“Two, we need to talk about whatever you learned that made you choose to give up your chance to escape and go into Rowansmark instead. And three . . .” I gently tilt her chin up to face me. “Saying that I feel worry for you when you’re in danger is like saying a starving man feels like having a snack. I don’t worry, Rachel. I’m consumed. You’re in every breath I take, and so I don’t worry. I agonize. I plan. I reassure myself. And then I plan some more, because I’m not going to stand idly by while men who’ve been corrupted by their fears or their greed destroy the only family I have left.”
She smiles, though it looks like there are tears in her eyes. “I love you, too.”
I lean down and kiss her. A long, slow, sure kiss that leaves my pulse racing and my heart pounding. When I pull back, she says, “We need to talk about your family.”
“I’m willfully ignoring the fact that Ian is related to me.”
“I’m talking about your father.”
I listen as she describes the man my father has become. As she tells me his only thought was for the safety of his sons.
For me.
By the time she starts explaining how Ian came to her cell to kill her only to break completely when he realized our father was still alive, my heart is pounding, a painful rhythm that sends jolts of energy through my veins, though I don’t know what to do with it.
“Marcus isn’t . . . stable. Mentally. But he’s sweet, and he loves you, Logan. He really does. He loves Ian, too.”
I move restlessly when she mentions Ian, and she tilts her head back to look in my eyes. “The things Ian did are monstrous. He deserves to be punished. But the boy Ian was before the Commander’s actions caused your mom to commit suicide and your father to ignore everything but his frantic need to ransom you, the boy Ian wanted to be before James Rowan forced him to whip his father and feel responsible for his father’s death—that boy isn’t so different from us.”
“He’s different. Neither one of us murdered innocent people because we were angry or in pain.”
“I did.” Her voice is steady, but the hand pressing against my heart trembles.
I cover her hand with mine. “You were defending yourself. There was no time to ask questions, and we know Melkin was tasked with killing you and taking the device.”
“He wouldn’t have done it.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But there was no way for you to know that.”
She smiles, a small, bittersweet lifting of her lips. “Logan, I’d just found out my father was dead. And I was still reeling from losing Oliver. I was running on nothing but rage and grief and the desperate belief that if I could just make the Commander pay, my pain would be worth something.”
“And yet you were still defending yourself.” I roll onto my side so I can face her. “Rachel, no matter how much pain you felt inside, you never deliberately took an innocent life. I can’t imagine a situation in which you would make that choice. That’s the difference between us and Ian.” My voice hardens. “He’s not my brother. He’s a killer who hurt the people I was responsible for. The fact that he used to be something different, something better, doesn’t change what he’s done.”
“I know.” She brushes a kiss across my lips. “But you should’ve seen the awful expression on his face when he realized he’d done so much harm to make his father’s death mean something, and it was all a lie. And then he helped me. He could’ve killed me, or turned me in, or just walked away. But he gave me his cloak and his dagger. He told me how to get safely out of the swamp. And he defied his leader so that he could rescue your father.”
I absorb her words for a moment, but I can’t find it in myself to soften toward Ian. “I’m glad he helped you, but he has a long way to go before he could ever make up for the things he’s done. He deserves to be punished.”
“Yes, he does. But your father forgave him, and made me promise I would save you both.”
I stare at her. “You promised to save Ian? Why? From what?”
“From James Rowan. And I did it because I needed Marcus’s help to learn about the summoners.” Quickly, she explains that they’re buried somewhere in Rowansmark—probably a safe distance outside the city’s wall, if I had to guess—and that neither Marcus nor Ian knew how to find and destroy the tech.
“So you went into Rowansmark hoping to find the tech before I walked into a trap our little stolen device couldn’t possibly handle.” I lean my forehead to hers and close my eyes as the gift of her love for me, a fierce, indestructible love that would drive her to sacrifice her life to save mine, pours across the broken foundations of my life and lends it strength. “Rachel . . .”
Her voice is a whisper of sound between us. “If you’re about to tell me you feel bad because I put myself in danger for you when we both know you’d do the same for me—”
I press my lips to hers, swallowing the rest of her words as I fist my hand in her hair and draw her as close to me as she can go without sinking beneath my skin.
When I lift my head to draw a breath, she says in a breathless voice, “Are you just trying to shut me up, or—”
“I’m trying to thank you.” I kiss her again, and it’s like diving underwater. The cacophony of insect noises in the forest behind us becomes a muted hum. The brilliant starlight is a distant glow that can’t touch us. Nothing can touch us. We’re floating in a world that belongs only to us, and I don’t ever want to surface.
Rachel breaks our kiss and says, “We could disappear, you know. We could walk into the Wasteland and never look back.”
I lean my cheek to hers as I let myself imagine it. Rachel and me and peace. The seemingly endless expanse of the Wasteland ours to explore and conquer. No more fighting. No more fear. No more risking everything we have left to make sure those who deserve justice get their due.
But if we do that, who will stand for the innocents still in Rowansmark’s path? Who will remove both James Rowan and the Commander from power? The weight of responsibility that lifted briefly at her words settles back on my shoulders, heavier than it was before.
