"perhaps we should have told them from the start," my father whispered.

"they're only children," my mother whispered back.

"exceptionally bright children."

"in a few years." my mother's voice was almost pleading. i heard my father kiss her.

"all right, love," he said. darkness, the click of the door. "all right."

i didn't question it. i was so warm and loved and happy. i had faith in the things i didn't yet understand. everything would come together in time.

when my parents died, the memories became too painful to dredge up. i avoided them. but lately there's a purpose to them. an urgency. i let my parents back in, the way i did when they were alive, let their voices flutter through my head.

in my dream tonight the world dangles from my mother's neck as she kisses me good night, and i reach up to grab it.

chapter 21

the next day i make an effort. i get out of bed. i go to the kitchen and force down a bowl of oatmeal and dry toast. and after, when i'm feeling nauseous, i sit very still until the feeling passes. i take the aspirin claire gives me. i ignore the dizzying bits of light. i wash the dishes. i say nothing about the fistful of blond hair that came out this morning when i was tying my ponytail.

the effort is more exhausting than the ailment, though, and by noon i'm hiding in the shed, leaning against an old car covered by a tarp, to catch my breath. there is the stale, dusty smell of unused things. pieces so rusted that i can't tell what they are line the shelves. jars full of bolts, nails, safety pins. things that are of no use to me.

all day i've been going through the motions of a well person. i don't know if anyone is truly convinced, but claire didn't complain when i scrubbed the bathroom tiles and vacuumed dried cereal from the living room carpet. right now i'm supposed to be taking inventory on what supplies are running low and writing up a shopping list.

i just need a few minutes to get my bearings. while i'm clearing the haze from my mind, i try to imagine where rowan could have gone. we have no living relatives, and we always kept to ourselves.

what i know for certain is that if he believes i'm alive, he's searching for me. otherwise he's avenging my supposed death. nothing rowan ever does is in vain. nothing without purpose. there are so many places for gatherers to dump an unwanted girl's body, and rowan would have stayed long enough to search all of them before moving on. but a body dumped a year ago would be gone by now. if he's looking for me at all, it means he thinks i'm still alive.

now the question is, how do i go about finding him? when i was little, i was taught that if i ever got lost, it was best to stay in one place so that i'd be easier to find. but now my brother and i are both in motion. he won't be back here to find me, that's for sure.

i make my way back to the house, still trying to reason out a plan. i take comfort in the chores, menial and repetitive. gabriel helps me fold towels and tells me i don't look as pale anymore. i can't tell if he's only trying to be kind, because i still feel as lousy as ever. but i manage to keep my dinner down.

"how do you feel?" silas asks, drying the wet dishes as i hand them over.

"much better," i say.

"well, you still look like crap," he says. "i'm taking the couch again. i don't much care to be woken by your midnight cough-a-thons."

"because you have such pressing engagements that demand a good night's sleep," i say.

but i'm glad that gabriel and i will have the room to ourselves nonetheless. when i climb onto the mattress beside him, he reaches overhead to turn off the lamp.

"you seem better," he says, with so much relief that i don't dare tell him that i'm still miserable.

i sigh, tilt my head toward his, and just nod.

i don't want to talk about how i feel. i don't want to talk about how long we'll be in this place, or how long it will take to find my brother, or if i ever even will. i don't want to talk about anything that relates to time at all, so i only say, "it's been so long since you've smiled."

there's a pause in the darkness, and then a soft laugh from him. "where did that come from?"

i strain to see him in the flimsy glow of silas's clock. "just saying."

"this hasn't been a smiling sort of time," he says.

i stretch my arms up over my head, yawn. "it has been fabulous. what, you don't agree?"

we both give small, halfhearted laughs. he traces his finger across my chin, feels the smile filling up my cheeks. "you are exhausting," he says, not without affection. "you never stop moving."

"i'm not moving right now," i say. i'm so tired of chasing things that are forever eluding me.

there's something jenna said to me late one afternoon. the sun was going down, turning everything pink and yellow, which meant that soon we'd be called in for dinner. we were lying on the trampoline, sweaty, exhausted. we'd jumped for what i'm certain was an hour, laughing at first, but then just gasping, forcing ourselves higher and higher, taking turns propelling each other up, up, up like dying birds with just enough will to try to take flight.

then, in the stillness, she'd reached for my hand as she sometimes did. her fingers always carried the ghosts of her little sisters. she never mentioned them, and i never knew their names, but still i could sense that when jenna was quelling one of cecily's tantrums or dabbing at my tears, she was remembering how she'd cared for them.

