Moments like this, when he’s standing close enough for me to see the cracks in his chapped lips, the ones he has because he always gives away any lip balm we happen to find. I wonder if they’d feel rough if I touched them. If he’d wince.
I pull my hands away from his, coughing as I adjust the straps of my backpack. I hold the headdress up between us, just so I have a reason to step back.
“You think we would have learned our lesson about treasure by now,” he breathes, looking down at the exquisite piece of gold. It contrasts strangely with the dirt smudged on my fingers, and I turn it over in my hands, staring at the red stones.
To think, it was a stone like this that started the whole thing.
Dean holds his hand out, and I look up. His face carries a hint of mischief, a smile that tugs on the corners of his mouth. The whole world has gone to shit, but I can count on that smile. The one that talked me into throwing a water balloon through the school bus window at Michael Precocci after he made fun of Vanessa for not shaving her legs yet.
That smile could get me to do almost anything. I hand the headdress over, and he lifts it to my head, setting it gently on my unwashed hair. The space between us is open again, and feels like it crackles with a dangerous promise. I ignore it, focusing on the ruby droplets as they skim the skin on my forehead. Dean raises his hands, his smile deepening as I turn to look at my reflection in the broken glass.
I think I look ridiculous. The headdress leans to the left, awkwardly balancing on my greasy ponytail. My eyes flit to Dean’s reflection. His brow is furrowed, his eyes narrowed like he’s thinking about something.
“What?” I press.
“I just wonder what she looked like, you know? Anne.”
The sound of her name on his lips is odd, like it will always be too loud, no matter how quietly he says it.
Anne de Graaf.
She upended the world. She unwound everything. I can never tell if I hate or envy her power. Maybe both.
Dean gently touches the gold with a hesitant finger. “I always imagine her as this terrifying thing. This force. But she was just a girl once. And she had people that loved her. She probably had inside jokes and a favorite food and stuff. It’s just . . .” He takes a deep breath, and his eyes get this faraway look, like he’s lost in his thoughts. “It’s just weird to think.”
I lift the headdress off my head, wincing as it takes a couple of hairs with it. I don’t want to be compared to Anne. It doesn’t matter what she looked like, or who she was.
The thought brushes against the one secret I have from him, and I don’t trust myself to meet his eyes. I kneel down, wrapping the headdress carefully in a towel I’d brought from the fortress.
“It suits you,” Dean jokes.
I crane my neck to look up at him as I tuck it into my backpack. “Yeah? Just casually wear an ancient headpiece around the fortress while hanging laundry and picking tomatoes?” I tease.
He thinks about it. “Save it for Halloween. Go as Anne de Graaf’s Chosen One.”
My fingers freeze on the zipper. Chosen One. He can say it casually. He can joke about it, since he has no idea. Still, I have to fight the shudder that works its way down my spine as I stand.
“Yeah, because I’m sure everyone is still dressing up this year,” I shoot back. It’s small moments like these, the ones I don’t expect, where I realize how much we’ve lost. Where I feel how different the world is now. I yank the zipper closed. “And Harlow will kill you if she hears you joking about that. You know how she feels about all that Chosen One shit.”
“According to you, Harlow will have killed me twice before this little mission is over,” he muses.
I stand, tightening the straps on my shoulders. “You, of all people, know that Harlow would find a way to bring you back just to kill you again.”
Dean laughs, the sound vibrating off my ribs as he nods. “True.” He looks down at his watch. “Speaking of the merry murderess—”
“Hey. Theoretical murderess. That’s my sister you’re talkin’ about,” I interject.
“She should be heading back soon. If we’re going to beat her home, we’d better move,” he finishes.
We walk down the hallway, past abandoned exhibits about the Mycenaeans and an old gallery devoted to the Bronze Age.
Wind whips up the staircase, careening in from open double doors that lead into the middle courtyard. Overgrown trees lean over a cracked, empty fountain, and weeds spring up between the stones that used to make up the walkway. Dean and I pass through, barely warranting notice from the sparrows that have taken up residence in the rafters of the covered walkways crisscrossing around the edge of the courtyard.
We are cutting through the foyer when we hear it.
Footsteps.
Dean and I freeze. I reach for my blade while he turns his head slowly, locking eyes with me. We both hold our breath, hoping that it is just an echo. Or a trick of the wind.
Anything but them.
Thunk. It sounds again, closer this time.
Dean and I move at the same moment, darting to the exhibit room to our right, hiding in the shadows. He is pressed against me, holding me closer.
“Is it—” I whisper, unable to conjure the word as I keep eyes on the cracked floor at my feet.
“I can’t tell,” he breathes, his voice barely audible over the crashing of my heart in my ears.
I wrap my right hand tight around the mirror in my back pocket as I turn my face up and look into Dean’s eyes, his blue irises glinting in the low light, soft and safe. Not in a poetic sense. Not just because I’m in love with him.
But because the world is different now. And looking in the wrong eyes is a death sentence.
Dean sticks his toe past the doorjamb, tilting his ankle to angle the mirror that’s fastened to his shoestrings into the hallway, as the footsteps sound again.
If it was Harlow and her crew, they would have used the identifying whistle. Even a rival fortress in the area would have used some unique sound. We aren’t friends with other settlements—it is kill or be killed, out here—but we know there is a special kind of alliance between free humans now. There are bigger things to worry about than who has better supplies.
I hold a hand up as the footsteps sound again. Closer this time.
Dean grips my arm, and I shut my eyes. Maybe they will just pass. Maybe they won’t know we are here.
But I know, deep in my gut, that if it’s them, the hope that they’ll pass is wishful thinking, because they have a weapon we don’t—a heightened sense of smell.
He lowers the mirrors, and I know what he’s thinking. I feel Dean shift next to me, leaning toward the door. I grab him, pulling him back.
“Don’t even think about it,” I hiss. He pulls my hand from his arm.
“We’re dead if we don’t know what we’re dealing with,” he whispers back.
He stills as the footsteps sound again, but there’s something else—the sound of hissing—a breath that could be going in or out, I can’t tell. There is more than one, though. A symphony of breath racing past saliva-soaked teeth.
Dean leans forward, tilting the mirror on the back of his hand past the door. I can’t see the glass, but I know the moment he sees them. His jaw tightens and he turns, yanking me closer as he pivots, shielding me. I can feel his heart beating through my back.