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

by Nina Varela

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 .

“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.”

It was a big bed, and there was plenty of space between them, yet it felt like there was very little space at all.

Breathe for Ayla. The smell of her hair, like soap and sea lavender. Breathe. Midnight. Moonlight.

“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.” “No you can’t,” Ayla muttered, cheeks hot. Crier raised an eyebrow. “Was I wrong?”

“Does my face look all right?” she found herself asking Ayla. Ayla raised her eyebrows. “What do you mean, all right?” “I don’t know,” Crier muttered. “Never mind. It was a foolish thing to ask.” She felt Ayla’s eyes on her and refused to look up. She stared at her own hands in her lap, light brown against the midnight black of her dress. “It does,” said Ayla almost begrudgingly. “Look all right, I mean.”

“Which illness gives you stomach pains and a limp,” Crier muttered, helping Ayla through the green door of the inn. “A bad one,” Ayla retorted.

Crier moved at the exact same time, hands flying up to frame Ayla’s face, and they were kissing.

She’s cleaning up feathers. She’s holding my locket. She kissed me—and I kissed her back.

That she was capable of the most human feeling of all. That she loved Ayla.

(That kiss. The way her entire body had lit up, everything inside her coming awake.)

“We don’t know how long they’ve been planning this attack, my lady,” said one of the guards. “They might have planted weapons, firebombs.” “On my bookshelf?”

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.

All of this had happened only because of the fifth pillar. Logically, there was only one solution. She needed it gone.

“Humanity is how you act, my lady,” said Jezen. “Not how you were Made.”