“You said he’d keep his word if I just did what he asked.”
His voice is cold and empty too.
“I lied.”
His face contorts, his body shakes, his legs tense.
“Get. Back,” I say.
He watches me, his knife hand trembling so badly that he’ll never be able to stab me with it before I disarm him, tie him up, and leave him for Quinn and Willow to deal with. Rolling to the balls of my feet, I lunge for his right arm.
His left flashes out, silver streaking through the moonlight, and I remember his ambidextrous sword work a millisecond before he can slice into me. Spinning to the side, I drop and roll forward, coming up several yards away.
He isn’t trying to take the device. He’s trying to kill me.
I crouch, blade out. Something feral tears through me, obliterating Eloise, his unborn child, the kind of girl I once dreamed I’d be, and every cautious word Logan ever spoke, leaving nothing but pure, scorching bloodlust in their wake.
Melkin swings his sword in dizzying circles and rushes at me. I wait until he’s almost on me, and then dive forward, low to the ground, crashing into his legs and sending him flying over the top of me. His blade nicks me as it goes by, but I can’t feel the pain, and he drops his sword as he lands on his side.
I’m screaming now. Raw, agonized wails that flay the air with their fury. Out of the corner of my eye I see Quinn and Willow hurrying toward us, but I have no time for them. Whirling, I lunge forward while Melkin is still reaching for his sword. He sees me and slashes out with his knife instead. The blade catches my cloak and tears into it, but I don’t slow down.
I can’t.
Driving my boot onto his wrist, I grind the small bones together. He yells and drops his knife.
I slam my knees onto his diaphragm and feel the air leave his lungs.
He whips his left arm up and punches me in the face, and I land in a pile of ash on my back. He’s already on his feet. Already coming for me. I can’t see his weapons. I don’t know which hand he’ll use. And I don’t have time to get up.
He’s in the air, long legs dropping down, his face a mask of murderous intent.
I broke his right wrist. The weapon must be in his left hand. I roll to his right as he lands beside me, his left arm already swinging forward. Flipping my blade around, I push myself off the ground and bury my knife deep into his chest.
He sags, deflating slowly onto the ash beside me, and reaches for the knife with his empty left hand.
He isn’t holding his sword. I scan the area and see it gleaming yards away from us. His knife lies beside it.
“I wanted to take it.” His eyes stare into mine like a child trying to understand what he’d done wrong. “That’s all.”
“You were trying to kill me!”
He was. I know it. I had to have known it. I didn’t just fatally wound an unarmed man who wanted nothing more than to steal from me.
His blood seeps along the knife hilt, thick and warm, and coats my hands.
“You tried to kill me.” My voice shakes.
“Disarm. To take it.” He coughs, a horrible wet sound that sprays me with blood.
“No. No.” I pull the knife free as he slides onto the ground. “No.”
My hands can’t stop the bleeding, but I try. Pressing against his wound, I try to make sense of him. Of myself. Of what we’ve done.
What I’ve done.
He raises a hand, long fingers gleaming white in the moonlight. “Eloise?”
I can’t look at him. I can’t. But I’ve lied to him before, and I can lie once more. “Yes.”
“Can’t save you.” His voice is nothing but a whisper straining against the blood filling up his throat.
“You just did.” I can barely speak past the suffocating guilt choking me. I killed him. A desperate man. A pawn of the Commander’s who wanted nothing more than to save his beloved wife.
He doesn’t speak again, and I cover his wound with my blood-stained hands until his chest falls quiet.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
LOGAN
I hear the Rowansmark battalion before I see them. No need to use stealth when you have sheer numbers on your side, I guess. They swarm out of the trees, carrying swords and torches. Quickly, I close my eyes before the firelight costs me my night vision. I can track their movements with my ears instead.
It’s immediately obvious they aren’t tracking. They’re hunting. Trying to flush out their prey. Walking with less than five yards between each soldier, beating at the underbrush with their swords, peering up into the trees they pass with the help of their torches.
