Cinza traced the scars encircling Ruby's wrist. Her arm lay gently across Cinza's chest, and her warm breath coated the back of Cinza's neck. They were laying together on the tree, which Cinza had managed to elongate into a small makeshift couch with the use of some of the larger roots. After the heat died down and they started to get a bit cold, they'd draped the two cloaks over themselves to ward off the chill of the night-time forest wind.

  Ruby's cloak was the only one to match Cinza's in its detail and care. That wasn't to say the rest of the cloaks they'd made for the group were cheap or flimsy—on the contrary, using magic they'd been able to enhance the tight stitching to a level of quality beyond what their meager means would normally support (before Nate Price had begun to supply them with cash). Ruby had simply spent just as long going over every inch with her own abilities, enhancing and decorating the surface with the tiny specks of light that made it shimmer, as well as patterns and designs that were only visible under the right light. The inner surface was lined with the smoothest soft material Cinza could imagine. At the moment, it was doing wonders draped across her skin.

  "How long do you think it'll be 'til he gets here?" Ruby murmured into Cinza's hair.

  "Oh, are you growing bored of me?" she teased.

  "Never," Ruby breathed into her ear, sending a shiver down her neck. She hugged herself tighter to Cinza's back, spreading warmth through her body.

  "Makoto should be coming soon, but we still have some time," she replied, checking her watch. Makoto was to meet them at this particular spot and lead them to the appointed ritual site for the night. Normally, Cinza was the one to pick the sites and lead the group there, but as she'd been preoccupied with the heist mission, she'd left the task to Makoto. The locations themselves weren't particularly important. Cinza just preferred a wide open clearing where she had enough room to perform her more complex and stunning movements.

  "Mmmm," Ruby hummed suggestively, tracing lines down Cinza's chest with her hands. Cinza laughed, but she stopped Ruby before it went any further. Her mind had already wandered onto other topics. She'd finally remembered what she'd been thinking about before the exquisite redhead had decided to seduce her into a makeshift tree bed.

  "Ruby, I've never asked about your parents."

  "Mmmparents?" Ruby asked, startled. "Why would you ask about them?"

  "I never knew my own. I didn't really have parents until I turned twelve, and I ended up leaving those behind eventually when our paths diverged. I wanted to know what yours were like."

  She hugged Cinza tight, and this time it was less seductive and more comforting—as if Ruby needed the embrace more than she did. "I never met my mom, she died when I was a baby. My dad hated me. I left him. It's not really a nice story."

  "Oh," Cinza replied awkwardly. "I'm sorry."

  "It's okay," Ruby answered, giving her another reassuring squeeze. "I don't mind you asking. You can always ask me anything. Why parents, though? How'd you get there?"

  Cinza relaxed herself within Ruby's warm embrace. "The parents who eventually adopted me were very religious."

  Ruby giggled. "And you're worried you're going to hell for sleeping with another girl?"

  "No, nothing like that. I was thinking about how much we've become like a religion ourselves. We have rituals and a holy text, we perform ceremonies and we evangelize."

  "By evangelize do you mean tossing those copies out for people to find?"

  "Yes, though it wasn't as productive as I'd hoped. It was pretty foolish in retrospect. We only managed to recruit one new member from all that effort collecting and distributing the copies, and we lost the capability to awaken newcomers."

  "I think you're forgetting something," Ruby said, and her hand left Cinza's skin for a moment to point at the scroll tube resting at the back of the tree against the trunk. It was sitting next to a small pile of Cinza's charms and bracelets where Ruby had tossed them, just visible in the dim glow Cinza was keeping alight under their blanket of robes.

  She nodded. "Until now, of course. Still, we've become a religion. We even worship a goddess."

  "Well, our goddess has proven herself many times over," Ruby said smugly.

  "You know the world would describe us as a cult."

  "Let them," she said fiercely. "If we are a cult, then we're the first cult in history to be right about who we worship. Does it matter what they label us?"

  Cinza smiled. She enjoyed Ruby's passion and spirit—in more ways than one. "There was a time where I would have said the same thing about being Christian."

  "Are you confessing to me you're a skeptic?" Ruby asked playfully.

  "If I were?"

  She was silent for a moment, but her hands never left Cinza's skin, nor her face from Cinza's hair. "You're our leader. Skepticism is good in a leader, it keeps them from being blind. If you don't believe in her as a goddess, that's for you to decide. I'll still follow you no matter where it takes us."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Cinza sighed and pressed herself closer into Ruby's embrace. "You are one of the most beautiful and magical things in all the universe, Ruby."

  "Flattery, my love?" Ruby tickled her gently. "When we were having such a serious discussion!"

  "I am being serious," Cinza frowned. "I've just been thinking a lot about my past lately."

  "Ah, the great and mysterious history of Cinza the Bold, first of her name."

  "It needn't be a mystery," Cinza said, though she felt a pang of anxiety and fear in her chest as she said it. "I'd tell you if you asked."

  "But you don't want me to ask, and I know that you don't want me to, so I leave it as a marvelous tale forever buried in those diaries you keep so meticulously next to our bed." As Ruby got more tired, she frequently began using dramatic language with flair, as if she were a bard telling stories from some ancient legend. It was endearing, as Cinza herself had always loved that style of speech, and tended to employ it herself when speaking in public.

  "I'd tell you though, if you ever asked me," she added, and her flair was suddenly gone once more, back to the quiet, bashful tone of truth and exposure.

