“Think you’re better than me? Think you could choose a stranger over your own family, and I’d stand for it?” He spins the knives into his favorite throwing position.
I drop and roll toward him as the first knife leaves his hand. It flies over me and embeds itself in the railing that lines the walkway. Before he can throw the next one, I come up swinging.
The rage bursts free of the dam within me. I can’t hear anything but the pounding of my heart and the memory of the constant litany of abuse that has spewed from my father’s lips since I was born. I can’t feel anything but the blazing heat of my anger coursing through me and the way his body gives beneath my fists. I can’t see anything but the blood he’s put on my hands and the flash of fear on his face as he realizes I’m stronger than him.
We smash into the council door and land heavily on the floor inside. In seconds, we’re both on our feet, throwing punches and pivoting to match each other’s moves. I take his blows and barely feel the pain. We have the same training, the same instincts, but I’m faster.
I’m always faster.
This time, I don’t hold back. I drive my fist into his stomach and think of every time he laid a whip to Willow’s back. I slam my elbow into his temple and remember the way the light in my mother’s eyes grew fainter and fainter until all that was left was a haze of corn liquor. I kick his knee hard enough to shatter bone and remember my screams the first time he broke my arm. Before I’d learned that screams only made the punishment worse.
“No more,” I pant as his shattered knee gives out, and he falls heavily to the floor. “You’re done giving orders. You’re done abusing us. And you’re done killing people.”
He spits out a mouthful of blood and teeth and glares at me. “I’m done when I say I’m done.”
I lean down, my face inches from his, and say with absolute certainty, “You. Are. Done.”
His right shoulder tightens, a nearly imperceptible movement, and his eyes flick toward my chest. He whips his remaining knife toward my heart.
I block his arm with my right palm, moving the tip of the blade to the side.
He lunges forward.
Grabbing his wrist with my left hand, I wrench the weapon around, and shove it toward him.
The blade slides into his chest.
We stare at our hands, both holding the hilt, while blood pours across his tunic. My pulse pounds against my skull, and my breathing tears through me like sobs. I feel sick. Vindicated. Horrified.
His eyes find mine, full of fear and confusion, and he opens his mouth as if to say something, but I let go of the knife and back away. I don’t want to hear his last words. I don’t want to watch him die.
As his death gurgle rattles in his throat, I turn and stumble out of the council building.
Chapter Ten
“He’s dead,” Elder Toilspun says. “You killed him.”
I walk past the elder without a word and sink down beside Willow. There’s blood on my hands, but I no longer know if it’s hers or my father’s.
I killed my father.
Something warm wraps around my shoulders, and I look up in surprise to see Jared’s cloak resting on me while he shivers in the winter air.
I’m shivering, too. My teeth are chattering, and the rage that drove me now feels like a sea of ice chilling me from the inside out.
I killed my father.
Dimly, I realize that Willow’s injury is packed with turmeric to clean the wound and that Jared is carefully wrapping a bandage around her stomach. Her eyes are open, and she’s staring at me.
I killed my father.
Killed him.
“So much violence,” Elder Saintcrow mutters. “It isn’t natural.”
“You didn’t have a problem with it as long as we kept it outside the village border,” Willow says weakly. “You turned a blind eye. Kind of hypocritical to complain now.”
“I killed my father.” I try the words on for size, shocked to hear my voice shaking.
“He was trying to kill you, son.” Jared’s voice is kind.
“You stopped him,” Willow says. Her eyes are fierce. “Nothing else would’ve worked, Quinn. You stopped him.”
Do the echoes of his violence—echoes of my own violence—die with him? If I turn away from everything he taught me to be and choose a different path, can this moment be the ashes on which I build a new life?
“Quinn—”
Willow’s hand is cold against mine. I try to wrap my fingers around hers, but all I can think of is the blood on my skin. The blood on my soul.
“We will meet to decide what must be done in the wake of these events,” Elder Saintcrow says to us before ushering the rest of the elders into the council house, where we can no longer hear what they’re saying.