“I want to,” I say.
She smiles. “So do I, but we can’t, can we? Not yet. We have to go back inside Rowansmark and find Quinn. We have to stop the summoners from destroying the troops you gathered. We have to get James Rowan out of power and get rid of the tech that uses the Cursed Ones as weapons. And we need to find your father, because he’d really love to meet you.”
“And then, we finish what we started with the Commander,” I say. “We finish it, and we do our best to live quiet, peaceful lives.”
She laughs, and warmth coils through my body. “Do you really think you and I are capable of quiet, peaceful lives?”
“I’ll settle for a life that doesn’t involve bloodshed.”
Her laughter dies, and I see the warrior she’s become in the steady intensity of her gaze. “But first, we have more blood to shed.”
“We do. But not tonight. Tonight, I have other things to worry about.” I lean down and kiss her again, keeping my hands gentle as I hold her, though there’s nothing gentle about the way she holds on to me. “Tonight, I have you.”
“You said I don’t worry you.” She traces my jaw with her lips.
“You don’t.” I’m breathing too fast. Or too slow. I can’t tell, but my chest is tight and my pulse is racing, and I’m underwater again. If this is how it feels to drown, I can’t wait to suck the water into my lungs and let it take me.
“You said I consume you.” Her lips find the pulse on my neck and press while my heart hammers inside my chest.
“You do.” My voice is rough.
“Prove it.”
I smile as I hear the challenge in her voice, and then, as the moon drifts across the sky above us, I dedicate myself to the task of kissing Rachel until she runs out of air, and we drown together.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
RACHEL
We’re up and moving south toward the swamp below the city before dawn. Logan has no idea how soon the Commander will attack Rowansmark, but it’s too difficult to hide an army that size for long. Sooner or later, a tracker, a sentry, or a traveler through the Wasteland will see the forces gathered outside Rowansmark and report it to James. The Commander must know this, so he won’t wait.
Which means we have to get back into the city today and stop the summoners.
Except that Logan doesn’t seem to think we can.
“I told you,” I say as I accept a handful of blackberries and some peeled thistle—our breakfast for the day—from Nola. “We can’t find the summoners because they’re buried somewhere, and we aren’t going to have time to search every inch of dirt around the city’s wall. There are three full armies running drills inside and out of that wall all day long. We’d be caught in a second. And if we can’t find the summoners, we can’t destroy them. According to Ian, our only option is to send an inverse signal to nullify the sound wave the summoners produce.”
“We don’t have anything capable of sending an inverse signal. That would require a device set exclusively to the opposite of the infrasonic wave, and all we’ve got is a staff set to infrasonic and enough transmitters to amplify it for hundreds of yards,” he says as we follow Smithson and Nola through the woods. Frankie is at our backs, his hand on his sword, and Willow and Adam tree-leap far ahead of us, searching for danger.
None of them say it, but I can see their concern for me in the way they’ve surrounded me as we travel. The way they bring me food and watch for traps and basically treat me like my injuries mean I’m one slippery step away from being an invalid.
I’d argue that I had these same injuries when I escaped Rowansmark’s dungeon, hiked through a sewer pipe and a swamp, and then traveled north of the city and climbed a tree, all while starving, but the reality is that it’s nice to feel loved after weeks of being reviled and abused.
“The device could send an inverse signal,” I say.
“The Commander has the device.”
I blink at the bitter anger in his words, though I know it isn’t directed at me. “Okay, then you can build something.”
He gives me a tense, lopsided little smile. “While I love the faith you have in my abilities, the truth is that it would take days to put together a piece of tech capable of sending an inverse signal powerful enough to nullify what the summoners must be able to do. And that’s if I had the right supplies, and if I wasn’t also breaking into Rowansmark.”
I frown as I skirt a thorny bush. The sun is a faint blush in the early morning sky, and the path through the Wasteland is cloaked in grays and purples. I reach out and run my fingers down the cold length of Melkin’s staff, strapped securely to the back of Logan’s travel pack. Near the top, a small section of the metal slides open—a battery compartment, I assume. The compartment is opened by just a fraction, and a thin bundle of copper wires stretches from the opening and into Logan’s pack.
It’s the modification he spent the last few weeks working on so that he could do what he promised me—make a weapon capable of destroying the Commander.
So that I could finally close my eyes and dream of something other than blood.
“What about using Melkin’s staff?” I ask as we pass the grove of ancient, twisted walnut trees I stopped at on my way north less than two days ago.
“The staff can only send an infrasonic signal.”
“Which means what?”
“Which means it can only send the same type of signal that the summoners send. It would call the tanniyn, but instead of one sonic pulse, it uses the transmitters I stole from Hodenswald to emit a constant, unremitting infrasonic signal with an amplified strength capable of reaching a minimum five-hundred-yard radius.” He wraps his hand around mine as we leave the walnut grove behind and approach the swamp. The sharp, fetid fumes lie heavy in the air and sting my eyes as we come closer. “I’m sorry, Rachel, but I don’t know how to stop the summoners. We’re going to have to stop James Rowan instead.”
I think over his words as we reach the edge of the swamp and stare at the wide mouth of the pipe resting in the swamp to the west of us.
