Deception

  Willow lies in the wagon bed along with Sylph on a thick pile of canvas covered with a blanket. The others recovering from injuries have been transferred to the highwayman wagon that also carries blankets and bedrolls.

  Quinn sits beside Willow, alternating between checking her brow for fever and lifting the edge of her tunic to examine the neat row of stitches he sewed into her skin to close the cut she sustained in the river. She sleeps now courtesy of a pinch of pain medicine, though earlier Quinn had his hands full keeping her from leaving the wagon to resume guard duty.

  Smithson sits beside Sylph, his face pale and his eyes red. He holds her hand and leans down to whisper to her every few minutes.

  I sit between Sylph and Willow and ache for a miracle. For inspiration. For something more to do than to sit here waiting for my best friend to die.

  I don’t know how to do this without losing myself. I don’t know how to pretend to be strong for everyone else when I have no strength left.

  Sylph moans and opens her eyes. “Stomach hurts,” she says, and Smithson rushes to comfort her with words and touches and all the things I don’t know how to do.

  Guilty.

  Alone.

  Broken.

  I want to fight the voices that whisper to me, but their words sound like the only truth I have left.

  Something brushes against my hand, and I look down to see Sylph’s fingers fluttering against mine. Gently, I wrap our hands together the way we used to when we’d lie beneath the stars in her backyard, giggling over our secrets while we ate the sticky buns Oliver always sent with me when I’d spend the night at Sylph’s.

  I can’t remember our childhood without seeing Oliver’s dark eyes lit with joy when we tumbled into his stall, begging for treats. Dad scooping us both onto his shoulders and pretending he would forget to duck on his way into our house. Pieces of home that I took for granted would always be there, but I was wrong. All the people I love leave. First Oliver, then Dad, and now Sylph—the girl who loved everyone with equal energy but spent extra love on me. The girl who wanted nothing more than to be Claimed and settle down to a quiet life full of children and laughter.

  Instead, she lost her family, her home, and soon will lose her life for reasons that feel far away from me now. Because I wanted revenge? Because the Commander wanted power? Because someone from Rowansmark wants to punish us for crimes unknown?

  The reasons don’t matter. Only the results.

  “Jeffrey Morrow.” Sylph’s voice is faint. I look down and find her green eyes watching me. “Remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “Who is Jeffrey Morrow?” Smithson asks. His words sound stretched thin and tired, as if the effort it took to speak used them up before they left his lips.

  “Boy . . . Rachel.” Sylph draws a ragged breath and I lean forward, but she keeps speaking. “Beat up.”

  “His dad was the Commander’s chief physician. He was a year younger than us, so you probably never had him in any of your classes,” I say to Smithson, though I don’t take my eyes off of Sylph. “He thought because his dad was so rich, he was better than the rest of us. He used to follow Sylph and me through Lower Market and call us names.”

  “Pushed me,” Sylph says.

  “Yes.” I smooth the curls off her forehead and wince at the heat blazing on her skin. “We were in the alley behind Oliver’s tent playing one day, and he snuck up on us and pushed Sylph down.”

  “And you did something about that,” Smithson says in his stretched-thin voice.

  I nod, and reach for the damp cloth resting in a bucket of water at my feet. “I chased him. Caught him after only half a block. And then—”

  “Punched . . . face.” Sylph smiles. “Bloody nose . . . crying . . . like a . . . girl.”

  I dab her face with the cloth and wish things were still simple enough that punching the right boy in the nose would fix it all.

  “He told his dad I’d hit him, but when his dad came to Oliver’s tent to confront me, Sylph said she’d done it,” I say, and crumple the cloth in my fist. “Her father wouldn’t let her come to Oliver’s tent for a month.”

  “Brave.” Sylph’s eyes lock on mine.

  “Yes, you were. You still are,” I say.

  “You.” She pushes the word at me. “Brave . . . always . . . braver . . . than anyone.”

  I’m not brave. Not anymore. I’m a broken girl too terrified of losing herself to name her fears and fight against them. But I can’t tell her that. I can’t stop pretending strength when she needs me. I swallow the words with all their jagged edges, and lean down to kiss her feverish cheek.