“I told Dad he was done,” I say as I meet Willow’s gaze. “I’m done too.”
Her grip becomes almost painful. “What do you mean you’re done?”
“No more weapons. No more fighting. I’m not going to be a monster like him.”
“You’re not a monster,” she says.
I don’t reply. The elders debate for hours. Someone brings Jared a blanket, and he wraps it around Willow. She tries to get me to talk to her, but I have nothing left to say. I’m hollow, my rage spilled out like my father’s blood. Jared sits quietly beside us, occasionally checking Willow’s wound. I’m strangely grateful that he still looks at me with clear-eyed calm instead of the terror imprinted on the face of every villager we see.
Finally, the elders leave the council house and approach. Elder Toilspun looks at me, his weathered face solemn.
“Several village laws have been broken tonight,” he says. “The most important, of course, being the law against killing a fellow villager.”
“He was defending himself!” Willow struggles to sit up, but hisses in a gasp of pain, shoving Jared’s hands away when he tries to help her. “Our father committed the crime. Hold him responsible.”
“We do, of course.” Elder Toilspun glances behind him at the group of elders, and then says softly, “But there’s also the issue of the village’s safety. After seeing what Samuel Runningbrook was capable of when he was angry, and then seeing that Quinn is capable of the same—”
“Want to see what I’m capable of?” Willow scans the walkway. “Somebody give me a weapon.”
“I’m afraid the elders have made our decision, and it is final.” He takes a deep breath and straightens his spine. “Quinn Runningbrook, you are hereby cast out of our village.”
Willow swears viciously and latches onto Jared’s shoulder so she can haul herself to her feet. She sways precariously, and sweat beads across her forehead, but no one knows how to take pain and keep going better than my sister. “If you cast him out, then you’d better do the same to me, or I will make you wish you had.”
“What about your mother?” Elder Toilspun asks.
“I go with Quinn.” Willow presses a hand to her wound.
Jared wraps an arm around her back and keeps her steady.
Elder Toilspun nods once. “Very well. Quinn and Willow Runningbrook, you are cast out. Jared Adams, as the council has found no proof of your guilt and wants no involvement in Rowansmark’s affairs, you are free to leave.”
Whispers blanket the air as the three of us slowly move down the walkway. Willow retrieves her bow and arrows from where Dad discarded them, and we take a moment to gather a few meager possessions from our home. Once Mom heard that Dad was dead, she disappeared into her room with her jar of corn liquor, not even coming out when I told her we were leaving for good. It doesn’t take long to pack up the few things we can call our own and rejoin Jared on the walkway that leads into the forest. I can feel the villagers watching us as we leave, but their gazes don’t touch me. Their words don’t matter.
I killed my father, and now I am both free of him and forever chained to the horror of what I’ve done. Somehow, I’m going to have to find a way to live with that. Jared puts
Willow over his shoulder and carefully climbs down the northeast ladder. Willow smiles at me, and I read the forgiveness on her face.
Forgiveness I hope I can offer myself one day.
When the shock wears off. When the marks of violence fade. When I’m ready to look at this clearly and figure out what part is mine to bear and what part needs to be left on my father’s grave.
As I walk into the Wasteland with the lights of the village at my back, I promise myself that I will find redemption. I will find peace. I will become the man I choose to be.
Excerpt from Deliverance
Chapter One
LOGAN
“Five minutes.” The soldier guarding Lankenshire’s dungeon raps sharply against the bars of the cell I’ve been in for the past three hours.
Three hours since the Commander showed up outside Lankenshire with an army and a demand that I be released to him by dawn or he’ll attack the city. Three hours since the Rowansmark trackers inside Lankenshire demanded that I give them the device Willow hid in the Wasteland or they’ll call the Cursed One—the tanniyn—to destroy Lankenshire. I’m assuming the gray metal boxes I saw mounted to buildings throughout the city while I was being marched from the gate to the dungeon—boxes that match the one Ian pointed out to me in the square—all contain a signal capable of summoning the beast. Maybe capable of summoning more than one beast, if Ian’s claim about multiple tanniyn roaming the earth is correct.