"do you know why we're married to house governors?" she said. "it would be one thing if we were penned like horses and let out for breeding, but it isn't like that. we aren't pets-we're wives, which is worse."

i'd thought about what it would mean to be penned for breeding, and then i raised my eyes and watched a cloud that looked like a broken octopus. "how is it worse?" i said.

"because if we weren't wives, it would just be what it is-stealing girls and making them obey. but people used to get married to spend their lives together. there's intimacy. it implies it was consensual. it's not just our freedom that was taken, it was our right to be unhappy, too."

at first i couldn't rationalize it. being a bride was something i wanted to escape, but surely it was better than being a prostitute or a faceless baby machine. "we still have a right to be unhappy," i told her. "we just have to pretend with linden, that's all."

she laughed bitterly. "oh, rhine," she said. she rolled on top of me and took my face in her hands and smiled so sadly. "none of us are pretending."

i think about that now, and gabriel watches me with his head tilted. his eyes are so full of life and curiosity. he's been caged up too. and now, suddenly, i understand what jenna was saying.

when i was married to linden in the gazebo, my hand was limp in his. my eyes bored through him. i didn't hear the vows being spoken. and when he talked to me, much later, my smiles were lies. my kisses were for the higher purpose of escape.

"what are you thinking?" gabriel asks. he demands nothing of me, and there's only one thing keeping me beside him:

"choice," i say softly. "i'm thinking about choice." and i lean forward and kiss him.

he kisses back, readily. we're fast learning the ways of one another.

i've made the right choice, haven't i? a life outside of linden's mansion isn't a pretty life, or an easy one. and the small annoyances of life on the wives' floor are the things i miss now: cecily sneaking into my bed when she couldn't sleep. my sister wives shrieking with laughter as they played games when i craved silence. and linden, who was present even when he was not. every second of every day held the promise of him. even when he was nowhere to be found, before the day was over he would come by to say good night.

i push the thought of him away as soon as it comes. i have no business missing linden ashby. he spent his days doing as he pleased while his wives were made to wait in their cage. i was right to run away. even cecily, ever content to be his prisoner, had enough sense to recognize that. life without those safe little walls isn't easy, but it's mine.

i close my eyes, feel gabriel's breath on my face as he repositions himself beside me. he whispers my name like it's the most important thing in the world. "yes?" i reply, but our lips are already touching, spurring all my nerves and muscles and my bloodstream to a strange, wonderful upward motion. everything alert, buzzing.

it's the first time we've kissed without the stigma of my marriage, my sister wives looming in the hall, or one of madame's perverse displays. i make a noise, and then he does, faraway and unrecognizable.

this delirium is not to be confused with that brought on by my fever. this is happiness, so sudden and unexpected. this is the world disappearing around us.

there is only a wisp of a memory of that man's hand on my thigh, erased in a second when gabriel brushes his fingers over the spot, bringing flutters of warmth and light. everything that happened before feels like a million years ago now. this is the freedom i craved throughout my marriage. to share a bed not because of a wedding ring or a one-sided promise that was made for me, but because of desire. inexplicable yet undeniable. i have never craved closeness like this for anyone else.

his hand reaches under my shirt, palm flat against my stomach, and then his head draws back a little and he goes still.

"what's wrong?" i say.

"your skin is burning up," he says.

"i'm all right."

"can't you just be honest with me?" he sounds angry now, and i feel as though i'm shrinking under him. i open my mouth, but i can't think of anything to say that wouldn't make matters worse.

"something is wrong, isn't it?" he says. "and you've been trying to keep it from me."

when i don't answer, he pushes himself upright, away from me.

"gabriel . . ."

he turns on the light, looks at me, his hair a mess, eyes dark with worry and something else-affection? pain?

"don't try to take this on yourself," he says, with more force than i'm used to hearing from him.

that's fair. he has given up everything to follow me. i owe him the truth, seeing as it's the only thing i have left to give him.

"okay," i say, pushing myself upright. "okay, yes. i feel terrible all the time, and i don't know what's happening, and i'm scared. okay?"