  The wagon lurches to the left as someone jumps onto the back step. I look up as Frankie eases his large frame through the canvas flap and carefully makes his way toward us. His face is pale, and his eyes are swollen.

  Quinn goes still, his fingers freezing in the act of checking Willow’s brow for fever. “What are you doing in here?” he asks.

  Frankie looks at Sylph, and then turns his attention to Willow. He clears his throat, and then says quietly, “I owe you two an apology.”

  A muscle along Quinn’s jaw leaps, but he says nothing.

  “Is she awake? Can she hear me?” Frankie asks. “I can come back if this is a bad time.”

  Quinn is silent for a moment, then he gently taps Willow’s cheek. “Wake up, Willow.”

  Her eyes flutter, and then slowly open. She frowns at Quinn. “Why is my head all fuzzy? What did you give me?”

  “Something to help you rest.”

  “Don’t do it again. It’s bad enough when I have to see one of you hovering over me. Seeing two of you is more than I should have to deal with.” She flashes a quick grin at her brother, but is instantly sober again when he doesn’t respond in kind.

  “What’s going on?” she asks, and struggles to sit up. Swearing, she grabs her lower back and glares at Quinn as if it’s his fault she’s wounded.

  “Please don’t try to get up yet,” Frankie says.

  Willow looks past Quinn, her gaze sweeping the rest of the wagon before coming to rest on Frankie. “Why are you here?”

  “I came to apologize.” His voice is rough with emotion. “I’ve been hard on you. Both of you. Never did understand someone who’d choose to live in the trees instead of the safety of a city-state. Figured you were nothing better than highwaymen.”

  Willow’s brow arches toward her hairline. “I’m a whole lot better than a highwayman.”

  Frankie crouches down beside her, keeping plenty of distance between himself and Quinn. “Thom was my best friend. Been my friend for over forty years.” His voice thickens, and he clears his throat sharply. “He was dead as soon as that bridge exploded. I knew it. You knew it. Everybody knew it.” He looks at his boots. “You didn’t have to try. You didn’t have to risk yourself like that, but you did it without a second thought.”

  Raising his head, he faces her. “I wouldn’t have done the same for you or your brother. You knew that, too. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “I didn’t do it for your gratitude.”

  “No, you didn’t. But you’ve earned it anyway. If you ever need anything—anything at all—you ask me, and I’ll do it.”

  Willow stares in silence for a moment, and then looks toward her brother. Quinn shifts his position and faces Frankie.

  “Willow and I both thank you. And I owe you an apology as well,” Quinn says.

  Frankie holds up a hand, palm out. “Didn’t appreciate being near choked to death, but I understand why you were angry.”

  “It’s no excuse for losing control like that,” Quinn says.

  Frankie offers his hand, and Quinn shakes it without hesitation.

  As Frankie carefully makes his way out of the wagon, I turn back to Sylph and have to bite my tongue to keep from crying out. Smithson leans over her, his wide palms tangled in her hair. She looks at him, pink tears slowly sliding down her face, while blood pours from her nose.
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  Chapter Forty

  RACHEL

  “Oh, Sylph.” I breathe her name out and the pain rushes in. A knot in my chest sends bright shards of hurt into my veins with every heartbeat. My hands shake as I grab another rag and try to capture the blood as it spills out of her nostrils, curves around her lips, and streams toward her jaw.

  “Please,” Smithson whispers, and Sylph tries to smile.

  The rag can’t contain the blood. It gushes from Sylph and coats my hands.

  Blood pouring from the sky. Puddling at my feet. Biting into my skin.

  A shudder works its way up my spine, and I barely keep myself from screaming.

  I can’t stay here, confined in this wagon while another person I love bleeds to death in front of me. I can’t stay here, confronted with my impotence and helplessness. I can’t, but somehow I have to. Sylph deserves to be surrounded by those who love her.

