If I tipped my head down, I could press my lips to the place where his blood rushes at his wrist and feel his pulse race.
A kiss. That’s what it would be.
A…kiss.
Nightmares don’t kiss. They don’t give human boys sweet dreams, either.
“I have to go.” I jerk away, rubbing the memory of his touch from my cheek with my knuckles. “But I need your help.”
“Go where?” He sits up, his blanket slipping down.
“To the ocean.” I look away. I don’t need to dwell on the secrets of a mortal boy’s skin; I need to find a way back to myself before I lose Foxglove forever. Before I’m nothing but Clara and her raven hair and sad eyes, with only the gray humming between her ears and not even a memory of magic left inside. “If I go tonight, while the moon is dark, I might…”
I might be able to rejoin my dear ones.
If Wig and Poke avoided the wards surrounding Amaria and survived, they would have been pulled away from the island come the first crescent sliver in the sky. They’re loyal friends, but they are as driven to perform their nightly duties as any other planting. But they’ll come back at the darkening of the moon. Come back for me.
If I can get out to sea, beyond the wards, I might find them there, waiting.
Or my magic might return to me and I could start searching for them. I survived crossing the wards once. Surely, I can survive it again.
But I can’t tell Declan even a scrap of the truth.
“Come outside,” I say, motioning toward the door. “I’ll explain.”
“Let me get dressed. I’ll meet you out there,” he says without hesitation.
I nod and creep to the door, slipping gratefully out into the chill autumn wind sweeping in off the water. I move a few steps down the sandy path to the beach and then a few more, pulling in deep breaths and blowing them out until my heartbeat slows.
I look up at the sky, at the stars and stars and stars—so many more than on a moony night, but never as many here on earth as in the sky above the night garden—and I am seized with a powerful ache for the land of my birth. It burns in my lungs and clutches at my throat. I hunch my shoulders and press my fists against my chest, riding out the wave of longing for my sisters, for the safety of our bed, for the shelter of their arms looped through mine as we curl together in sleep, for the simplicity and completeness and rightness of the time before I was ripped away.
Before I understood what it was to long for something. Before the confusion and isolation and too much time in the human world.
“Clara?” Declan’s whisper makes me turn.
I see his lean, broad-shouldered shadow step from the doorway, and for a moment I want nothing more than to turn and run from him. Run as fast and as far as I can, run right into the sea and keep running along the ocean floor until I’m spit up on some distant shore.
But could I ever run far enough to forget that for a moment I wanted to give a kiss? Run fast enough to banish the memory of being something so close to a human girl?
To forget that I also want to run to him, nearly as much?
“Clara?” he calls again, concern edging into his voice.
“Here,” I whisper. I’m certain he won’t hear me over the waves rubbing at the shore, but he does. He turns and shuffles down the path to meet me, his hands in the pockets of his coat, his head tipping to the side the way it does when he’s unsure of what to say.
“So…where we goin’?”
“To the boats. To the place where you found me,” I say, hoping I can make him understand how important this is, how worthy of rule-breaking. I know the boys aren’t allowed to take the boats out without a professor, and never after dark, and never ever past the wards.
“Can it wait until morning? I can get Gunder to—”
“No. I have to look for my birds. They’re most alert at night.”
His brows draw together, and when he speaks, his voice carries hurt gingerly in its arms. “Clara…it’s been a month. If the poor things were ever out there, they’re gone by now.”
“You’re probably right,” I say, wanting with everything in me for him to be wrong. “But I need to look. Now. Can you take me? I would go alone, but I’m not sure how to work the sail.”
“And you can’t swim to save your life.”
I try to smile, but instead I shudder with the memory of the ocean pulling me into its belly. “Yes,” I whisper, wishing I’d never learned to fear something the way I fear the black water licking at the land all around me. “That, too.”
He sighs and casts an anxious look out at the sea. “It’s dark.”
“Not so dark,” I say, forcing fear away with thoughts of Wig’s sweet snuggles and Poke’s clever eyes. “There are stars. I can see your face without a lamp.”
“I don’t know.” Declan lifts his chin and sniffs the air. “It smells like rain.”
I glance up at the cloudless sky and furrow my brow. “Your nose is confused.”
“My nose isn’t confused,” he says with a quirk of his lips. “Storms come up quick on the island, and it always smells like this just before.”
“Like what?”
“Like…” He closes his eyes as he inhales. His eyelashes fan out onto his pale cheeks, reminding me of those moments I’d watched him sleep. I think I should look away, but I can’t. I’m captivated by the shadows beneath his cheekbones, charmed by the dip between his nose and upper lip, tempted to see if my fingertip would fit into that hollow as perfectly as I imagine. “Like new grass and rusty water and earthworms and…goat. Old goat.”
“That sounds awful,” I say, with a huff that feels strange after so many days without laughter.
Declan opens his eyes with a grin. “But accurate, you can’t deny it.”
“The only thing that smells like old goat is an old goat. Keep going like that and you’ll hurt the clouds’ feelings.”
“Aw, well…you’re probably right. Wouldn’t want to do that.” His smile fades as his eyes meet mine and something sparks between us. We stand in silence, lips parted, breath puffing in the salt-laced air.
He’s so close I have to tip my head back to hold his gaze, close enough that the soapy, earthy, wood-smoke and nut-bread smell of him tickles my nose.
My cheeks grow warm and longing surges inside again, but it isn’t longing for my sisters or safety or something I’ve lost. It’s that new longing, the yearning for something I’ve never known but am desperate not to miss.
Before, I had no clue what that something might be, but now I wonder…
Could it have something to do with Declan? With his strong, safe arms and his soft words and the way looking into his eyes makes me feel not alone in a way not even Wig or Poke ever did? Could it have to do with his warm skin and his lips and…
Oh…
A kiss…
He wants to kiss me, too.
I suddenly know it the way I know the names of every planting in the garden, and it terrifies me nearly as much as being snatched beneath the waves.
“Help me,” I beg, backing away before his lips dip any closer to mine, dizzy with the nearness of my escape.
Every beat of my heart is a fist slammed against my ribs—painful, but cruelly satisfying. In this sharp, starlit moment, there is no gray, no doubt about who I am or what I’m here to do.