Three hours since Ian took Rachel and disappeared.
“Five minutes until what?” Willow asks from the cell beside mine. “Until you let us go? Why wait? Open our cells now, and we’ll be gone before you can finish locking the doors behind us.”
The soldier doesn’t look amused. “Five minutes until I escort you to your trial, where the triumvirate will try to figure out a way to appease both the Rowansmark trackers you’ve managed to upset and the army waiting at our gates.”
“It’ll be fine.” Willow sounds far more confident than I feel. “Logan has a plan. Right, Logan?” When I don’t answer, Willow’s voice sharpens. “Right, Logan?”
“Do you?” the soldier asks softly, his eyes locked on mine.
I open my mouth. Close it. Swallow against the lump of fear that wants to close the back of my throat and say, “I’m working on it.”
“You’re working on it?” The man steps closer to the iron bars that separate us. “You listen to me. This is my city. My home. I have family here, and I don’t want to lose them because some refugee from Baalboden brought trouble down on our heads.” He shoves his green cloak off his shoulders and points to the row of gold bars that line up neatly over his heart. “I’m a ranking officer in Lankenshire’s army. I haven’t pulled dungeon duty in years, but I’m here today because the triumvirate thinks you merit special treatment. They think you’ve got a way out of this impossible situation. So don’t tell me you’re working on it. Figure it out before all of us die. You have five minutes.”
He turns on his heel and stalks toward the entrance of the dungeon, his boots slapping against the stone floor as he goes.
“That was dramatic,” Willow says as she leans against the bars of her cell and looks at me.
“That was accurate.” I close my eyes against the terrible image of Rachel, badly injured, traveling to Rowansmark at the mercy of my murderous brother Ian while I sit in a dungeon, faced with the impossible task of appeasing both the Commander and the trackers, unable to save her. “Every worst case scenario running through my head has come true.”
“Oh, please,” Willow says. “Knowing the way your brain works, I’m sure there are at least five scenarios worse than this one that you’ve spent useless hours worrying over. Besides, this isn’t that bad.”
“Not that bad? Willow, the Commander is sitting outside the gate with the Carrington army and what’s left of Baalboden’s guards and he’s promised to attack the city at dawn if I don’t give him the device by then. He’s a man who keeps his word. And the trackers are going to call the tanniyn to destroy Lankenshire the same way Baalboden was destroyed if I don’t give the device to them instead. But I can’t give the tech to either of them, because if I do, I have nothing to use for ransom when I arrive in Rowansmark to barter for Rachel’s life.” I rub my eyes and try to think my way around the impossibility of it all.
There has to be a way out of this. Too many lives depend on it.
Willow’s voice is steady. “If you give the tech to the trackers, it’s the same as giving it to Rowansmark itself. That should satisfy the ransom for Rachel. Then we just have to deal with the old man and his stupid army.”
I’m already shaking my head. “The second I give up the device, I’ve lost my leverage over both the Commander and Rowansmark. Plus, I doubt Ian’s pain atonement vendetta against me will be satisfied by hearing that the device made its way back to Rowansmark. He wants to hurt me, and what better way to hurt me than to hurt Rachel?”
My throat closes over her name, and I can’t push away the fear that pounds through me, taunting me with images of Rachel hurt. Bleeding.
Dead.
“So the trackers, the Commander, and rescuing Rachel—those are all of your worst case scenarios?” Willow asks. “Because you forgot to mention that my brother, the bastion of self-sacrifice, went missing too. Presumably to track down Rachel, since no one would be crazy enough to kidnap Quinn. Of course, Ian is a lunatic who wouldn’t recognize sanity if it slapped him in the face, so there’s that.”
“Thank you for summing that up. I feel so much better about the whole situation now.”
