Mated to the Beast of the Wasteland novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: The Water Tower

"No," Sable said again. "Absolutely not. You told me what happens there."

"I told you what happened last time."

"He died last time!"

She threw a trade list at the wall. It fluttered down onto the stove.

I pulled it off before it caught.

"Nobody's going tonight," I said. "Listen to me."

"A crystal's no good without the ring. Six nodes on the walls, cable between them, a cradle in the water tower."

"That's weeks of work. If Brand brought the crystal home tomorrow, we'd have nowhere to put it."

Sable folded her arms. "And Perrin's paper?"

"His week runs out the day after tomorrow. Let it."

"And then?"

"And then we build the ring. And when it's done, we go to the reactor our way. Not his."

She looked at me for a long time.

"Our way," she said. "You keep saying we like you've got a vote."

"I've got a wrist." I held it up. "Says I do."

She laughed, which meant she'd lost.

Perrin's week ran out. Nobody from Wasteland City signed.

The thirty-day mark came and went, and no truck came to inspect us.

By the sixth week the ring was half up.

Three nodes stood on the walls, ugly iron spikes wrapped in scavenged coil.

The crew hung cable between them off the catwalks.

The kids from the east row brought me screws in jam jars and asked for a coin each.

I paid them in flatbread.

I'd been sick every morning that week. Dust, I told myself. Haven lungs.

That afternoon Brand and I climbed the water tower to fit the core cradle.

The tower was the highest thing in town, a steel tank on four legs with a hut on top for the old pump controls.

I could see the whole Wasteland from up there.

And far off, a faint gold smudge on the horizon. Haven.

"It flickers," I said. "Gran's right. Watch the left edge."

Brand squinted. "I don't see it."

"Wait."

The gold edge dimmed for a breath, then came back.

He didn't say anything. He just moved closer to me.

We worked till the sun went low.

I was on my knees bolting the cradle to the floor when Brand straightened up and sniffed the air.

"Ember."

"One more bolt."

"Ember, look."

The sky to the west had gone brown.

Not cloud. A wall of it, rolling toward us across the flats, swallowing the old highway as it came.

Down below, the gun tower bell started ringing and didn't stop.

"Dust storm," Brand said. "Ladder. Now."

We got as far as the hut door.

Then the wind hit, and the whole tower hummed.

Grit came sideways. I couldn't see the ladder. I couldn't see my own hand.

Brand pulled me back inside and slammed the hut door.

He jammed the bar across it.

The hut was the size of a closet. A bench, the dead control panel, a window caked brown.

The roar outside was enormous.

I sat on the bench and coughed until my eyes ran.

Brand pulled my filter mask up over my face from round my neck and held it there.

"Breathe."

I breathed.

"How long do they last?" I asked through it.

"All night, sometimes."

"Will the nodes hold?"

"The nodes are spikes on a wall, Ember. They'll hold. Will you?"

"I'm fine."

He sat down on the bench next to me. It wasn't built for two. My hip pressed his.

The tower swayed. I grabbed his knee.

"You're scared of heights," he said, delighted.

"I'm scared of steel towers in high winds. That's engineering."

"You climbed up here every day for six weeks."

"In daylight. With you holding the ladder."

He grinned in the dark.

"I always hold the ladder."

"I know. I noticed."

The light went. The storm turned the dusk to night in five minutes.

All I could see was the amber of his eyes when he turned his head.

"Six weeks," he said quietly. "You've been sick every morning for one of them."

"It's the dust."

"It isn't the dust."

"How do you know?"

"I can smell it on you. Something's different. I don't know what."

My heart did something strange.

I didn't let myself think about it.

"You're imagining things," I said.

"Maybe."

He put his arm round me, and I leaned into him, and the tower swayed and held.

His shirt smelled like solder and dust and him.

"Brand."

"Mm."

"Six weeks of crawling round on walls together."

"Yeah."

"And every night we fall asleep before we've got our boots off."

He laughed, low, against my hair.

"Is that a complaint?"

"It's an observation." I turned my face up. "We're stuck up here. All night. Nobody's banging on the door."

"Nobody can get up the ladder."

"Nobody at all."

He was very still.

Then he kissed me.

He kissed me like he had all night to do it properly, and for once, he did.

Slow, at first.

His mouth moved over mine, sure and warm, and I felt the shape of his grin when I made a sound against him.

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