Free Ash & Bramble by Sarah Prineas Page A

now, reflecting the warmth of the fire. He shifts, and his arm comes around me. I lean into him.
    My stomach rumbles. Back at the fortress, the Godmother’s workers are eating tasteless lentils. It’s the only food I can remember.
    â€œHere,” Shoe says. He takes the warmth of his arm away and opens the packet of gingerbread. He breaks off a piece, catching every precious crumb in his hand, and holds it to my lips.
    The ginger-spice smell fills my nose, and my mouth starts to water. I take a bite. Its sweetness is so overwhelming, it’s almost painful. It fills me with another kind of warmth as I chew and swallow.
    More , my stomach demands.
    Shoe is eating the crumbs off his hand and gazing at me with an almost-smiling look in his forest-green eyes. Even though he is exhausted and dirt-smudged, with twigs snarledin his ragged hair, looking at him feels to me like a bite of gingerbread—sweet, and a little painful. Because I’ve never seen Shoe smile. His face is beautiful to me, but it is too pale, too bleak. A smile will be my new goal, I decide, even if an actual smile from him might be more sweetness than I can bear.
    My stomach gives a loud growl. “It wants more,” I say.
    â€œTry giving it a bit of this.” Shoe hands me a piece of cheese that he’s taken from one of the Jack’s packages.
    I close my eyes as I savor it, then eat the cracker Shoe gives me, and drink some water, and then I’m full and warm and leaning into Shoe as he settles against the cave wall again.
    â€œAll right?” he mumbles. I can hear the exhaustion in his voice.
    â€œMmm. You?” Suddenly the escape and the thorns and icy rain and long walk through the forest catch up to me, and I feel the heavy weight of sleep pressing down on my body. My eyes fall shut.
    I feel the vibrations in Shoe’s chest as he answers, talking more than he has before, as if being outside the Godmother’s fortress has finally made him feel more like himself—but my ears can’t sort out what he is saying.
    I resist the pull of sleep for a moment, afraid of the darkness that is a little like the Nothing. Then its peace and warmth surround me, and with a sigh I let it pull me down into its soft and velvety depths.
    S HOE WAKES UP with the solid wall of their tree-cave at his back, curled around Pin, who is sound asleep. The coals of their fire smolder. For a moment he watches the last tendrils of smoke drift up, and he feels safe and warm. It is as if they are two rabbits in a snug burrow. The opening of their cave is a low arch in the darkness framing a forest that glows emerald green and gold.
    He pushes up onto his elbow and looks down at Pin. She looks different in sleep. Sweet, somehow. When awake she is so sharp, her gray eyes keen under her level brows, her mouth ready to quirk into a teasing smile. Truth to tell, she has dragged him into this, and they aren’t clear yet, but he is glad to be filthy and afraid and still aching with weariness—and warm next to her in their tree-cave. Better here with her than making endless pairs of shoes in the Godmother’s fortress.
    He frowns. She has her hand curled under her chin, and he can see the dark stain of blood soaking the bandage she’s wrapped around her wrist. Surely it should have stopped bleeding by now. He’ll have to talk to her about it when she wakes up.
    Quietly, trying not to disturb her, he eases out from under the woolen blanket and tucks it around her, rummages in the knapsack, then crawls out the opening of their cave.
    The sun is just coming up; the sky overhead, what he can see of it between the tall pine trees, is the pale blue of early morning. The air is cool and smells richly of dirt and green growing things. The rising sun shines through the trees,sending shafts of golden light to pierce the shadows. He sees moss-covered tree stumps, and pine branches dripping with another kind of moss, and green billows