9

We walked mostly in silence. Walked and walked and walked. I stripped off my scarf and undid the buttons of my coat. Then my coat came off, tucked under my arm. But the heat kept building and before long, I was wiping sweat from my brow and panting.

I'd always considered myself relatively fit. The last week of being confined to a cell, then the cabin, was showing. I should have spent more time doing jumping jacks and less time moping.

We stopped at intervals to take a drink of water. I waved off Roman's concern every time he asked how I was doing, but he noticed. His pace slowed. The intervals shortened and the breaks lengthened. A three hour hike was much longer in practice than in theory. With all the breaks, I'd probably added an hour or two.

My left running shoe chaffed against my little toe. After a while, it started to feel like my feet were growing flatter and flatter, the hard ground punching out their natural arch. His flashlight dimmed and I swapped it out for my juiced one. Eventually the quality of air in the tunnel became less stifling and the visibility in the distance improved. Not exactly a light at the end of the tunnel, but not pitch blackness either.

"The tunnel's opening up," I said, confused.

"Once we're out, it's only another twenty minutes or so," Roman confirmed. "We're almost there."

I'd assumed we'd be climbing out at another service hatch.

We didn't.

We simply walked out of the tunnel into the starlit night...and into an alien landscape. Solar fields, Roman informed me. Almost every building in Capra had solar panels, but these panels were large and winged and mounted onto metal stalks that tilted them in various directions, and they seemed to cover every inch of ground for miles. They looked like shields, protecting the earth from the sun rather than harnessing its energy.

Across the field to our right, loomed the shadow of a high wall. "Is that The Smoke?"

Roman gave a nod.

"It's walled."

He looked at me a moment, considering his next words. "It is, although the gates stand open. People are free to come and go."

"A warden approached me at Sector Five," I said, staring at the wall that didn't keep anyone in. "He said he just wanted to talk, that he wouldn't stop me from crossing the bridge to the Outerlands."

"We call it a debriefing," Roman offered. "The Smoke is hard living, and some people start to think they might be better off out there in the wild. They're not. But all we can do is share what we know about the wild. What they do with that is up to them."

"Because they're not prisoners." Where had that come from? I'd never thought of myself as a prisoner before.

But if the people in The Smoke weren't prisoners because they could come and go at will, what did that make me?

What did that make every citizen in Capra?

I swallowed thickly, shaking my head at myself. That would be going too far. We weren't prisoners.

But we weren't free, either.

I stood there, catching my breath and taking in our surroundings. And trying to wrap my head around the lack of security checkpoints. "The supply train runs straight from Capra to here, just out into the open where anyone can hop on or walk through the tunnel."

"But they can't go anywhere," Roman said. "The security at Capra's end is locked down tight. And up there…" He pointed up ahead. "That's the train depot, the last stop on the line. Beyond that is the Hot Zone."

"I've never heard of the Hot Zone."

"Come on," he said and started walking again, cutting through the solar fields toward the high wall.

I rolled my eyes at his obvious evasion of my question and took off after him, ducking beneath the wing of a raised panel.

Except, he wasn't evading.

He answered as we tramped through the patchy grass and zig zagged between the panels. "The Eastern Coalition consists of Capra, The Smoke and the farmlands, all surrounded by a wide buffer of land that we call the Hot Zone."

"What about the mines?"

"The old peat mine? That's part of the farmlands."

And everything else? Another lie, of course. The minerals and metals that everyone thought came from mines were likely traded for at Sector Five.

Not everyone.

Only those of us walled within Capra.

Roman went on, "Beyond the border of the Hot Zone is the wilds—the Outerlands as you call it. The Hot Zone lies entirely in the Wardens' jurisdiction and that's where most of our efforts are concentrated, monitoring the electric fences and patrolling the strip to protect the Eastern Coalition from the wild."

Every question answered raised a dozen more. If the Wardens concentrated their efforts in the Hot Zone, what about The Smoke? What about the farms? The Wardens supposedly controlled everything beyond the walls of Capra, but the way Roman spoke, I now wondered.

I didn't ask, though.

We were approaching the edge of the field. An asphalt road ran between us and the wall and branched off into the wide gap where solid metal gates were partially rolled back.

