ángeles.”
“If we make it back,” Esteban says, snatching the flask from Sayida’s hand before she can put it away.
“Always the optimist. Have you so little confidence in my ability to get you home?” Dez calls good-naturedly, but I hear the challenge running beneath the question.
“I trust you with my life, Dez, but I worry that scavenger’s mistake will follow us.” Esteban runs a hand over his coarse, curly hair.
“This scavenger also happens to be the only person in ángeles who can read an alman stone,” Dez says, an edge to his words. “Unless you’ve acquired talents I wasn’t aware of.”
“If you call that curse a talent,” Esteban says.
I stand abruptly and leave—but not because of Esteban, whose insults are as familiar to me as the whorls on my palms. I glance at Dez once because I know that he is going to follow.
Treading away from our camp, I keep along the river until we’re out of earshot. Dez’s presence looms behind me, his steps matching mine.
“Esteban was out of line,” Dez says when I finally stop to face him. “I’ll speak to him.”
“Esteban is always out of line,” I say sharply. “And I don’t want you to have to speak to him. I want you to let me deal with him myself.”
Dez glances skyward, confused. “Let me help.”
“Don’t you see what you do?” I take a breath because between running in and out of Esmeraldas and my memories trying to break out of the Gray, I feel stretched too thin. “They’ll never respect me if you come to my defense at every turn.”
“You’re still the most valuable person in this unit. In all of ángeles. Without you we’d be in the dark.”
“You don’t see it,” I say, shaking my head slowly. “I’m not talking about my value.”
He smiles. Now, of all times, he smiles at me—with that look that makes me want to do senseless things.
“Then tell me,” he says. “I can’t read your mind, not for lack of trying.”
“Can you change the past?”
He takes my hand, and I imagine that I can feel him through the soft leather of my gloves. “Ren—”
“I’m serious.”
His smile falters but only for a moment. “You’re always serious, Renata. I’m sure you were born serious.”
“Being responsible for thousands of deaths will do that to a girl.”
“You’re not a girl,” he says, caressing my shoulders. “You’re a shadow. You’re steel. You’re vengeance in the night. You’re a Whisper of the rebel Moria.”
I know he means to compliment me. Among our units, we are as good as our skills. But when he tells me I’m the whisper of death, and not a girl, it’s like an arrow in my chest. I stare back into his eyes, wishing he were a little less reckless. And yet, then he wouldn’t be Dez.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“No, Renata.” He sighs. “I can’t change the past. If my father’s bedtime stories serve me, there’s only one way to change the past, and that’s with the Knife of Memory.”
I laugh because if I was born serious, then Dez was born brazen. The Knife of Memory. A blade so sharp it can cut away whole swaths of memory at a time—whole years, whole histories. A classic Moria children’s tale.
“You can’t make this right, Dez. Only I can.”
He wags a finger at me. “As Margo so lovingly reminded us, we lost our last stronghold because of me. I couldn’t defeat the Bloodied Prince. If she’s going to turn her rage on someone, it should be me.”
“That wasn’t your fault. We had no allies and were outnumbered ten to one, Dez.”
He looks away but agrees with a nod. Something inside me twinges at the hurt on his face. Under the shade of verdina trees, I allow myself to finally relax into the strength of him. His tunic is loose and unbelted. I brush the wild black waves of his hair that never want to stay tied down. It hurts to move my neck, so I stand on a thick tree root.
“Why do you get to comfort me, but you won’t allow me to do the same?” He chuckles and rests his hands on my waist. We’re eye to eye, and I surprise him with a kiss. The fear that’s dug its claws in me all day lets go. I can let go when it’s just the two of us. He wraps an arm around my lower back and presses me against him. Everything about him is sturdy, dependable as the great trees that surround