Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) by Harry Manners Page A

goings stalled in a trice, and people came running. Any break in the monotony was welcome.
    Already, he was searching their muddied faces while Alex bade them all hearty greetings. He too smiled and waved, but at the same time he searched for one in particular. It had been hell being away from her so long. She had plagued his thoughts every minute of these long weeks.
    He spotted her off to the left, sandwiched between a pair of gruff, filthy farm hands, a head shorter than the rest of the crowd. One moment all he saw was the ash blond crown of curled locks, and then the crowd parted some, and there she was. Eyes like polished steel, pale skin in perpetual blush, a jaw too rugged to be wholly feminine, but hardy and well-formed.
    James almost forgot himself by waving to her. She was no classic beauty; her hair was matted from work and she was dressed in a muddied Old World tunic, the cheap product of factories that had once enslaved great droves in the East—clothes that had carpeted all the land after the End. But James was intoxicated. A beast once unknown to him clawed up from the depths of his subconscious, pulling a primal red blindness over his eyes. He wanted to touch her, feel that hair between his fingers, her skin on his.
    But at the same time, there was something else, altogether different. It was a stoicism, a kind of peace that nothing else could bring. It was the looks she gave him. Beth Tarbuck was one of those people who brightened up the world just by having been born into it. If she had been born in the Old World, she would have been the sole desire of boys for miles around—not for her looks, but for her smile, her laugh, and the look in her eyes that only few people can give, one that can make someone feel truly understood.
    She smiled for the merest moment, so fast James wondered if it had been his imagination, followed by a wink just as fast. Then her face was plain as the rest, filled with the same adulation as the rest of the crowd. Before he was aware of it, James had nickered his mount forward, drawn toward her. A wave of dizziness washed over him, the hand on his rifle forgotten. Hands were slapping against his legs and horse as people cried welcome, and he mumbled back, but in his mind, he was already over there with her, climbing down from the saddle and taking her in his arms. His chest felt swollen with something entirely unlike air; it was like soup, thick and expanding, filling him up. And elsewhere, other feelings stirred his flesh.
    “James,” Alex called. His voice cut through the haze, snapping the link between James and the golden tunnel separating him from Beth, and then he was blinking amidst a sea of faces, bombarded by a racket of voices. “Come on.” Alex had already turned away. He hadn’t noticed anything.
    James cleared his throat, making a renewed effort to smile and shake hands with the traders, aides, mothers, and scavengers below him. But his eyes were still drawn to the left, to the very same spot, furtively stealing glances at her whenever he could.
    All the while she remained immobile, the shadow of a smile lingering on her lips, watching him. When it proved too much for him and he once again made to inch forward through the crowd, she shook her head almost imperceptibly. Her eyes flashed.
    Later , they said.
    She turned in a flash of icy gold, leaving an impression of thick lips, grey eyes, and a smile to light up the world frozen in the air. When he looked again, she was gone. In her place were only the beefy paws of the farm hands being mashed together in great booming claps.
    Drunk on the afterglow she had left in the air, even from thirty feet away, James made to carry on in Alex’s image, but couldn’t quite shake the stupor that had fallen over him. They reined up by the stables and James dropped to the ground, taking a feed bag from the head stock keeper with thanks and attaching it to his mount’s muzzle.
    “Glad to see you both, young masters!” cried