could finish, and if there was ever any doubt that our journeys were meant to cross, it was answered here and now, while the mountain storms raged. Our need became a heat that blurred the freezing night, and a belief that somewhere there was a parallel world where two people could travel their own path beneath the stars that guided them. And as I dug my fingers into his shoulders, his touch misting every ache and pain, I knew this was where it had all been leading.

       That the mark we were making was one last act of defiance, proving free will was always the real legacy anyway.

       Chapter 6

      The moonlight was illuminating the floorboards like an old-world piano. I rested back against Grandpa’s willow chair. This had always been my safe place: my back against his legs, my cheek against his knee. Tonight though, I could only rest my weary head against his empty seat, and watch the night alone.

      The insomnia was consistent at least, and when I did sleep, there was no Max to wake me from the vivid North Mountain dream that had returned these past few weeks. A barn owl hooted a few trees away. Somehow it seemed to know that the worst part was waking to a shame so intense I could barely force any thoughts past it.

      I’d taken to sitting in Grandpa’s study when sleep eluded me. Partly so I didn’t disturb Mum, who was a light sleeper, but also because it was the one room that could offer some comfort. There were too many memories elsewhere – my window was too empty; Eli’s makeshift animal nurseries still swung from the beam in the living room; and Jas’s bed was neat and cold. I thought of the moment Eli had brought Jas home as a tiny, abandoned snow-leopard cub. The two of them had an unbreakable bond and she’d grown up to become one of the best and most loyal watch-cats in the world, even finding a way over the Mountains to Octavia’s research centre in the Dead City. The moment she saw him incarcerated inside the canister haunted me, as did the moment she squared up to Brutus, a molossus hound more than four times her size. Where was she now? I closed my eyes.

      Only Grandpa’s room offered some semblance of peace. He was gone but his scent still pervaded the enclosed space, and if I closed my eyes tightly, I could hear his whisper.

       ‘Come what may, nature finds a way … We take what we need to survive, nothing more, Talia … All life has its place within the forest, including us …’

      I contemplated the flickering floor, trying to forget the dream that left too many aches in places I never knew even existed. It was nearly three months since August left with the legatio, though my head seemed determined to replay that night above everything else. It was taunting me, lest I forget the consequences of letting myself feel anything. I could only be grateful that Unus had returned to the cave with armfuls of firewood before we’d had time to give in completely. I flushed at the memory, at the way we’d pulled apart, aching and sober, before he shuffled back inside our tiny cave.

      I’d considered disappearing. And yet I was the last carrier of Thomas’s biological control, which both isolated and trapped me simultaneously. I was different, and not Eli different. Even though my twin had also possessed Thomas’s bloodline, Cassius had already hinted the control wasn’t as effective in the male line. Which left me.

      By Thomas’s own hand I was no longer an Outsider or an Insider.

       I was tainted.

      And inexorably linked to the mother of all mythical creatures, a genetic hybrid far older than the Roman civilization and with the soul of a young girl who’d never seen the world. Lake’s double-lidded serpent eyes flickered through my head, and I knew she was searching.

       Did she know she had the power to change everything?

      August had made me promise I wouldn’t look for her without him. Even the lower slopes of the North Mountains were treacherous, without happening across an unstable chimera with a chemical attraction to my blood. And yet, he must have known I couldn’t not try. I was drawn to her, as I knew she was to me. A darkness, like Cassius himself, had been poured into our cells. I could feel him growing closer, like the night, crossing my sun. Dark to dark. Dust to …

      ‘Talia?’

      Mum’s cracked voice broke the still air and I raised my head to spy her fragile frame, silhouetted in Grandpa’s doorway.

      ‘It isn’t dawn and you’re not on shift. Why aren’t you abed, child? You should sleep. The day’s long enough for us all … long enough … I’ll wake your brother – he’ll know what to do … Eli?’

      She shuffled away, and the knot in my stomach tightened. She’d been anxious for a while, but Eli’s death had hit her hard and most days it seemed as though she lived in a world that had died along with Grandpa and Eli. I’d stopped trying to wake her. What point was there in making her live a reality she hated? And truthfully, part of me was jealous of the escape she’d created for herself. Leaving me out in the cold.

      Her bedroom door creaked closed again and I sighed in relief. She’d get up again in a couple of hours and have forgotten she ever saw me.

      Quietly, I climbed to my feet. The night air was warm and the forest was sleeping, which meant there was no one to convince I was the same old Tal. I slipped through the open doorway and stepped across towards the trapdoor that opened into the forest below. Our home had provided shelter to generations of my family, yet tonight it was too full of ghosts. With a final glance at Jas’s empty bed, I swung down to the forest floor and paused. It was one of my first lessons from Grandpa.

       Listen to the forest, Talia. Sense what kind of mood she’s in.

      But it was one of those nights. Ambivalent.

      ‘Tal …?’

      I hesitated, cursing under my breath.

      Unus’s stilted voice was unmistakable as it reached out from the gloomy trees. His was the first shelter of its kind in Arafel, a floor-house, although more had been added since the arrival of the new Outsiders. It was where he spent his nights, as no treehouse could be expected to support the weight of a ten-foot Cyclops, and until now I’d taken comfort from his proximity.

      ‘Tal, no sleep?’

      He shuffled out across the milky clearing, care written all over his one-eyed pudgy face. He still looked so out of place in Arafel, and yet his skin had developed a warmer glow over the past couple of months, which suited him.

      ‘Yes