I’ll be fine. I’m up high enough that the torchlight can’t reach me. I settle against the branches and wait while they spread along the Wasteland beneath me, calling to each other, swinging their swords, and making enough noise to announce their presence to anyone within two hundred yards of us.
Before long, they’re gone. I wait until I can no longer hear them beating the bushes, until their yells fade into silence, and expect the normal noises of night in the Wasteland to resume.
They don’t.
Which means I’m not as alone as someone wants me to think. Tension coils within me, and I slowly draw my knife.
It’s a smart plan. Use loud, obvious hunters and hope that once the prey eludes them, he’ll feel comfortable and give himself away. I’d have done the same myself.
Settling slowly against the tree, I hold myself absolutely still, ignoring the pain in my side demanding I readjust in an effort to find a more comfortable position.
It takes almost an hour, but then I hear him. A faint whisper of sound that could almost be mistaken for the breeze. Almost. But the birds are still silent, and the forest feels like it’s holding its breath.
I don’t try to look for him. If he’s tree-leaping, I’ll feel it if he lands in mine. But if I move to a position where I have better visibility, he’ll catch the movement. And if he doesn’t, he’ll certainly catch the noise.
Instead, I wait. I don’t hear him again, but eventually the birds hoot, coo, and chirp, and I hear the nocturnal ramblings of raccoons on the ground below.
He’s gone.
But he and a battalion of Rowansmark military men are now between me and the safe house.
The only recourse I have is to move with extreme caution and come up with a plan as I travel. I can’t single-handedly overwhelm an entire battalion. I have to hope I can outwit them.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
RACHEL
I sit by Melkin’s body until dawn bleeds across the sky. Quinn sits with me while Willow remains on guard somewhere in the trees.
I didn’t ask him to sit with me. But somehow having him there, quietly present without offering judgment, makes the ragged edges in me settle just a bit. I haven’t spoken since my final words to Melkin, but as the gloom around us lifts, I raise my eyes to Quinn’s.
“I killed him.”
He nods.
“I thought he was going to kill me first. He attacked me. He had his weapons out. I was sure he was going to kill me.” I was sure, but now I’m not. Now, I’m looking back and remembering I jumped up from my travel mat with my knife already raised for battle while his was still trained at the ground. I lunged at him, blade out, before he ever raised his sword.
He was trying to disarm me and defend himself. And I killed him.
I struggle to my feet and run to the edge of the trees, where I fall to my knees and retch.
I killed him.
My stomach is empty, but I keep heaving.
I killed him.
I’m shaking, my teeth clattering against each other violently, when Quinn’s solid arms wrap around me from behind and hold me against his warm chest.
“You thought you were defending yourself.”
I did think that, but it doesn’t comfort me now, and it won’t comfort Eloise.
“It happened fast. Did you make the best decision you could given th
e information you had?”
I twist around to look at him, his warm brown eyes steady on mine, his straight black hair haloed by the early morning light. “I don’t want absolution.”
“I’m not offering any. Take the blame that belongs to you, and nothing else. I’m asking you to look it in the eye and face it for what it is.”
But I can’t face it. Not really. If I do, if I let it cut me like I deserve, everything else will spill out too. Oliver. Dad. Melkin. Logan at the Commander’s mercy in a dungeon. It’s all one gaping pit of loss, destruction, and grief, and if I feel it, I’ll never be able to protect the device and deliver judgment.
I don’t even have to ask the silence to take it from me. It’s already gone. Slipping into the emptiness before I make the conscious choice to send it there, and leaving me numb.
I push away from Quinn, and he lets me. Why shouldn’t he? I mean nothing to him. I’m just a broken girl who lost her father and then killed a man. And I’m about to go kill another.
Gathering my belongings, I stow them in my pack and then turn to find Quinn and Willow packed as well, standing by Melkin’s body.
