Whatever he sees on my face causes him to blink twice, tighten his hold on his cloak, and look away as the massive stone gate swings open with a high-pitched groan.
Four guards line up on either side of the gate, ready to let us out and remain behind to stand watch throughout the day in case there are those who want in. Melkin places a hand on my shoulder and presses me forward.
I snatch his hand, crush his fingers in mine, and spin until his arm is pinned behind his back.
“Don’t. Touch. Me.”
He doesn’t respond, but when I release his hand, he watches me closely and follows me down the gritty cobblestone road past the guards, beneath the steel arch with the Commander’s talon-and-double-slash insignia burned into the center of its smooth surface, and leave the city behind.
The road leads away from the Wall through the scorched ground that makes up Baalboden’s perimeter and ends at the charred remains of the highwaymen’s wagons. We walk it in silence until we reach the point where the road ends and the wild tangle of the Wasteland begins. Stopping, we open our packs and pull out our weapons.
Melkin straps a double-bladed leather glove to his right hand, and the six-inch blades of silver protruding from both his index and ring knuckles sparkle beneath the hesitant touch of the early morning sun. I recognize the glove as one of Logan’s inventions, and it tells me plenty about Melkin.
He likes his prey close and thinks the abnormally long range of his arms will be advantage enough to keep him safe. When he straps a sword around his waist, I acknowledge that he must be proficient with his left hand as well. He takes out a thick walking stick and extends it to its full length. The black metallic surface swallows stray rays of sunlight whole.
He sees me staring and mutters, “It was a gift.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it at any of the weapons vendors in the city.”
“Because it isn’t from this city. Now, you got any weapons, or am I going to be responsible for keeping the both of us alive on this trip?”
I unclasp my own bag. Minutes later, the bow and arrows are strapped across the outside of my pack, where I can easily reach back and grasp them; my knife rests against my hip; and my Switch is in my hand.
“Where are we heading?” he asks.
“Somewhere in the vicinity of Rowansmark.”
“Care to be more specific?”
“No.”
He shrugs, and we pause for a moment, listening, but the Wasteland offers nothing beyond the sound of birds chirping over their morning meals. Which doesn’t mean there aren’t highwaymen lying in wait, but at least we don’t have to worry about fending off the Cursed One at the moment.
Melkin steps off the cobblestones and slides into the dark tangle of trees, vines, and undergrowth waiting for us. I follow on his heels, my Switch ready in case of trouble.
The smell hits me first. Wet moss, crisp leaves, and the soft, musky scent of tree bark. If I close my eyes, I can imagine I’m standing next to Dad, listening to the deep, reassuring rumble of his voice quietly instruct me how to listen. How to walk without leaving an obvious trail. And how to survive anything the world throws my way.
I ache for him, a sharp, sudden longing that reminds me that missing him is how I started this entire nightmare. I draw in another breath, savor it against my tongue, and let myself feel a tiny sliver of raw hope. Maybe Dad is with the package. Maybe, by searching for it, I’ll find him too. Maybe if I find him, he’ll know how to make everything right again.
“You coming? Or you planning on sniffing trees all day?”
I ignore Melkin and start walking. The Wasteland is a strange mix of overgrown forests, bogs, and fields and the ruins of the sky-climbing cities destroyed or abandoned over five decades ago when the Cursed One was first released.
“Mind the thorns,” Melkin says quietly, swinging his walking stick in the direction of a patch of pretty green undergrowth adorned with needle-sharp thorns.
I skirt the plants and use my Switch to swipe hanging vines out of my way as I walk. Melkin stops to listen, and I halt as well, though my ears don’t pick up anything beyond the usual whisper of bug wings and breeze that mark the forested area of the Wasteland closest to Baalboden.
“Hear that?” he asks in a voice designed to carry no more than a few feet.
I listen harder and finally catch it—a faint shush of sound that could be an animal foraging for food, or could be the slide of a boot against the branch of a tree. I release the Switch’s blade with a muted snick, and catch Melkin’s slight frown as my walking stick becomes a weapon.
