Chapter 15There was a moment when she saw him standing there, that Maya’s resolve wavered.
He smelled of smoke, coarse and peaty, and his pale cheeks were smudged in soot. A deep gash above his left eye still ran thick with blood, the scarlet turned into sticky brown paste where he’d obviously wiped at his face, and the immaculate clothes he’d left in that morning now sported more than one rent, baring the bruises forming on his flesh beneath. Though he held himself ramrod straight, she couldn’t tell if that was because Dec wasn’t actually in pain, or simple Jericho doggedness to ignore his own suffering.
But then she saw his eyes, and she saw the flare of fear deep within the blue as he continued to whitewash his purposes outside of the refuge. That strengthened Maya. She was not the on
