Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark, #1)

by Veronica Roth

Akos thought of the Blooming. Thuvhesits weren’t as . . . expressive as the Shotet during their rites, but the sense of it was the same. Gathering to celebrate something that happened only to them, of all people in the galaxy, and only at a certain time. The reverence they had for it, for its particular sort of beauty. Everybody knew the Shotet followed the currentstream around space as an act of faith, but until then, Akos hadn’t understood why, except maybe that they felt like they had to. But once you saw this up close, he thought, it was impossible to imagine a life without seeing it again. He felt separate, though—not just because he was Thuvhesit and they were Shotet, but because they could feel the hum-buzz of the current and he couldn’t. The current didn’t go through him. It was like he wasn’t as real as they were, like he wasn’t as alive. Just as he was thinking it, Cyra held out her hand. He took it, to relieve her of the shadows, and he was startled to see tears in her eyes—from the pain or from the wonder, it was hard to say. And then she said something strange. Breathlessly, and with reverence: “You feel like silence.”