My pulse picked up a stuttering beat as we crossed the road. Behind those walls lay a mystical beast. A thing of nightmares. Stories told to warn off young girls from shying away from their duty. It had never been said in so many words, nothing ever really was, but we all assumed that to be removed from Society meant being exiled to The Smoke. There was nowhere else to go.

Maybe it was that, or maybe it was just the bitterly cold night hitting me now that I wasn't exerting myself anymore. A chill rippled over my skin and I pulled my coat on, tucking my hands into the deep pockets.

A pair of guardhouses stood sentinel either side of the gate, just inside the wall. By the looks of the dismal stalls, they were vacant. The windows were shot out. One had a gaping hole where the door should have been. Two concrete parking lots dominated the immediate area on either side of us. Only a couple of the bays were occupied.

Beyond the parking lots, and straight ahead, darkness hung over the shapes of buildings. Some short and squat, others taller than the sterile buildings in the Quantum Zone. No lights illuminated any of the windows. Starlit shadows fell to the ground we walked on, until we reached a narrow alley hedged between tall, brick buildings and left even that small company of shadows behind.

I felt life all around me, but I couldn't hear it, I couldn't see it.

"Where is everyone," I whispered. "Is there a curfew here?"

"Not exactly, and this isn't a residential area." As narrow as the alley was, we walked side by side.

Roman dipped a look at me. "The Smelt still uses peat, but everything else here runs on solar and wind. Do you know how solar energy works?"

I shrugged. "The panels absorb sunlight and that gives us energy?"

That's about as much as I knew.

Roman nodded. "We rely more heavily on our wind turbines during the winter months, but when the sun isn't shining or the wind doesn't blow, we're limited to how much can be stored. Energy is rationed, particularly at night. The lights go out at seven in the evening."

"We don't have rationing in Capra."

"Capra never has shortages of any sort," he said. "That's part of the Eastern Coalition's commitment to the town."

"You make us sound like spoilt brats."

"That's not what I said."

"You literally call me exactly that every chance you got."

"Not every chance," he said with a hint of amusement in his tone.

We broke free from the alley and crossed a wide pavement into another alley before he added, "I'm willing to admit, I was a little hasty in my judgement of you. I've begun to see that your inability to take no for an answer has more to do with your stubborn personality than an indulgent childhood."

I scowled at him. "Is that supposed to be a compliment?"

"Not necessarily," he said with enough ambiguity to grind my back teeth to dust if I allowed it.

I didn't.

I was too tired to work up the irritation at Roman for his perspective on our world. My limbs felt too loose, as if they were getting ready to fall off. At the end of the alley, we turned left onto the pavement. Here the buildings were tall and uniform, and some windows glowed with the telltale flicker of candlelight.

After we'd squeezed through another alley, we came out on a compact square surrounded with apartment blocks, all uniform again, although these were only three-stories high and each window had a shallow balcony. I hadn't particularly noticed the lack of greenery until I saw the stark difference with the small patch of hardy shrubs in the middle of this square.

Finally, Roman took us through an outer door and up a flight of stairs. When we stopped in front of a door, I expected him to knock. He didn't. He unlocked the door with a silver key dangling from his truck's key fob.

I stood in the doorway, hesitant to barge unannounced into someone's home, but Roman had no such qualms. Guided by his flashlight, he walked straight in and rummaged through a kitchen drawer. The apartment appeared to consist of just this one room, a double bed pushed against one wall, a mismatched armchair and upholstered couch against the other with a table between them. The kitchen counter at the far end was banked by a glass door that likely opened onto one of those balconies I'd spotted from below.

Given that the bed was in the living room, and unoccupied, it seemed we were alone. I closed the door behind me and made my way to the couch. "Whose place is this?"

"Mine."

I blinked. "Yours?"

"I had to give up my quarters on the warden base when I transferred to town," Roman said as he brought a fat candle over to the table and lit it.

"So you bought this apartment?"

"Property can't be bought in The Smoke." He shrugged. "It's just a rental."

The flickering glow from the candle didn't cast its light far, but it was enough to lift the edge of darkness throughout the room. It was enough to catch his gaze and pin a look on him.

He didn't miss it. "What have I done now?"

"You have a second home in The Smoke." I bent over to remove my running shoes.

"And?"