“I thought we were just listing our problems. Nobody told me I was supposed to provide sympathy.” Willow sounds irritated.
The fear pulsing through me makes it impossible to stand still, so I start pacing the small confines of my cell. “I don’t need sympathy. I need a plan. My people are trapped. The clock is ticking. And I’m stuck inside a Lankenshire prison cell without a weapon or a shred of tech within reach.”
I’m also stuck in an endless loop of thoughts that have nothing to do with my present circumstances and everything to do with the secrets I recently uncovered about my past. I was born in Rowansmark. Fine, I can adjust to that. I was kidnapped by the Commander as a newborn and kept in Baalboden to coerce my father into turning over his invention for calling and controlling the tanniyn once he completed it. I can adjust to that, too.
But knowing that the woman who called herself my mother was lying to me, knowing that Rachel’s father, Jared, brought regular reports about me to my father in Rowansmark and never respected me enough to tell me the truth, and wondering if Oliver, the closest thing I ever had to a father in Baalboden, knew my secrets all along and only looked after me to protect the Commander’s investment—I can’t adjust to that. I can barely stand to look it in the eye.
The foundation on which I built my life is lying in pieces around me, but I can’t stop to put it back together. I have a prison break to engineer, an innocent city to protect, a murderer to track down, and two power-hungry leaders who need to be stopped. Personal reflection will have to wait.
“I wouldn’t say that we don’t have any weapons,” Willow says.
I jerk to a stop and whip my head toward Willow’s cell. By leaning against my cell door, I can just see her. She’s crouched against the front corner of her cell, her back pressing against the iron bars that lock her in. With deft movements, she unties the leather strap that binds her long, dark braid and slowly pulls it free. My eyes widen. A length of thin silver wire is attached to the end of the strap and is woven into her braid. She holds her braid secure and tugs until nearly half a yard of wire slides out of her hair and lies in her lap.
“Brilliant,” I breathe.
“Agreed.” Willow coils the wire around her left wrist and secures the loose end against the leather tie. It looks like she’s wearing a simple silver bracelet, but I have no trouble imagining the kind of havoc Willow can wreak with that length of wire.
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Picking locks.
Jabbing eyes.
Slitting throats.
“Have I told you recently that I’m grateful you and Quinn decided to stay with our group instead of trying to find another Tree Village to join? I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Willow flashes me a smug little smile, and I make myself smile back, but inside, my desperation is growing. One weapon alone won’t help us fix this. I need tech, supplies, people . . . a plan.
And I don’t have a single workable idea.
The soldier picks up two lengths of chain and strides down the corridor toward our cells. Our five minutes are up.
“If you’re going to make a plan, you’d better think fast,” Willow says as the soldier stops before my cell, a heavy iron key in his hand.
“I’m trying.”
I run through my options as the man opens my door, wraps chains around my wrists, and then puts a matching set on Willow while she gives him a look that would drop a lesser man to his knees. He doesn’t give the silver “bracelet” on her wrist a second glance.
Best Case Scenario: I think of a way out of this before we reach the courtroom, and no one dies.
Worst Case Scenario: Everything else.
My stomach cramps as Willow and I, flanked by another pair of Lankenshire soldiers, follow the man through the long stone hallways that lead from the dungeon to the courtroom.
Short of cutting myself and the device in half and giving a piece to both Rowansmark and the Commander, I can’t think of a single way to keep this city and the Baalboden survivors who followed me across the Wasteland—survivors who are family to me now—safe.
“What’s the plan?” Willow whispers as we turn a corner and begin climbing a set of steep steps carved into the stone. The torches that bracket the stairway are lit, their golden light gleaming against her dark hair as she looks at me.
“Um . . .”
“You don’t have one, do you?”
I shake my head and force myself to think smarter. Faster. Rowansmark needs to believe that Lankenshire is turning me over to them, or they’ll use the beacons. The Commander needs to believe that I’ll be in his custody by dawn, or he’ll attack the city.
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