“Fine. But we need a backup plan in case something goes wrong.” I look at Logan. “You’re usually the one with the multiple backup plans. What’ve you got?”
He slowly shakes his head. “If we can’t stop James in time and he activates the summoners to call the tanniyn outside the city’s wall, then we’re out of options. The beasts will destroy the Commander’s army.”
“Unless we use the staff.” I meet his eyes. “Maybe we can’t nullify the summoners, but we can outdo them. If James triggers the tech before we can stop him, we can use the staff. A sustained, powerful infrasonic signal might draw all the tanniyn inside of Rowansmark instead of outside the wall. You said yourself that you’d put a plan in place with the armada’s captain to evacuate the city and then flood it once you used the staff, right?”
“Only after the battle outside of the city was won. After the Commander came through the gate.” He turns to me as the rest of our friends line up on either side of us and consider the distance between the sandy shore of the swamp and the mouth of the pipe.
“I built this weapon to take out the Commander.”
“I know, but this is important, too.”
His blue eyes bore into mine. “Rachel, this is a one-time-use weapon. We have to drive it into the ground and then run, because the tanniyn—every single one of them living anywhere near Rowansmark—will come bursting through the ground where the staff is located. If one of the monsters doesn’t crush the staff, it will fall down into the depths of the earth. If we use this inside Rowansmark, there is nothing left to go after the Commander with except our swords, and he’s surrounded by an army of soldiers ready to protect their leader. If we do this, you may be giving up your chance to get revenge.”
I meet his gaze and swallow hard as the memory of the Commander’s ruthless expression while he stabbed Oliver to death in front of me fills my mind. Reaching up, I run my fingers over the leather pouch I wear around my neck. The one with dirt from my father’s grave and ashes from my childhood home. The one that commemorates everything I’ve lost because of the Commander.
Finally, I say, “Revenge won’t help me. We’ll find another way to bring him to justice. I want him dead, but I want to save the lives of the soldiers in his army more. Let’s go.”
Logan smiles, a breathtakingly beautiful smile that warms his eyes sends a frisson of pleasure across my skin, and then leans close. “I love you, you know.”
I grin. “I know. Now, let’s go wade through this mess and get inside the city before we’re too late.”
It doesn’t take long to hike up our cloaks and wade through the swamp. Willow and Adam make snarky remarks about knowing all of Rowansmark’s dirty little secrets. Nola and Smithson endure the stench quietly, as do Logan and I. But Frankie takes three steps into the thick, murky liquid and starts gagging like he’s about to revisit every single thing he’s eaten in the last decade.
“You okay, Frankie?” I ask.
He nods brusquely. “I’m”—gag—“fine.” He bends at the waist and heaves, splattering the swamp with partially digested thistle stems swirling in a sea of purple blackberry juice.
“It gets better inside the pipe.” I hope. The pipe was rinsed at sunset. How many people could’ve emptied their chamber pots already this morning?
Frankie curses and then vomits again.
“Need some help?” Logan asks.
“Worst thing”—gag—“I’ve ever”—heave—“smelled.” He curses and gags and coughs until he’s doubled over at the waist again.
“I wouldn’t lean so close to the smell, if I was you,” Willow calls from the mouth of the pipe, where she and Adam are already waiting. “Especially now that you get to
smell both poop and puke.”
Frankie promptly vomits again and then glares at Willow like it’s her fault. She laughs, but it doesn’t sound unkind.
“Come on, old man,” she says. “Plug your nose and get over here before I have to go out and fetch you. You know I’d never let you live that down.”
He obeys, hiking his cloak even higher, burying his nose in the heavy cloth, and then stumbling his way to the pipe just ahead of the rest of us. Willow helps him climb in, and then asks him if he wants some more blackberries.
He gags again, and glares at all of us. “Never speak of this to anyone. Do you hear me? Never.”
Willow grins, but there’s a tightness around her eyes, a stiffness in her shoulders, that says the fear of what we’ll find when we get inside Rowansmark and look for Quinn is wearing on her.
“Let’s go,” I say, and we start the long, slippery trek through the bowels of the Wasteland and into the heart of the city.
This time, I’m not starving, and my back is a dull ache instead of sharp pains. I’m able to keep up with the group, though I suspect they’re moving slower than they normally would simply to allow me the dignity of not having to ask them to wait for me.
I can tell when we reach the city limits because smaller pipes branch away from the main pipe, and the contents of chamber pots rest in sloppy, stinking piles beneath some of those openings.
Frankie curses again and wraps his cloak around most of his face.
“How far in do we need to go?” Willow asks, her voice a tangle of hope and fear.
“We need to get as close to James Rowan as possible,” Logan says. “We should surface near the square, and then we can split up. Half of us can look for Quinn while the other half go after James.”
It takes us another thirty minutes to reach what I estimate will be a building close to the square. Frankie lifts Willow into the smaller pipe above us. The rest of us follow her lead, and then Smithson reaches back to help Frankie crawl into the pipe as well. Bracing our arms and legs against the slick metal, we slowly work our way out of the pipe and into what looks to be the hall of an office building.