“I saw what they copied off me in Bedrock. And I just saw your back. Part of your brand is different. Here,” I say, walking behind him and touching the strange symbols on his left shoulder blade. He sucks in a breath again, and it makes my heart beat faster.

“Is that it?”

I swallow, try to ignore the moths in my belly. “And here.” I trace my finger down the planes of his back to the shallow curve above his waistband. “Maybe here?” I pull my hand away. “I don’t know. It’s similar, really similar, but I think it’s different.”

I toe the dirt floor of the changing room. It’s loose enough to track footprints.

“Stay there,” I say, and I start copying his brand into the floor the way the Oracle had copied sections of my brand into her tray of damp earth.

“Have you lost your mind?” he whispers when he realizes what I’m doing.

“We’ll clear it before we leave.” I peer out through the curtain. The muffled chatter of the people raking the beds can be heard, but there’s no one in the hall. I cinch the fabric tight and finish my work.

“Done,” I tell Asher.

He turns and surveys the markings on the floor. “It’s just a bunch of lines.”

“Maybe. But maybe not.” I slide off my jacket and toss it aside, then pull off my scarf, lift my overshirt over my head.

Asher stiffens as I grab the hem of my final layer. “What are you doing?”

His question makes me pause.

There will be no going back from this, but if I had to show it to someone in the wastes, I’d pick Asher. Even after everything, I’d pick him.

“Trusting you.” I turn around and tug the sleeveless shirt off, baring my brand to him. Clenching the shirt to my chest, I hear him move nearer. The air on my skin is shocking, but not as much as his touch. It starts on my left shoulder blade, the faintest pressure, featherlight and warm. He traces the Old World symbols there, so different from his, and I bite my lip, shudder against my will.

“Sorry,” he says, but he doesn’t stop tracing the brand, and I don’t ask him to. A lifetime of being told to keep it hidden, and his mere touch makes me want to keep my shirt off forever.

His finger trails down to the small of my back, and I suddenly feel lightheaded. Sucking in a breath, I step out of his reach. “Draw it on the floor,” I say. “Find what’s the same, so you can line things up, and then fill in what’s different.”

I hear him working behind me. “Done,” he says a while later.