Page 39 of The Reveal
I don’t know which part of what he said I should focus on first. “The Kind?”
He pauses, and I can’t read the look he sends my way. Did he not mean to say that? “A generic term. For your monsters.”
The Kind,I think. Kindness is not what I associate with the creatures he’s talking about. Though I know that’s not quite the meaning intended.
“So what’s the prophecy?” I ask.
“As I said, this particular prophecy is a series of steps.” I get the impression that he’s studying me again. Looking for something on my face, in my eyes, though I can’t tell what. “Certain things will happen, and if they do, they are keys to a set of locks. Once all of those locks are open, a much bigger event will occur.”
“Thank you. That’s very illuminating.”
“It is just about time for the second of these locks to be thrown open.” There’s no mistaking it now. He’s watching me intently. I just can’t figure out why.
“But you’re the king. Surely, you have all the keys.”
Ariel does not smile. Not exactly. But that power hums in the cool dark all around us, and the way he looks at me feels like he would smile, if he could. Maybe if things were different—but then, if they were, I wouldn’t be standing here. “If only it were that simple.”
I turn toward him, and we’re so close. The air all around us is cool, and I can see pinpricks of light in the distance. Fires in the hills.Moonlight up higher. Small fires or flashlights deep in the shadows in the city streets. Even the odd flickers of electricity here and there by people who clearly don’t fear attracting the nightwalkingKindto their doors.
But there’s nothing as electric as whatever this is that blazes between the two of us.
This thing that shouldn’t exist.
I feel doomed. But in that doom, somehow, there’s a certain elation that I can’t make any sense of, because it’s impossible.
It’s a shivery kind of ache in every part of me, a desperate pulse.
“I’ve never been much for prophets,” I tell him, not entirely surprised to find that my voice has dropped to a whisper. “Seems like anyone with a little creativity can warble on about the end of days. Sooner or later, they’ll be right.”
I still can’t read that look on his impossibly perfect face. It’s something like quizzical. Or maybe it’s wonder.
But that’s nothing next to how it feels when he takes his hand and traces a pattern over my cheekbone. Down the line of my jaw, just shy of my lips.
He is cool to the touch after all, but it’s like an ice cube on overheated skin.
My body reacts with a hot, deep flush that there’s no possibility of hiding.
It rolls over me and about flattens me. It blooms inside me.
It devours me.
“The Reveal was foretold by many ancient seers.” Ariel’s voice is so low that at first I think he’s whispering dark sex words. Not this same prophetic bullshit. “Over many millennia. But also, more recently, by a local oracle of surprising strength.”
I scoff at that, though maybe I just want to move my face in his grasp so I can feel the friction. “What good is an oracle who doesn’t tell people what’s coming? Who doesn’t even try?”
“There is an oracle on every street corner claiming they know the end is nigh,” Ariel says softly. “Are you in the habit of listening?”
I’m listening now. And I have never felt anything like the clamor inside of me at the moment. Maybe he’s doing it. Maybe I’m doing it.
All I know is it’s unbearable, but maybe it’s the dark that’s doing this to me. Here in the ruins of Medford, where no one can see me. I have a stray thought that all my sins take place in the dark and then are ignored ever after, but that’s the only comparison to Samuel I can muster up.
Because Ariel puts the likes of Samuel to shame, something I would have said was impossible. I think about that awful Tuesday when everything changed, forever. He can call it locks or keys and talk about Vinca the death goddess, but none of that is likely to have anything to do with me. It was the end of the world. I know it. I was there. I watched it happen.
But if the whole world is made up of impossible events these days, what’s another one?
I hate myself, but not enough, because I tip myself forward and press my mouth to his.
It’s a mistake.