I don’t hear the sound again, but I don’t make the mistake of assuming a threat doesn’t exist. Clutching my Switch closer, I rest my other hand on my knife sheath.
We walk as silently as possible, but don’t hear sounds of pursuit again. I see the moment Melkin decides it was nothing but an animal. His shoulders drop, and the hand curled inside his bladed glove relaxes.
I don’t sheath the Switch’s blade, though. Better to be ready to deal violently with others than to be caught off guard.
Rowansmark is an eight-day journey southwest. Ten if the weather is foul or we have to go around a gang of highwaymen. I pace our progress by the familiar markers we pass—the lightning-struck oak, the creek with the stepping-stone bridge, and the swaying once-white cottage almost completely covered by kudzu. We’re making good time, in part due to Melkin’s pace. His long legs eat up the terrain, but I have no trouble keeping up. Fear for Logan’s life demands nothing less. And the anger I feel toward the Commander refuses to let me rest.
I’m going to retrace Dad’s route to his Rowansmark safe house and find the package. Once I find it, I’ll figure out a way to secure Logan’s safety while making the Commander pay for what he’s done.
A tiny inner voice whispers that if I find Dad with the package, I won’t have to figure it out alone. I tamp down the buoyant sense of hope that wants to blossom within me. The tracking device on my arm is silent, the wires cold. I have no reason yet to hope for anything.
The sun melts lazily across the sky, turning the forest we walk though into a damp, humid jungle. It’s too early in the spring for mosquitoes, but beetles and gnats swarm the trees, and I keep my cloak on despite the warmth.
Twice more, we hear a rustle of sound behind us, but when Melkin circles back, he finds nothing. As we’re sharing the Wasteland with a host of wild animals, hearing noises isn’t unusual. Still, the lessons I learned about the Commander’s lack of honor are carved into me with deep, crimson letters, and I’m not reassured.
When the sun reaches the middle of the sky, Melkin drops to a crouch against the thick trunk of an ancient oak, opens his pack, and offers me a flask of water and a hunk of oat bread. I take them and find my own trunk to rest against, keeping him well within my sights while I listen closely for sounds of human pursuit.
We eat in silence until Melkin looks up, wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his faded blue tunic, and says, “Your daddy taught you well.”
I stare at him. “How do you know he’s the one who taught me?”
“The Commander told me. I didn’t fancy on taking a helpless little girl across the Wasteland with me, but you know how to move quietly. You keep your head up, eyes open. Looks like you know what to do with that stick you carry too.”
I look away.
“Sure are a quiet one, aren’t you?” he asks, and caps his flask of water. “Always thought of you as a girl with spunk and guts. Never realized you were afraid to open your mouth.”
The bitterness festering in me bubbles up.
“How much spunk and guts does it take to chatter nonstop about nothing of importance?” I stand and stow my flask in my bag. “I have bigger things on my mind than discussing my skills. If you want conversation, choose a better topic.”
He stands as well, irritation on his face, and drives the bottom quarter of his ebony walking stick into the forest floor. I imagine I can feel the ground ben
eath me tremble with the force of it.
“Nobody appreciates a woman with vinegar in her soul.”
I slide my pack into place and stalk toward him, a distant roaring filling my ears as the anger inside me locks on to a handy target.
“Vinegar in my soul?” I’m closing in on him, and his hand tightens within the bladed glove he wears. “Is that what they call betrayal these days?”
My voice is louder than it should be, but I can’t seem to find the air I need to calm down. “You stand there and pass judgment on me like you’ve earned the right. What have you lost?” I’m yelling, my fist raised as if I’ll hit him. “What have you lost, Melkin?”
I need to hurt him. To lash out and hope that if he bleeds, it will somehow erase the specter of Oliver’s blood washing me with crimson.