  Ruby was offering to expose herself to Cinza in a way neither of them had yet managed. Cinza knew that Ruby wasn't her real name, just as Cinza's own true name was well-kept secret beyond any of the residents of Rallsburg. They had shared little beyond the basic details of their own stories. While Cinza kept diligently recording her life as she always had, she shuddered to share those details with the world—even those closest to her.

  "Do you want me to ask you?" she asked.

  "...Yes."

  "Even though I still don't want you to ask me?"

  Another hesitation. "Yes," Ruby whispered, but she sounded resolute. Cinza believed it was what she wanted.

  "What's your name?" Cinza asked, unsure where else to start.

  "Hannah. Hannah Newman." Ruby sounded as though she were letting out a huge sigh as she spoke her own name. They'd spent so long together that the secret finally giving way was like a breath of fresh air.

  "Well that makes sense. Ruby Dahl was simply too much," Cinza said, drawing a giggle. She wanted to ask, but she also wanted to make things easier on Ruby where she could. Keeping the tone light would help.

  "I'm from Tacoma. I came here because I was trying to run away and this was the first train leaving the station when I got there." Cinza laughed abruptly, interrupting her. "What?"

  "It's—it's nothing. I'm sorry. Please, keep going."

  Ruby shrugged. Cinza suddenly felt warm lips pressed on her skin. She'd planted a kiss on Cinza's neck, right on the eight-pointed star tattoo. Cinza let out a sharp gasp.

  "That's what you get for interrupting me," Ruby breathed into her ear, before settling back again into their earlier position and her voice returning to normal. "My parents and I… we didn't get along. At all. It wasn't the first time I ran away, actually. It was just the first time I ran far enough that I found something worth sticking to." Cinza smiled, but didn't interrupt. "I don't know if you remember what I looked like the first time you actually saw me…"

  "I would never forget."

  "Then you remember the bruises."

  Cinza nodded. "I remember how much you tried to hide them, and I remember telling you that they weren't what defined you. You didn't have to hide them from me because you weren't ever going back to the place that gave them to you."

  "I think it was more eloquent than that, but yeah. You didn't ask, and I was really grateful at the time, but I also wish a little that you had. I think getting it all out right away would have been better. Those bruises were from my dad. Everything I ever did seemed to make him angry. If I did bad in school, he'd get angry from the phone calls home. If I did well, he'd be mad for making him look bad since he never graduated. When I made dinner, he'd complain about the taste, and if he made dinner he'd get upset that I didn't look like I was enjoying it. He was impossible to please, and as I got older he got meaner.

  "High school was when it got the worst. I'd stopped just taking it and started shouting back at him. Bad choice, I guess, since that meant he had to do something worse to match me. So when I came home one day with a friend, and he caught me kissing her, he got really bad. That was the first time he'd hit me. My friend ran away—and I don't blame her, my dad was a scary guy—and I just kinda rolled up and got hit. I couldn't really fight back against someone like that."

  "Oh, Ruby," Cinza murmured. She started to roll over and face her, intending to hug her, but Ruby just hugged tighter and stopped her. Cinza relaxed again, letting Ruby continue talking from behind her.

  "He called me a dyke and a bitch and told me that he was glad my mom wasn't around to see what I'd grown up into. I'd never known my mom, but it still really hurt. That was… that was the first night I cut myself." Ruby held up her hand in front of them, pointing at the many lines across her wrists. "I kept that up for a while, but I always gave up before I could really do it. It got bad enough that the school noticed. They talked to my dad, but he managed to keep himself out of it somehow. The blame all fell right back on me, and they put me in counselling. I tried to talk to them, but I just couldn't. I didn't trust them enough to understand.

  "I started running away, a little bit more every time. First it was just a few hours, then it was a day, then two. I'd stay at a park overnight or just ride a bus until they kicked me off. I didn't realize how dangerous that was at the time. I was pretty much willing to do anything to get out of my home. I was skipping classes and spending time at the library instead. I look pretty old for my age so they just assumed I was a college kid. Then one day, my dad snapped.

  "I don't know what it was. Maybe it was me being gone for a few days, or maybe it was just that he drank a bit more than usual that night. Whatever it was, he beat me so bad I thought I was gonna die. I crawled into bed and when I woke up the next day, I went straight to the train station and didn't look back."

  "And the next day, you met me," Cinza finished.

  Ruby kissed her neck again. "I met you, and you saved my life."

  "You saved mine as well, you know."

  "We'll call it a draw," Ruby said, giggling. "You also showed me something to believe in, after I thought the world was totally worthless. You showed all of us something to believe in."

  Cinza smiled, but she still felt that doubt in the back of her skull. Not doubt in Ruby, as she trusted the girl more than anyone or anything else in the world. There was a tiny fragment of doubt in her mind that their goddess truly was someone they could believe in. She had been burned once before, after putting her faith and her heart into the hands of a deity she did not fully understand. Grey-eyes had performed miracles before her eyes, but still—was she someone Cinza and her family could really surrender to with their very souls?

  She couldn't be sure. Cinza might preach the new gospel of Grey-eyes, but she could never fully submit to the goddess herself. All she knew was that she wasn't going to let anything hurt her family. Not the beautiful, sensuous girl currently holding her in a warm embrace, not the silent and utterly loyal lieutenant approaching them from out of the dark forest, and not the eight other people who had placed their absolute trust in her to lead them to a better life.

  The stakes were too high for her to recklessly give herself over entirely to faith once again.