Free Descendant by Nichole Giles

even know how. I’m usually not so easily swayed.”
    “Now, that I can believe.” Kye pulls me closer, running his palms up my sleeves, inching me toward him until his arms are wound around me and we’re shivering together, the white puffs of our breath mingling in a common cloud. “Is this ... are you okay with me holding you like this?”
    My only response is a nod, because I am okay. I’m more than okay. I’m home. But I still need my questions answered. “Before we turn into Popsicles, are you going to explain to me about the bus thing?”
    “Yes, right. I’m sorry about that. It was unexpected or I would’ve warned you.”
    “What did happen, exactly?”
    He takes a long, deep breath and puffs it out. He doesn’t know I know. “What would you say if I told you I have a pet moose?”
    I hear my own laugh tinkle out, muffled in the blanket of snow surrounding us. “I’d ask his name and wonder what he was doing so far from home.”
    Kye swallows again, his smile uncertain. He’s nervous. “His name’s Finn, and he was looking for me.”
    Recognizing the hesitation in his voice, I send him an encouraging look. If he was raised hearing the same warnings as me all his life, this might be the hardest confession he’ll ever make. Go on. Tell me more. Tell me all. “How did you come to have a pet moose?”
    “Funny thing is, he found me. I’d been living here for about two months and I’d never been so lost in my life. Literally. Val’s house is out in the sticks, and I went for a walk and couldn’t find my way back. Then I looked up and there he was, all alone and scared. He let me climb on his back, even though he was just a tiny little thing, and brought me home. Val let me keep him.”
    “Just like that? How did you know he wouldn’t, you know, gouge you with his rack or something?”
    Kye grins. “He didn’t have a rack then. He was just a baby. But I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, because he ... told me.”
    I turn my head to better see his face. “What do you mean, he told you? Like, with his eyes? Because you could see he was kind?”
    “No, he—I—” Kye clears his throat, staring at the trees, his chin resting on my shoulder. “We communicate. Always have. Different from talking, but kind of the same. I understand a lot of things other people don’t. The rustling of the leaves in the trees, the squeaks and sounds of animals, the language of basic elementals ...”
    Gifted. The word rolls around in my head until I feel it forming in my mouth, and still I have to test it before I can actually say it. The taste is strange, sweet. Forbidden. “Gifted.”
    “Yes. Like you.” He draws away, staring into my eyes until I can see his questions mirrored there. Knowing what’s coming fills me with that frightening anxiety Gram instilled in me. The idea that if I tell, bad, bad things will happen to me and everyone I love. I am momentarily speechless. “Not your average teenagers, I guess.”
    He smells like pine and musk and something else—something sweet, like a mixture of tree sap and flowers—as I take his face in my hands. “Average equals boring.”
    My feet leave the ground when he lifts me up and twirls me around, eyes closed. “You’re right. Nothing boring about us.” We’re both grinning when he puts me down.
    “How did you know? About me?” I ask.
    “I don’t know how. I just—I saw you and something you did triggered a picture, maybe a memory—I don’t know. I just knew. That’s all.”
    Could he have Sight too? No. Having one Gift is rare. Having two? I’m an anomaly. An original. Even Gram didn’t know what to make of my Sight.
    His thumb brushes the side of my neck and my stomach leaps with desire, a longing that burns in the back of my throat. That small amount of contact makes me ache for something I don’t understand. Not just kissing or even sex, nothing as simple as that—but a need that is foreign and unidentifiable.
    “Tell me about you. About