“Is that what happens to you?” Lys’s eyes slide to hers. “You regret everything in the morning?”
Her cheeks heat. “Sometimes.”
“But you come back anyway.” He seems so like a boy—all Oliver, warm and open and unguarded—that it hurts to look at him. It’s harder to excuse his cruelty this way, when there’s no trace of the forest in him. “Over and over, you come back. Why?”
She hears what he isn’t saying—what he isn’t brave enough to ask.
Is it real? Or is it the venom in her blood?
“I don’t know,” she whispers.
“I don’t know, either,” says Lys. “And it’s making me sick.”
Outside, the rain slows. Only a few red embers remain in the bowl. They’re pitched in near-total dark. Exhausted, Shea climbs over the altar and collapses against the pew alongside Asher, letting her head drop against his shoulder. He sighs, half asleep, and rests his cheek atop her head.
“I feel horrible already,” he mutters.
“You’ll feel worse in the morning.”
“Can’t wait.”
A few minutes pass, and then Lys drops down on her right. His knee bumps up against hers. He doesn’t move it away.This, said Asher.This, she thinks. They watch the last of the embers cool to black. Slowly, Asher’s breathing deepens.
“I’ll keep watch,” says Lys. “You should get some rest.”
She does. For once, her sleep is dreamless. The rain sounds like static.
She doesn’t yearn for home.
The following day is sunless.
The whole of the church is blanketed in a murky dark, the shadows steeped in blue. Shea finds Asher in the rectory, stretching out an ache in his tricep, a cup full of sunflower seeds on the pulpit beside him. He clocks her approach, glancing quickly away.
“Look, Parker, I was out of my mind last night. I said a lot of—”
“It’s okay,” she rushes to say. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“Okay.” His throat bobs in a swallow. He looks as cautious as she’s ever seen him. “Are we good? You and me?”
“We’ve never been better.”
Her voice is saturated in false cheer, and she can tell by the way he looks at her that he doesn’t quite believe it. She’s not sure she does, either. Everything feels knocked out of alignment. She watches as he falls to stretching out his quadriceps, one hand pressed flat against the wall. The light—what little there is—seems to cling to him. Anointing him so that he looks silver all over. The morning is humid, the air thick. He’s shed his outer layers, and Lys’s bite is stark against his forearm.
“There was a tick on me when I woke up,” he says when he feels her watching. “It had about nine hundred legs.”
“That number seems high.”
“Does it?” He casts a wary gaze skyward. “This place is overrun with bugs. I found a silverfish in the bathroom sink this morning. I don’t think they want us here.”
He’s making light of it, or trying to. It doesn’t land the way it might have, back home in Little Hill. Back before she uprooted everything. Back before he followed her into the forest.
“I was wrong,” she blurts out. “I do want to talk about it.”
He stops what he’s doing, his eyes flicking toward her. “Oh.”
“It’s just—last night, you said I was the reason you became a ranger.”
“I did say that, didn’t I?”