“Almost everything,” he says, and pulls his walking stick free of the ground, raising both hands as if to show me he means me no harm. “I’ve lost almost everything.”
I don’t know what to say to this. I can’t tell if he’s lying. Before I can study his eyes to see if he understands the sense of overwhelming loss howling within me, the ground beneath us rumbles slightly, and something that sounds like thunder, muted and distant, comes closer.
I meet Melkin’s eyes and we leap into motion. Shoving my Switch into the strap sewn on the side of my pack for this purpose, I grab the nearest low-hanging tree branch and start climbing. Melkin lunges for the tree as well, wrapping his long arms and legs around the trunk and shimmying up its length until he finds a branch thick enough to support him.
The rumble becomes a roar, and the ground below us begins to crack.
I’m one quarter of the way up the tree. The crack runs directly below me.
“Jump!” Melkin yells.
Frantically, I scan the branches around me until I find one that reaches into the heart of the tree beside it and is thick enough to support my weight. I scramble along its length and leap for the next tree. My feet skid along the branch as I land, and I start running, grabbing branches for balance, swinging my body into the upper reaches of the tree, and then leaping for the next. Melkin is tree-leaping as well, though I’m too focused on my own survival to worry about him now.
I’ve put seven trees between me and my starting point when the roar becomes a deafening bellow, the ground we stood upon just a moment ago dissolves into nothing, and the Cursed One explodes out of the ground.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
RACHEL
I freeze. I’m about seventeen yards from the monstrous beast slithering its way into the open. I don’t think it’s enough. At the very least, I need to move higher, but I can’t without alerting it to my exact location.
The Cursed One coils its body along the ground and pulls itself from the hole it created. Up close, it looks like a giant wingless dragon covered in thick interlocking black scales with a tail the length of two grown men lying end to end and a ridge of webbed spikes running along its back. Thick yellow claws protrude from its muscled limbs.
Our weapons are useless. Swords break against its scales, arrows glance off, and the only area of weakness seems to be its sightless milky yellow eyes, but to get close enough to stab the eye is to court a fiery death from its mouth.
Besides, stabbing it in the eye is pointless. Nothing dies from losing an eye.
The only escape is to stay off its radar. It tracks by sound and smell, and when it stops and swings its head slowly side to side, huffing smoky little breaths, I don’t dare move a muscle. I’m grateful I don’t have the food in my pack. It would only add to my human scent and make me a bigger target.
Melkin isn’t as fortunate. I slant my eyes to the side and see him clinging to the upper branches of the tree beside mine, but his pack is nowhere to be seen. I guess he had the presence of mind to drop it.
The Cursed One puffs its breath out, and small flames jet through its nostrils, scorching the earth in front of it. The burned dirt seems to infuriate it, and it shakes its head, puffing increasingly large flames from its snout.
If we’re quiet, absolutely silent, it will leave. I focus on breathing in and out with slow precision, though my lungs scream at me to drag air in as quickly as possible so I can flee or fight.
I won’t have to do either, though. I just have to be still.
Suddenly, it jerks its head up and points its sightless eyes straight at me.
My stomach lurches, and as I glance around for a way out, I catch sight of Melkin’s pack hanging on a branch several feet below me. I didn’t realize he’d climbed up behind me before switching trees, dropping his pack along the way. I’m about to pay the price.
Abandoning my efforts at controlled, silent breathing, I give in to my body’s demands, dragging in a huge gulp of air while I tense my muscles for action.
The beast sniffs again, its body coiling like a snake about to strike.
If I don’t move, I’m dead.
I have to time it just right. Leap as it attacks and hope the noise of the fireball it spews covers the sound of me landing in another tree. Glancing at Melkin’s position, I judge the distance between my tree and his. He catches my eye and jerks his chin toward the branch below him.
I brace myself and watch for my moment.
I don’t have to wait long. In seconds, the beast’s agitation reaches a boiling point and it rears up, takes aim, and roars a giant ball of fire straight at my tree.
