Forbidden (8 page)

But Avra’s face hung in his mind, Avra, tipping the vial of poison to her mouth.

With a grunt of horror, he leaped over the blood, flew through the back door without bothering to secure it, and headed for the station in a brisk walk.

The sky had paled. The neighbors would discover her body and call the Authority of Passing. The thought of her in such a place terrified him, but he could think of no better way to honor her than to let her pass on to Bliss according to the Order that she had served.

It was now his duty to save Avra. Dear, sweet Avra, whom he loved and would die for if only to save her from this unholy death that had found him.

Avra…Avra, whom he loved more than life itself.

Rom broke into a run as fresh tears blurred his sight.

W
hatever the
blood had done to him, Rom did not find a way to hide it before he reboarded the early-morning train. It was the extremes of emotion that plagued him most. He struggled one minute to suppress his terrible grief, then was overcome the next by a desperation to save Avra from anything similar. One moment he gripped his hands into fists in an effort to hold back tears; the next he murmured Avra’s name like a prayer as he willed the train to go faster.

But he found new sense to his condition in his longing for Avra. He’d discovered a deep desire to protect her, yes, but now a profound love filled his heart with a warmth that felt less like pain and more like intoxication. Love, until now understood as nothing more than one’s duty to remain loyal, now raged with emotion.

If Avra hadn’t taken the blood, and he desperately hoped she had not, she would still possess a brain that could reason for him.

By the time he reached the basilica, his thoughts were torn. It was the swelling notions of benevolence and compassion directed at Avra that confused him the most. This wasn’t the stuff of pain as much as desire and love. Surely, love. Was it possible that he was simply overreacting to his new state of mind? That he no longer possessed the ability to control such mad sentiments? That his heart was simply too weak to contain opposing emotions? Agony for his mother’s death…love for Avra.

Perhaps, like a starving man, he would consume anything, anyone right now. And perhaps he would have wept at the passing of a sparrow.

No. He could not accept that. These feelings were far too real. A fresh onslaught of tears came to his eyes when he rushed down the steps to the storeroom where he’d left her.

He tried the door, found it unlocked, and peered inside.

The first thing he noticed was the light. All of the candles had been relit. There was no sign of the vial—he couldn’t remember where he’d left it.

He jerked his eyes to the floor. Avra lay there, curled up, shaking. But no vial. Thank the Maker, no vial.

He quickly stepped in and closed the door. She made no move to indicate she’d heard him.

“Avra, I’m here.”

He crossed the room in three strides, fell to his knees beside her, and pulled her into his arms. Her arms wrapped around him and he held her tighter.

“Shh, shh. I’m here.”

She was tangled in her cloak and he could feel her shoulders shaking—not with tremors, but with sobs. Her hair fell over his arm, dangling toward the floor as he cradled her against his chest. Her mouth twisted with a soft cry. The sound of it, the sight of it, tore at his heart.

He tried to straighten her cloak, to pull it around her and over her shoulders. He cursed himself for leaving her alone to face her fear.

“Avra, don’t cry. I’m here! I’m well. See?”

She had always been afraid, and with reason. But now the thought of her suffering roused in him something new and fierce, something so at home in his heart that he knew it belonged there—had perhaps always been there, waiting, slumbering, silent until now.

“Please don’t cry.” He drew her hair away from her face with a trembling hand. There was just enough light to see that her cheeks were scratched, that one of her lips had bled, that her eyes were swollen from weeping. How long had she been like this?

“Avra. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” It was a phrase normally spoken from fear after a mistake, but now he felt something else. He felt regret.

He had never seen her like this, without her spine straight, shored up against whatever fear gripped her.

He laid his cheek against her head. She no longer smelled like soap and the clean-lint scent of the laundry, but like skin and the musk of sweat, like something sweet and heady. He turned his face into her hair, breathed deeply.

Sweet Maker. How had he never noticed it before?

He drew her hands away from her face again, kissed her eyes. He touched her lip where she had bitten it. But there was blood, too, at the corner of her mouth.

A chill crept over the back of his neck.

He glanced around the room.

“Avra? Where’s the box?”