I can’t abandon him for the forest animals to eat. Leaving my pack beside Dad’s grave, I use my knife to start digging a new one a few yards away. Soon, Quinn and Willow drop down beside me and dig as well.
“I’ll do it.” I don’t want their help. I need to do this for Melkin. Alone. A small piece of atonement in the lifetime of penance I’m going to serve for my crime.
“We can help. It will get done much faster,” Willow says, but Quinn lays a hand on her arm, and they pull back.
It takes me almost an hour. I use my knife and then scoop dirt out with my bare hands, letting the dust of his grave mingle with the stains of his blood on my skin. Then the three of us lift him and lay him gently down. When Willow picks up his walking stick to lay across his chest, I hold out my hand for it.
On our first day in the Wasteland, the Cursed One incinerated everything but Melkin’s weapons. His sword is far too long and heavy for me to carry across the Wasteland, but I can bring this back. A reminder of what I’m capable of. A faint comfort for the wife he left behind.
Together, we push the soil back into place until all that remains is a little hill of dirt. Quinn stands beside me, a solid, reassuring presence I refuse to lean on. Willow stands across from us, scanning the surrounding trees, her bow already in her hand. I should say something. A eulogy. A good-bye. But Melkin deserves to be memorialized by someone other than the girl who took his life, and I don’t know how to put into words the cost of what I’ve done.
I turn away. I have a mission to complete. When it’s over, I’ll look for absolution. When it’s over, I’ll find what comfort is left to me.
I refuse to brush the dirt from my hands. Scooping up my pack, I arrange it against my back and slide my Switch into its slot so I can carry Melkin’s ebony walking stick instead. When Quinn and Willow pick up their packs too, I frown at them.
“You don’t need to come. I can find my way back on my own.”
“Can you?” Quinn asks.
“I can find what I need to find.”
“We’ll go with you.”
“Why? You don’t even know me.”
“I knew your father.” His voice is steady, but pain runs beneath it. “And you were right when you said we still owe him a debt. I’d like to pay that debt by escorting you through the Wasteland.”
There’s a quiet insistence in his voice, and I’m too tired to argue. Besides, what do I care if two Tree People tag along? It isn’t going to slow me down or change my plans.
“Fine. But remember how you insisted on coming with me when you find I’ve landed you right in the middle of a war.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
LOGAN
I’ve been traveling hard for three and a half days. Tree-leaping. Sleeping in the wide crook of an oak curtained by Spanish moss. Watching the wires on my tracking cuff get brighter by the hour as I cut across the safer trails Rachel would use and shave time off my journey.
I’m closing in.
So is the Rowansmark battalion. I’ve seen their signs. Heard thin snatches of conversation floating back to me. I don’t know how close I am to them, but they’re still between Rachel, Melkin, and me.
I haven’t seen any sign of the tracker, and that worries me. He could’ve circled behind me. Gone ahead of the battalion to find the safe house. Caught up with Rachel and Melkin.
The scenarios are endless, and they all spell disaster.
Stopping to rest in another oak tree as the sun climbs toward noon, I assess my strategy. Following the battalion isn’t getting me anywhere. I need to flank them. Get ahead of them. Intersect with Rachel and Melkin before they run into them.
Moving with care, I open my pack. I’m running low on food since I haven’t been able to go to ground and hunt, but I still have a few jars of preserved fruit and some sheep jerky I took from the safe-house pantry. Choosing a small ration of each, I eat quickly and then grudgingly use a small bit of pain medicine.
I’m going to have to move fast. I can’t afford to feel the full effects of my journey until later.
After packing my bag and assessing the noises around me to gauge the relative safety of moving forward, I aim southeast and start tree-leaping. Within twenty minutes, all sounds of the battalion are gone, and I’m deep in the Spanish moss–draped forest of the southern Wasteland, surrounded only by birds, bugs, and the occasional rabbit or squirrel.
When I judge I’ve traveled far enough south to risk cutting back toward the west without running into the battalion, I take another short rest, refuel on water and some jerky, and start leaping again.