"Seriously?" I peered up at him. "You and I, we don't have the best marriage, Roman."

He said nothing, just looked at me, absolutely clueless.

I sighed. "All this time, you had this apartment to escape that marriage whenever you wanted. The rest of us don't have that luxury. We have to suck it up. I don't know, maybe you would have tried harder if you didn't have another place to run off to? It's just a guess, but yeah…Whatever."

I peeled off my socks and pulled up a knee to examine the chafed skin on the side of my little toe.

Before I realized his intention, Roman went down on his knees before me and wrapped his fingers around my ankle.

I tried to wriggle free. "I'm fine."

He held on, his grip gentle but firm. "I just want to take a look."

Horror set in. My feet were rancid. Imagine blue cheese left out in the sun in a bucket of stale sweat. For a month. That stink was my feet.

I cringed, my cheeks flaming until he returned old stinky to me. "It's a little red, but not bleeding. I have bandages in the first aid kit, but it may be better to let it toughen before the walk back."

"Thank you, Doctor."

He winged a brow at me.

I pursed my lips and mentally rolled my eyes—at myself. "Thank you," I said with simple sincerity.

"You're welcome." He rose to his full height. "If you'd like to wash—"

"I'd die for a bath," I rushed in. I totally would. A long, hot soak in a tub would go a long way to soothing my sore muscles and the humiliation of my stinky feet.

"There's only a shower stall," he said. "The water in the tank may still be lukewarm, if you're lucky. The electrics doesn't come on until the morning. I was going to suggest a hand wash."

I wasn't a spoiled brat. I wouldn't groan about a hot tub or a lukewarm shower.

"I'll take my chances." I smiled hard and pushed up from the chair, expecting him to step back.

He didn't.

We were standing within a breath of each other. My hand went out automatically, my palm pressed to his chest.

I meant to push him back.

That was the intention.

But suddenly I was hyperaware of his male scent, of the lean muscle and raw power that lay beneath his black overcoat, of a heartbeat I couldn't feel but nevertheless pulsed beneath my palm.

Roman cupped my chin in the palm of his hand, his gaze drinking me in. "I did have this apartment to escape to, but I never did. I haven't spent a night outside Capra's walls since I married you."

"Why didn't you?" God knows, there'd been plenty of times when I would have run from the tension in our house.

"Because I offered for you," he said. "You're my wife."

"You stayed out of duty."

Disappointment coursed through me, threatened to crush the breath in my lungs. What had I expected? "You feel responsible for me. That's the reason you'd do anything, even this, bringing me to The Smoke, to protect me from my own curiosity. You're worried I do something rash and land myself in hot water."

"I am responsible for you."

My voice hitched. "And that's the only reason?"

His brow arrowed, the look in his eyes intensifying. "Is that not enough?"

Not nearly. "Nothing personal, right? You would have done the same for anyone. Sorry, I mean, any wife."

I felt so stupid, I wanted to slap myself. I wasn't special. I wasn't anything more than one of his many responsibilities.

My hand dropped from his chest. I swallowed down the dry grit in my throat. If possible, I felt even more stupid at this silly overreaction, for feeling like I'd lost something when it had never been mine.

"Georga."

I shook my chin free from his palm, and he let me, but that hand immediately clamped down on my shoulder.

"I would do everything within my power to protect my wife, any wife—any woman, child or man, for that matter, placed in my care." The patience in his voice stretched to infinity and beyond. "That is who I am."

"I know." I hated the scratch in my voice, because I did know.

"That does not mean there isn't more," he said. "That doesn't mean I don't have feelings for you. That doesn't mean you aren't special to me."

"As your wife."

"As the beautiful, spirited woman who stormed into my life and defied me at every turn." His voice took on a growling quality, deep and husky. The gray in his eyes smelted to molten silver. "As the woman who isn't afraid to challenge me, my views, and the whole damn world. You crawled beneath my skin and you've been an itch ever since."

I wasn't sure if I should be charmed or appalled. My nose wrinkled.

"That didn't come out quite right," he said.

"Thank goodness."

Roman's mouth twitched.

I bit down on a smile, the oppressive weight lifting from my chest. That wasn't exactly a declaration of…well, anything really, but it told me everything I needed to know for now. We were more than the duty that had thrown us together.