  The shudder seizes my arms, my legs, and my teeth, shaking me with merciless fingers until I drop the rag and wrap my arms around myself to keep from flying into a million little pieces.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Smithson chants the words softly, rocking back and forth while Sylph grows pale and begins to tremble.

  I slowly slide onto the wagon bed and curve my body next to hers the way we used to when we’d spend the night gossiping about our dreams. Hers were simple and sweet. She wanted a home of her own with blue curtains and white walls. Children and family dinners. A husband who wanted nothing more than what she could bring to him.

  My dreams were bold and bright and impossible to articulate beneath the shadow of Baalboden’s Wall. I wanted freedom. A place to live where I could wear what I wanted, say what I wanted, and challenge everyone as my equal. A crusade to lead if that was what my freedom cost.

  My dreams are simple now. I don’t want to change the world. I don’t want to save it either.

  I just want to save Sylph.

  Wiping my hand clean on the blanket beneath me, I lace my fingers through hers and squeeze gently.

  She doesn’t squeeze back.

  “Sylph. Please.” Smithson chokes on a sob and leans down to press his cheek against hers. “I love you.”

  Her hand is cold in mine, and her body shakes as I stretch until I can rest my mouth next to her ear. “Thank you,” I say, and swallow against the suffocating grief that stuffs my throat with cotton, “for everything. You loved me when no one else my age would. You accepted me. You stood up for me. You’re brave and kind, and I will spend the rest of my life missing you.”

  Her lips move, but no sound comes out. I don’t need to hear the words, though. I know Sylph would spend her dying breath telling us she loves us.

  “I love you, too,” I say, and stay pressed against her. With every faint beat of her heart, my pulse pounds harder. Faster. It feels like a metal vise is slowly squeezing my chest until I have to fight for every breath.

  She moans, and I whisper, “Shh, it’s all right,” but it isn’t. I’m a liar, and every tiny, shaky rise of her chest proves me wrong. Slowly, so slowly I almost believe she’s simply holding her breath, she sighs and goes still. Silent.

  An anguished cry rips past Smithson’s lips, and he gathers her to his chest. The empty space beside me grows cool, and the blood soaks into the blanket. I sit up, shoving myself away from it.

  “Rachel?” Quinn asks softly, but I can’t look at him. At any of them.

  I only have eyes for Sylph.

  Crawling across the wagon bed, I brush her hair from her face as Smithson rocks her back and forth. Her green eyes stare at nothing. Her skin looks like candle wax. The Sylph I knew is gone.

  No spark in her eyes. No laugh hovering just behind her words. No love spilling out of a heart that refused to turn anyone away.

  A bubble of panic swells inside me, pushing against my chest. My breath tears its way out of my lungs, and my head spins.

  She’s gone.

  Nothing I can do will bring her back.

  The space in my heart reserved just for her is an aching void that threatens to slice into the silence and spill the blood of everyone I’ve lost, and I can’t let it hurt me. I can’t let it break me.

  Scrambling away from Smithson, I slam into the wagon bench behind me.

  “Rachel, wait.” Quinn holds a hand out to me, but I’m already up. Already moving. I grab the edge of the wagon’s entrance, rip the canvas aside, and leap for the ground.

  The people walking behind the wagon shout as I roll across the forest floor, but I claw my way to my feet and start running. I shove the helping hands away from me, duck beneath the outstretched arm of the recruit guarding this edge of the line, and race into the trees.

  Faster.

  Stray branches whip my skin. Underbrush tangles around my ankles, threatening to bring me down. I dig my fingers into tree trunks for balance and push myself on.

  Faster.

  My breath burns my throat, my vision blurs, and something roars inside my head. The image of Sylph’s waxy skin and lifeless eyes slams into the wall of silence, and I shudder as a dark, terrible grief tries to rise to the surface.

  Faster.

  I can outrun this. I can push myself hard enough to leave it all behind. If I no longer see it, it doesn’t have to be real. It isn’t real.

  It isn’t.

  My feet slam into the forest floor. A branch tangles in my hair, and I rip it free. I don’t need to cry. I don’t need to feel. I don’t need anything but to run until I leave behind the gaping wounds that carve my spirit into something I no longer recognize.