I run along the branch and leap for Melkin’s tree as the trunk behind me explodes into flame. I land hard, slip, and nearly fall, but Melkin’s unnaturally long arm snakes down and catches me.
I dangle against the tree, my feet struggling to find purchase on the branch below me, while the Cursed One roars its fury and swings its head from side to side, obliterating everything in its path.
Panic blazes through me, sharp and absolute. I’m not going to die. Not like this. I have too many promises to keep.
My feet find the branch, and I steady myself by holding on to the trunk below Melkin. He keeps his hand on my pack, and we freeze as the Cursed One slithers around the trees, sniffing and listening.
I don’t know what called it here. Maybe it was close enough to hear me yelling. Maybe we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, though I’ve never been a big believer in coincidence. Whatever caught the Cursed One’s attention, we’re in its sights now.
Any gratitude I feel at being high enough to avoid letting it sniff out our location disappears when it bellows, a throaty roar of fury, and strafes the trees in front of it with fire. The trunk below us bursts into flame, and heat licks at my toes.
Smoke billows up, choking me, and the flames crawl steadily toward us. My lungs scream for air, my muscles shake with the need to run, and my skin feels dry and parched, but switching trees now would be my death sentence. I hold my breath to keep from coughing, and focus on remaining still.
It works. The Cursed One swings its head back and forth for another interminable minute, then curls back around, black scales glistening in the flickering light of the flames it created, and slithers its way into the gaping hole it made in the ground.
We remain still until the last trace of it disappears. Then we explode into motion. Scrambling up the trunk, we run along the length of the thickest branch we can find and tree-leap only to do the whole thing all over again.
Fire spreads quickly in the packed density of the Wasteland, but I know there’s a river less than one hundred fifty yards to the west. Melkin knows it too, and we head for it in unspoken agreement.
Behind us, a wall of fire chews through the forest, spitting sparks and embers toward the sky and gushing a cloud of black smoke in our wake. We leap, climb, run, leap, and at some point, Melkin’s hand reaches out and takes my heavy pack off my shoulders so I can keep up.
In the distance, I see the deep blue-black surface of the river glittering beneath the afternoon sun. My lungs burn, and my hands are raw from snatching at rough bark for balance, but I incre
ase my pace as the wall of heat behind me whispers along my skin.
Melkin reaches the river first, but doesn’t jump. Instead, he waits, reaching a skinny hand back for me as I make my final leap and skid along the branch toward him. He catches me, grabs my hand, and together we dive out of the trees and into the crisp, cold water.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
LOGAN
I no longer know what time it is. I’ve been lying on the damp, gritty floor of this cell for hours. Maybe a day. Maybe more. Without a way to track the sun, I can’t be sure.
Pain is my constant companion—stabbing me with every breath and making a mockery of my attempts at sleep. At least one rib is broken, my arms and legs ache fiercely with bone-deep bruises, and my eyes are nearly swollen shut.
But worse than all of that is the burn on my neck. Every throb of agony from my seared flesh is a reminder of the Commander’s power over me. I want to use the pain to focus on a plan to remove that power from him permanently, but my thoughts are fuzzy and vague, and the pain seems so much more important.
A chill seeps into me from the stone floor I lay on, and even with my cloak, I’m shivering. I should force myself to stand up and walk. Loosen the muscles. Promote faster healing.
I inhale slowly, trying to keep from pressing my lungs against my rib cage with too much force, and place my palms flat on the floor in front of me.
My body shakes as I slowly push myself to my hands and knees, inch by torturous inch. Gray dots swirl in front of my limited vision, and my empty stomach rebels against the waves of dizziness swamping me.
I may have gained my cloak, but I’m in no shape to gain my freedom.
It’s a devastating thought, but I can’t hang on to it for long. Heat is eating away at my brain, blurring the edges of reality until I can’t tell if the contents of my head are memories, dreams, or wisps of things not worth the effort it takes to force them into something that makes sense.