I wasn’t sure what surprised me more—the swiftness of my own instinct to kill the hare, or Julian making light of my murderous tendencies.
Ezra rolled his eyes and started gathering kindling.
I’d never seen an animal skinned, only the work of a good butcher once all the fur and cuteness was gone. Feeling like I owed the rabbit as much, I watched what it took to make it ready for us to eat. It was a gory affair, but Julian finished quickly, every cut precise.
“You’ve done this before.”
“Of course I have,” he said simply. “More often with fish, though. That’s smellier business, but not as bloody.”
“Show me how, next time.”
Julian glanced up with an approving nod. “I will.” He paused a moment. “You’d have made a fine Transistor. I’m grateful you were not selected. I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t want to face you in that capacity.”
It had not occurred to me until now that as a Transistor, I’d have never met Ezra or Julian or learned the truth about Progress. I’d have been single-mindedly focused on killing resistors. I’d have felt righteous in my wrath, in my duty to defend the defenseless. “Thank you,” I murmured, dazed.
Ezra, tender from their fight, slowly gathered what we needed to make a small fire and fashioned a spit. We crouched close to the flamesdespite the warmth of the day, huddled like children around a bag of candy. Little time passed before the meat began to brown and drip small crackling bits of fat into the fire. With a surprising lack of refinement, Julian cleaned the meat and handed out portions. He offered a blood-dark organ to Ezra.
“Jo should have it.”
“I am not currently bleeding. You are,” I responded, around the bite I’d already taken with all the manners of a wild dog.
“I am notcurrentlybleeding. I was previously bleeding,” he grumbled, popping the slimy-looking organ into his mouth and chewing with a grimace.
We made fast, greasy work of the rabbit and kicked sand over the fire. It hadn’t been enough to satisfy us, but it was more than we’d eaten in a few days. A warm sense of accomplishment filled me nearly as much as the fresh, gamey meat.
Noting the smile on my face as we walked away, Ezra grinned. “You’re becoming feral right before my eyes.”
“Do you like it?” I asked, intending it to be a joke. Instead, my voice took on an earnest tone that set my cheeks aflame.
“Yes. And I like it when you smile,” he responded softly.
My heartbeat set off fluttering like one of the noisy little birds we scared from the grass. “Don’t be foolish,” I said, more sharply than I’d intended.
“He is incapable of being otherwise,” Julian said.
I started to laugh, the sound like water spilling over a dam. I didn’t realize how tense my shoulders were until that tension eased incrementally.
The trees were already thinning. “It shouldn’t be much farther,” Julian said. “Cascade is on the other side of this forest.”
Here, the wagon trail was well-worn and covered with a soft pine needle bed. This was the kind of forest I’d seen in picture books, with none of the messy undergrowth that made Frostbrook’s woodlandsdifficult to navigate. It made me want to learn the names of the trees. These ones were taller than any I’d ever seen, the needles a dark, rich green. Julian had called them giants.
“It’s hard to believe you’ve never been here,” I said to him. “It looks exactly the way you described.”
“It feels like I have.” His expression became faraway, as close to daydreaming as I could imagine him in all his practicality. “I’ve been exchanging letters and research with the Taylors for so long, I feel as if I’ve lived by their sides. Nikola isn’t much older than I am. I suppose she feels like a sister. She’s far more intelligent than I am. You would like her.”
“Wasn’t it dangerous to correspond in writing?” I’d never written a single thing I didn’t want every other girl in our dorm to read—usually out loud with cruel glee. It had taken only one traumatic enactment of a diary entry for me to decide that private notions should never be committed to paper.
“The letters were written in code, of course.”
Of course. Just like his journal. He really was the overachiever we’d all thought him to be back at the House. I considered his messy desk at the Frostbrook Mission. “Is all your research documented in code?”
“Nothing is documented. Even with cyphers, that’s too risky. Most of my research is in my head. And Nikola destroys every previous iteration of her prototype plans.”
Dread washed over me. If someone wanted to stop Julian and Nikola from introducing synthetic radiance to the world, it would simply be a matter of finding them and killing them. “How many people know what you’re working on?”
“In detail? Only the Taylors in Cascade, of course.” Julian glanced aside at Ezra, who appeared to be engrossed in studying the canopy above us, his mouth working through a series of expressions that led me to believe he was likely having some kind of riveting conversation with the trees. “Ezra is aware of some of my research, despite preferring not to be.”
Julian held the future in his mind. A walking liability to the House of Industry. Just one boy.