  Something wraps around me from behind, and I tumble to the ground. Twisting, I punch and kick, but every move I make is easily parried until suddenly I find myself held close, tucked up under someone’s chin.

  “Where are you running to?” Quinn asks quietly.

  My breath sobs in and out of my lungs. The longer I sit still, the faster the grief will catch up to me. “Let me go.”

  “And let you fall headlong into the river?”

  I lift my head and see a sheer drop just six yards from us. I shrug.

  “Do you want to die?” he asks as if he really wants to know.

  Do I? It would be easier. I could fade into silence and all the broken pieces in me wouldn’t matter anymore. I wouldn’t have to grieve, or think, or desperately stuff everything I can’t stand to face into the silence.

  But Logan would grieve. And if Dad, Oliver, and Sylph are waiting for me on the other side, they’d be disappointed in me. I’d be disappointed in me. I’m not a quitter.

  I slowly shake my head. No, I don’t want to die.

  “Why aren’t you crying for Sylph?”

  “Tears don’t bring people back.” Pain stabs from my chest to my fingertips.

  “Tears aren’t for the people we’ve lost. They’re for us. So we can remember, and celebrate, and miss them, and feel human,” he says.

  Feel human. I push away from him, and he lets me go. If allowing everything that wants to hurt me to rise to the surface and destroy me is what it takes to feel human again, then I’d rather feel nothing at all.

  The silence greedily absorbs the shock of Sylph’s death until the dark, fathomless void consumes me—a stranger pressing against my skin from the inside out. I don’t feel human. I don’t feel grief, or pain, or fear.

  I don’t feel anything at all.

  Slowly, I climb to my feet and find Logan standing behind us. His eyes flicker from Quinn to me, and then he walks forward and opens his arms. I step into his embrace, but his touch is only skin deep. Inside me, the Rachel I once knew is gone.

  Chapter Forty-One

  LOGAN

  It’s been ten days since Thom blew up the bridge, and we left the Commander and his borrowed army on the western side of the river. Black oaks, shagbark hickories, and the occasional cluster of pine trees mingle with the cypress and maple. Long slabs of gray-white rock rise out of the ground for yards at a time before submerging them
selves in the soil once more. Every now and then we come across the sagging, ivy-covered hulk of a long-forgotten house perched at the edge of the river’s steep embankment.

  Why anyone would want to live near the constant musty-dirt smell of the water and the swarms of mosquitoes and gnats that fill the air at twilight is a mystery to me.

  Most of my time has been spent working with Jeremiah to flesh out the map so that it includes the other three northern city-states in case Lankenshire won’t reach an alliance with me, and perfecting my understanding of the Rowansmark tech so that I can replicate it once I have the right wire and metal at my disposal.

  Using supplies I found in the highwaymen’s wagons, I’ve nearly completed the device I can use to track and kill the Commander. We’ll see which of us manages to put the other one down like a dog.

  I like my odds.

  I’ve also held two more funerals to bury those who were poisoned. Of the nineteen names on my list, ten are dead, including Sylph. Thom was poisoned as well, though he wasn’t on my list. I don’t know why the killer would go after Thom without marking his room, but Thom seems to be the only victim who didn’t wake up with a bloody X on his door. The other nine who were in marked rooms show no signs of sickness. The killer deliberately separated families and friends by poisoning only one person per shelter. Knowing they aren’t about to die, however, does nothing to comfort those who remain.

  It does nothing to comfort me, either. I’m grateful I won’t be losing any more of my people to poison, but I feel like I’m walking with the blade of an axe poised at the back of my neck. It’s not a matter of if it will fall, but when.

  When the killer will strike again.

  When the Commander will catch up with us.

  I skirt the wide trunk of a black oak tree and take a long look at myself. I’ve never had an easy life. I understood loss and fear before I was old enough to learn how to read. I knew what it felt like to fight for survival because survival was all I had left. I accepted that any respect I might earn from others, I must first earn from myself. And I overcame it all by refusing to allow my circumstances to dictate my intelligence, my courage, or my choices.