Then he saw it on the floor by one of the table’s legs. It was open, the vellum inside it. The vial lay on the floor nearby where it had apparently rolled to a stop.

Even from here he could see that it was nearly half empty.

His heart pulled through a hard beat, pushing thick blood through his veins as if they had suddenly collapsed, then opened to accept a rush of new life.

He turned back to Avra, mind awash in horror. But there was no terror in her eyes. She was staring up at him with soft, round eyes, swimming in something he hadn’t seen before. The glint of fear was gone, replaced by a need that mirrored his own longing.

Neither spoke. Rom wanted to. He wanted to cry his outrage over the danger she’d put herself in. He wanted to beg her forgiveness and weep with her.

And then he suddenly didn’t want to. The urge to correct what was wrong here faded, smothered by a desperation to love this woman.

She began to shake in his arms, but not from fear. Her eyes pulled at him with the same desire he felt, he was sure of it, and this realization thrust him into a place so foreign that he wasn’t sure he hadn’t been sucked into Bliss itself.

Avra was no longer the young girl he had protected through life, but the woman he needed as he needed air. She was rising, eyes fired. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed his mouth with a fierce passion that inflamed him and made his mind rage with hunger.

Breathing hard, they fed on each other, two starving souls who’d found each other near death before finding the only food that could sustain them.

Avra pushed him back, straddling him as he dropped to the floor. Her fingers clawed through his hair. Her lips smothered his. She was breathing through her nose in short, desperate snatches of air.

His hands roamed the firmness of her back, her small shoulders, the drape of her hair as she pressed him down, devouring him. Ecstasy defied the torment that had ravaged his mind. It was physical, yes, but so much more.

His heart was alive. Screaming with pleasure. Eager to love and be loved, awakened to a dizzying and forbidden world of love and passion.

Avra suddenly jerked back an inch. Her eyes were wide and her breath washed over his mouth. They stared at each other, frozen for a moment.

And then she pushed herself off him, rolled to her knees, and blinked.

“What’s happening to us?” Her voice sounded lost.

Rom scrambled to his feet, head spinning. He didn’t know. Was this life or was this death? An hour earlier he had sworn death, but if what he felt now was death, then he would take his life without hesitation if only to feel its embrace.

She swallowed. “I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did.”

She kept her eyes on him, making no attempt to further discount her feelings.

Rom settled to his knees beside her. “We both did.”

He took her in his arms and held her gently. She hesitated, then pulled her legs to one side and rested her head against his chest.

“Are you all right?”

“I drank the blood, Rom,” she said, shaking again. “I heard you leaving and tried to call you but you’d gone. I thought you’d left me.”

“Never! Do you hear me? Never.” He hugged her and buried his face in her hair. The thought of leaving her horrified him, but he couldn’t summon the words to convey his feelings. So he held her close, aware of her warmth. The pain he’d felt at finding his mother dead was no less, but now a desperation for the emotions Avra had awakened flooded him with a gratitude that he could not comprehend.

However the blood worked, he was now sure it could not be something as simple as the gateway to Hades. Something far more profound had happened to them both. They were changed. Fugitives. Poisoned, alive, dying—whatever it was.

But above all, they were together.

“Are we dying?” Avra whispered.

“No. I don’t think so. Maybe we’re more alive.”

He wanted to tell her how he felt, to unravel what was happening to them, but there was a more urgent matter now. He knew that the priests would soon come to prepare for first assembly. They had to gather themselves and find someplace safe to hide.

“We have to go soon.”

He took her hand and slid his fingers through hers, marveling at the smallness of them, at the delicacy of her littlest finger.

“Do you feel any pain?” he asked.

“My mind hurts.”

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you.”

“Where did you go?”

He looked at the burning candles. “Home. I had to see my…”

“Your mother.” Fresh tears spilled from her eyes. “Oh, Anna—poor Anna! Rom, I’m so sorry!”

She clasped him and they wept together, clinging to each other. The wound would not seem to close, and Rom wondered if it was possible for hearts to actually break apart.

“Look at me,” he whispered, after the tears had stopped again.

She turned her head toward him, her lashes still wet. Had she ever been so beautiful?

He lowered his head to hers, touched a kiss to her cheek.