The sun is sinking toward the west, about three hours from sunset, when I glance down at the tracker cuff I wear and freeze. The wires glow at one hundred percent. My heart pounds, and I have to remind myself to breathe.
I’ve found her.
Somewhere in a thirty-yard radius around me, Rachel is traveling the Wasteland. I’m not too late. I’m busy scoping out my surroundings, trying to determine the best direction to take, when I hear her approach.
She’s arguing with someone. Melkin, most likely. I frown as her voice carries clearly through the thick oaks and mossy undergrowth. It’s not like her to forget how to move quietly.
Her oversight works to my advantage, though, and I brace myself for the climb down when she and a young man about my age enter the small clearing at my feet. He walks close to her, his left hand hovering behind her back as if he wants to touch her but isn’t sure of his welcome. I assess him quickly. About six feet. Ropy muscles on a lithe frame. Olive skin, dark eyes and hair, leather laces holding his tunic and pants in place. A Tree Person. I don’t know how he came to be with Rachel, but the way his eyes watch her with interest and concern make me want to send him back to his village.
Immediately.
Melkin isn’t with her. Either he succumbed to one of the dangers in the Wasteland, or he tried to fulfill his assignment, and Rachel killed him.
I study Rachel next, and shock punches a little frisson of panic through me. Her pale skin is smudged with what looks like ash. Her cloak is torn and battered. And her hands. Her hands are covered in dirt and dried blood, and she clutches a long black metal walking stick like it’s going to disappear if she lets go.
But worst of all is the look on her face. Cold. Fierce. Empty. Like someone snuffed out the Rachel I knew and sent out a hollow shell in her place. I hang on to the branch for another moment, trying to adjust to this new Rachel before I have to drop down and show her the shock written across my face.
“We need rest,” her companion says.
“Then rest. I’m going on.”
“You haven’t eaten today. You’ve barely slept. If you keep this up, you’ll collapse, and then what good will all this progress do you?” He asks, but his tone sounds genuinely curious instead of worried or upset. Like he’s fine w
ith allowing her the freedom to destroy herself as long as she’s given the matter proper thought. In light of the facts he’s just presented, my tone would’ve indicated a good shaking was in store for her if she didn’t listen to common sense and take care of herself.
She doesn’t respond to his invitation for self-reflection. Instead, she strides beneath my tree, her course set north, and acts like she can’t hear him. He follows her. I let them both walk past me. My first meeting with this Tree Person isn’t going to be me awkwardly trying to climb down a tree without hurting my rib. They’re four trees up when I grasp the branch I’m on and ready myself for a painful landing.
A slight movement in the corner of my eye arrests my motion, and I hold myself still as a man in green and brown, a dagger in his fist, melts out of the shadows between the trees and silently follows Rachel and her companion.
The Rowansmark tracker.
Rachel must have the package. Or he thinks she does. And he’s going to kill her to get it.
Except he didn’t bargain on me.
He’s approaching my tree. Five steps and he’ll be here. I’ll only have one chance to get it right.
Best Case Scenario: I kill him on my first try.
Worst Case Scenario: I miss, and never get another chance.
Best Case Scenario it is, then. Quickly assessing angles, momentum, and how much damage I can do without drawing my sword, I wait for him to walk directly below me, let go of my branch, and jump.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
LOGAN
He senses me and turns, but he’s too late. I slam into him, wrap my hands around his throat, and drive both of us onto the ground.
Pain explodes through my ribcage on impact, and I nearly lose my grip. He whips his arms up and claps them against my ears, disorienting me. I’m dizzy, unable to draw a complete breath, and losing focus fast.
Digging my thumbs into his windpipe, I will myself to hang on. He bucks beneath me and catches me in the ribs with an elbow. Agony sears through me, and my hands slip. Knocking my hands away from his throat, he throws me onto the ground beside him, pulls a knife, and looms over me.