I nodded silently, wanting to say so many things but unable to find the right words. Aelia was my feisty friend who was as unpredictable as she was loyal, but this time we weren’t facing the manticore or some other beast of Pantheon. This time the stakes were so much higher. She spun on her heel and headed off into the darkness.
Reluctantly, I started in the opposite direction, intending to find Mum and Eli before the alarm. The last of the afternoon light was receding and Pacha, the village lantern-bearer had begun lighting the beeswax candles suspended in willow rope jars from our treehouses. They illuminated a path through the forest at night, but the effect was to cast our homes into an ethereal half-light. Mum called it fairy-tale, but tonight their glow did little to soothe my nerves.
‘Tal?’
Max’s voice stopped me in my tracks and when I followed its direction, I could just make out his healthy face among the dusky branches of a dense red cedar. Instinctively, I gripped the strong arm that followed. His proximity was usually the only thing that enabled me to think straight.
I leveraged myself using the tree’s thick, nodulous bark but there was no real need. Max led Arafel’s treehouse construction team, and I was sharing his bough within seconds. I gazed through the feathery leaves that fringed his brown skin. He had three fresh rabbits attached to his leather waistband, and a forced smile pinned to his face.
For a moment neither of us said anything. It had been like this for a while now. The weighted silence. Like he was slowly building towards something methodically, the way he built treehouses. Only this subject wasn’t approachable with sheer logic, and there was no previous design for him to copy or adapt. It wasn’t a conversation I was anticipating in any way either, which made me the biggest coward, and him more than confused.
I loved Max fiercely, but there was a dam somewhere in my throat, one that blocked up all emotional pathways between my heart and mouth. And no matter how close we were, there was still a void between us, preventing those final words.
‘I made something for you,’ he murmured.
There was an underlying question in his voice, and I knew he wanted to ask how the conversation with Art had gone, that in his head he was already racing across the forest. Max to the rescue. He was always so damned busy trying to rescue everyone, he rarely stopped to ask if they wanted rescuing in the first place.
My stomach pitched as he held out a small wooden object. Anticipating, always anticipating. I stared incomprehensibly at first. In the twilight it looked a little like a wooden mushroom with a short fat stalk and a bigger, carefully whittled cap. Then, as I gazed, the fine markings of his determined wood-carving knife became clearer. I reached out and picked it up in wonder; it was no bigger than a whistle, but the craftsmanship was superb.
Lost for words, I turned it over and around in the palm of my hand. It was all there – the thick trunk, the veined knotted branches, the tiny indentations of a willow rope ladder and trapdoor.
‘It’s a treehouse,’ I whispered, my words slowing as the significance of his gift began to sink in.
He nodded shyly, waiting for the right reaction. A reaction that gave him the light he needed, a reaction that patched the need for real words – and real, honest conversation.
‘Not just any old treehouse,’ he returned, reaching across to pick it up gently and perform a swift manoeuvre. I gasped, as with a swift twist of his deft fingers, the small tip came away revealing a small, perfectly formed dart tube.
‘It’s one of the most accurate blow tubes I’ve designed.’ He frowned in concentration. ‘The aperture is just large enough to take one of our darts, and the narrow circumference maximizes direction and speed … Like this, see?’
He plucked a fresh cedar leaf, rolled it up into a tiny scroll and inserted it carefully into the tube. Then he raised it to his lips, and aimed at the floor beneath our feet. Two seconds later it was lying next to a small grey stone, slowly unfurling.
I stared at him in wonder.
‘You really are the most incredible craftsman,’ I murmured with real awe, hoping it would be enough, for now.
‘It’s perfectly balanced … the treehouse dart tube I mean,’ he added, his eyes shining uncertainly.
I nodded, knowing it wasn’t what he meant at all, that he hadn’t intended just to give me this. That it was his door into a conversation.
‘Max, I …’ I intervened, my head racing with a thousand inadequate words.
‘Sssh!’
He pressed a work-worn finger against my lips; and an expression flickered across his face, something between frustration and stubborn hope. It made me want to reach up and cradle his honest face in my shallow hands.
‘I thought you could wear it, like a necklace? So it rests here … my favourite spot.’
He dropped his fingers to gently brush the hollow of my neck, and I felt a flush steal up my neck. They were the same words he’d whispered that night, and he knew it.
‘Here, I could kiss here all night … I can see your blood pulsing, alive and vibrant. It’s such a gift, after everything.’
My world wobbled.
We’d already sealed our caring the most intimate way possible so why was I still holding him at arm’s length? And, if he wanted it all so much, why in the name of Arafel wasn’t that enough?
Perhaps if I just closed my eyes and pretended, I could lose myself long enough for it to become the truth.
‘It’s a practical keepsake … for while I’m gone,’ he whispered.
‘What do you mean?’ I frowned. ‘Art will need to send Arafel’s best hunters. I’m one!’
‘I know. But you can’t leave your family, not again. Your mum’s right – you’ve risked enough already. It’s your turn to take a back seat, Tal. If Cassius came across you …’ He paused, a ferocious scowl suddenly contorting his face.
I looked away. The moon wound only a milky light through the cedar’s branches, but right then it felt as though I were standing in the full glare of the sun. I pressed my nails into my hands, suppressing the feelings running wild beneath my skin. I couldn’t let Max see how I felt about Cassius. That I knew he would like nothing more than to have his vengeance on the Outsider who brought Pantheon crashing down around his ears. And probably in the most sadistic way. Because Max would make it his own war. And I couldn’t have that.
‘I understand the risks,’ I whispered, watching light diamonds flicker in his eyes, ‘but he’d still have to catch me first.’
A brief silence hung in the air. The moment had gone and we both knew it. And although it was only a temporary reprieve, for one insane moment I felt disappointed. Gritting my teeth, I pushed myself onto the balls of my feet, readying myself to leap. Just as Max’s fingers brushed my forearm.
‘Has Art even agreed to it?’ he asked intently, his breath warming my cheek.
I shook my head. ‘There’s going to be a meeting and a vote in the Ring. Art said he has to put it to the Council. Aelia was …’
‘Angry?’
‘Terrified.’ Our whispers coincided as Aelia’s strained face spun into my mind.
The cedar leaves rustled with the breeze, and the tiny hairs on the backs of my arms prickled. Where would this all lead?
‘She thinks we’re hesitating because we don’t want to help. She says time is running out.’
I started as he reached forward and silenced my words with a swift, determined kiss. It was the briefest of gestures, but one that burned as though he had scored his initials there.
‘She’s not the only one,’ he whispered. ‘And at some point in the not too distant future, that