“Rom…”

What we call love, Rom, is the shadow of something lost.
How had his father known that?

“I love you, Avra.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “With love as it once was. The blood has turned us back in time. You feel it as much as I do.”

Her eyes searched his, understanding. And then she reached up, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulled him toward her. He kissed her again, gently this time, but when she fell away she was breathing heavily again, trembling.

“Is this madness?” she whispered.

“No.” He kissed her neck, the top of her shoulder.

“Don’t.”

Her scars.

“I never cared about them before and I don’t now. I wouldn’t have you without them. I swear if I had the power to heal them, I would only do it to please you. You are whole to me.” He kissed her neck again.

A soft
thump
sounded over their heads and Rom jerked his head up. The priests.

“Quick.” He scrambled to his feet and pulled her up. He collected the box, rewrapped the vial in the vellum, and then carefully set the bundle inside and latched it closed.

“Are you all right?”

“I don’t know.” But she was steadier on her feet than he had been.

She fastened her cloak as he blew out the three remaining candles. In the dark, he reached for her hand. Pressed the box into it.

“Can you carry this?”

He heard the rustle of her sliding it into the pocket of her cloak.

They moved toward the door.

“Will you be able to run?”

“Yes.”

Rom opened the door enough to peer out and listen. Footsteps echoed down the stairwell farther down the corridor, coming their way. He eased the door back into place and led her across the storeroom to the second door, laid his hand on the knob and turned it.

He waited until the footsteps stopped just outside the first door. As soon as it opened, he whisked Avra out, and they fled down the dark corridor in the opposite direction from the stairwell they had descended the night before.

The sound of their steps changed to an echo as they entered the old crypt tunnel. It was pitch dark and noticeably colder as the smooth floor beneath them transitioned to the unmatched edges of roughly hewn stone. Avra stumbled. His hand tightened on hers.

They kept to the wall, inching past the carved sarcophagi that erratically lined the corridor, the intermittent stone walls that jutted out between chambers.

He had avoided this part of the lower level last night, thinking fear might incapacitate them both. But now, even though he recoiled every time his fingers touched one of these homes of the dead, he found himself driven by something even greater than fear of death.

The desire to live.

More than that, to keep Avra safe.

“Almost there,” he whispered. He felt for the rail of the winding staircase, the cold curve of it along the landing. A cool but stagnant draft wafted up from below.

“What’s down there?”

“More of the same.”

He led her up the staircase, their footsteps seeming to echo too loudly on each step. It seemed impossibly long and high, as though they’d climbed forever before the rail finally flattened out onto a landing illuminated by a sliver of light from beneath a door.

He felt for the handle, but then hesitated.

Avra whispered, “What are you doing?”

For a moment, he was unsure how to share what he was thinking.

“Once we leave…”

She finished the thought for him. “We won’t be able to stop running.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I can’t live without you.”

His heart soared. He kissed her fingers.

“Where will we go?” she asked.

He drew a breath. “Right now the only person I can think of is Neah.”

“Neah! She’s as Order-bound as they come! She’ll report us in an instant!”

“It’s her or Triphon.” Their two closest friends from university. Rom had already run through all the possibilities. For the last six years, Avra had kept personal company with no one but him, and Rom had systematically ruled out every relation, neighbor, or other artisan he knew.

“There’s no one else.”

“Neah works in the Citadel. She could help us find this man called the Book, whoever he is.”

“You actually mean to try to find him? We’ll be caught for sure! No, Rom. We have to leave the city. We have to run.”

“We’ll eventually get caught. This Book may be the only one alive who knows what’s really happened to us. Or how we can fix things. Or if we even can.”

“Too dangerous. We all know the Honor Code.” Those who infringed on the Order were responsible for reporting not only others, but themselves. Anyone who didn’t was at risk of being reported for their failure to report.

In a system ruled by fear, the code rarely failed.

“I don’t like it.”

“Can you think of an alternative?”

When she didn’t answer, he tightened his grip on the door handle and opened it enough to peer out. The altar stood at the opposite corner of the sanctum. Farther down, near the narthex, early arrivals filed in from the main entrance. No guardsmen that he could see.