Crier's War (Crier's War, #1)

by Nina Varela

She had never really seen a pair of eyes like this.

The girl reached forward and pressed her thumb to the soft skin below Crier’s left eye.

Like she was more than a human girl. Like she was a summer storm made flesh.

Perhaps the butterfly was actually a wasp.

Ayla’s face was fascinating. Crier had seen her barely twice and she already knew this like she knew the constellations.

“Yes,” said Ayla, and refrained from adding, Your customs are similar because your entire culture was stolen from ours. Because you have no history or culture of your own.

Slay the house boots down

“Have you experienced love?” “Yes.” Ayla bit her tongue. “What does it feel like?”

More than anything, Crier wanted to find Ayla. To track her down in the servants’ quarters and make sure she was all right. But there was no way Crier would be late to her very first council meeting. All she could do, in the end, was catch a maidservant and instruct her to deliver a full breakfast—bread, fruits, cheeses, a bowl of honey—to Handmaiden Ayla, wherever she was, and to inform her that she was relieved of all her duties for the next two days.

It wasn’t much. It wasn’t nearly enough. But if Crier could not see Ayla, at least she could make sure Ayla’s belly was full.

“For the unoccupied chair of Councilmember Reyka,” said Hesod, “I nominate Scyre Kinok of the Western Mountains.” Kinok. Of course.

A sinister thought: What if her father, or Kinok himself, had had a hand in Reyka’s disappearance? The timing of it seemed all too convenient. A spot available, just now, as Kinok’s movement was on the rise and as Hesod was seeking ways to reintegrate his dissenters.

At the meeting, in front of everyone, Kinok had joked that Reyka, too, had been passionate.

One girl pressing another against the cave wall, bodies moving strangely. Crier felt something—a pulse, deep in her belly. She squirmed, suddenly embarrassed for reasons she could not explain, and tore her eyes away from the two girls.

Most times, lately, Ayla just looked soft.

For some reason, Ayla’s outrage—over a story, over her words, over, maybe her—made Crier smile. A thought came to her: a story of its own, one that had only just begun writing itself in her mind: a story of two women, one human, one Made, who told ancient faerie stories to each other. Who splashed each other at the edge of the water. Who whispered the beauty of snow and the fear of death into the darkness of a late autumn evening.

Crier. Just Crier, no Lady. This was a new feeling.

A drop of water gleamed on Ayla’s lower lip. Strangely, it made Crier want to—drink.

“You’ll fall ill,” Crier said at last. “We can’t stay.”

That night in her bed, though, moonlight falling through the window like a curtain of white silk, Crier could not stop thinking of Ayla—her face, her words, her curiosity, her habits.

Vaguely, Ayla remembered one of the head scullery maids trying to make Ayla stay behind with the other servants, and Crier saying, “The handmaiden will remain at my side.”

She tried to concentrate, to slow the frantic whir of her mind, but it flew uncontrollably to the place she knew it would—Ayla. Her lips. Her breath. Her skin. Darkness and touching and kissing and . . . She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood.

“It means I saw the way your Lady Crier looks at you,” said Storme. “It means I saw the way you look at her. The way you spoke to her. The way you almost touch her, sometimes.”

“When I was younger,” Ayla whispered, “my mother would sing to me.” Crier’s first thought was, I don’t have a mother.

She should be lying awake at night thinking of nothing but sliding a blade into Crier’s heart. She wasn’t. Instead she thought of: Crier’s odd, awkward affection, her questions, her endless curiosity—sweet, often naive, almost childlike, but always earnest, always fascinated by whatever answers Ayla was willing to give.

She was beautiful. It was perhaps a terrible thing to admit, but Ayla couldn’t help it. Crier was beautiful.

“I know you’re looking at me,” Crier said, and Ayla looked away so quickly that she nearly knocked her head against the carriage window. “I can tell. I can always tell.”

When she spoke, Crier saw that it wasn’t just her lips that were stained blue-black—it was also her teeth and tongue. It looked like she’d been drinking black ink.

So Crier dined, hardly taking a bite of the useless food put out before her. She pocketed a biscuit to bring to Ayla in the morning.

Crier took Ayla’s hand and placed it on her sternum. Right above her heart. She could feel the thud of it—Made, but no less real than her own. “I have a heart, like you,” she breathed, and again her eyes searched Ayla’s face, and Ayla heard her own heartbeat so loud in her ears, like the drums from the cave, like the night she’d led Crier out onto the black rocky beach and begged for the end of her story.

She knew she’d been wanting this for a long time, even though she hated herself for it. Crier moved at the exact same time, hands flying up to frame Ayla’s face, and they were kissing. Hot and furious, gasping into each other’s mouths, Crier’s fingers in Ayla’s hair, her teeth scraping against Ayla’s bottom lip, their bodies pressed together.

There was no way she could actually marry Kinok. Especially not now—not after the kiss. Not after she knew the truth about herself. That she was capable of the most human feeling of all. That she loved Ayla.

Even after everything that had happened, after what Ayla had tried to do. Crier still loved her. Maybe she had loved her ever since the moment Ayla had saved her life on the cliff so many weeks ago.

Crier had been Designed. Crier was Made. But in the moment Ayla first touched her, Crier had learned what it felt like to be born.

“Humanity is how you act, my lady,” said Jezen. “Not how you were Made.” And she let go of Crier’s sleeve.