I scan piles of rubble with trees growing from their centers, broken metal spires leaning precariously over the remnants of roads, and random clusters of buildings that remain somewhat whole. My eyes are drawn to the edges of the Wasteland, steadily encroaching on the borders of the city. Nothing moves. Nothing is out of place.
But when I lift my eyes above the tree line, I see faint lines of smoke drifting up into the air from the bluff just beyond the city limits.
“Fire?” I ask, because apparently along with a shaking voice and a white-knuckle grip on the railing, I feel the need to humiliate myself by stating the obvious.
“Campfires,” Willow says. “The army. That’s what took us so long. We had to go west and circle back around to avoid them.”
“Our lookouts have reported that the army has been getting closer every day,” Ian says.
“If they get any closer, they’ll be able to hear you snoring in your sleep,” Willow says.
“I don’t snore.” Ian sounds offended.
“Right. And bunnies don’t reproduce every time they look at each other, either.”
“The army is right on top of us. I think the only reason they haven’t already attacked is because they don’t know exactly where we are.” Quinn appears at my elbow. If he notices the death grip I have on the railing, he doesn’t react.
Rachel’s voice is fierce. “The Commander will send scouts. We should—”
“Oh, he sent scouts,” Willow says. “Five of them. And they were doing a good job of searching the city. Unfortunately for them, all they managed to find was me.”
“You killed them?” Ian asks.
“No. I invited them over for dinner.” She smacks his shoulder. “The sun is almost down. By the time the Commander realizes his scouts aren’t coming back, it will be too dark to send more. He can’t risk us seeing torchlight, and they can’t search these ruins without light.”
“You scare me a little,” Ian says, but his voice is full of admiration.
Adam steps closer to Willow. “She’s good at everything she does.”
Quinn clears his throat. “Maybe we should get back to the problem?”
“We can’t travel at night,” I say. “We need light as well. But we can leave at dawn, and—”
“They’ll leave at dawn, too,” Adam says. “And if they’re that close already, there’s no way we can outrun them. Not with children and elderly and the wagons.”
“Which is why we’re going to create a barrier between us,” I say. “Something they can’t cross.”
Rachel meets my eyes, and her smile is cold and bright. “Fire.”
I match her smile with one of my own. “Fire. And when the army finally gets past the blaze, we won’t be where they expect, because we’re leaving the main road behind.”
“What are we waiting for?” Willow asks. “Let’s go burn something down.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
RACHEL
As the sun disintegrates into ribbons of fire in the western sky, we huddle at the edge of the rooftop, scanning the southern entrance to the city while we make a plan.
“Those houses along the western edge look like they’d burn.” Adam points toward a dilapidated row of homes that skirt the city limit.
“There’s plenty of flammable debris through the side streets that lead to this building, too,” Willow says.
“We’ll create a firebreak behind those houses at the edge of the city.” Logan’s voice is calm, though he won’t relinquish his grip on the guardrail that encircles the rooftop. “We’ll go out in teams after dark. One team will create a twenty-yard perimeter behind the houses to keep the fire from spreading toward us. The other team will gather wood, dried grass, underbrush . . . anything that will burn. We’ll spread the flammable materials in thirty-yard lines from the houses and into the Wasteland to help the fire head toward the bluff.”
“And then we light it?” Adam asks as we turn toward the stairwell.
“No,” Logan says. “We get a few hours of sleep, make sure we’re ready to travel just before dawn, and then light it. We need to be ready to move the instant that fire catches, just in case. The flames and smoke will obscure the Commander’s sight line, and he’ll have to find another way through the city, because the whole main entrance will be on fire.”
After a quick dinner, Logan and I divide up our nighttime volunteers. Logan takes those who will be working on the firebreak, mostly because he can’t stand not to be in complete control of how much distance the team creates between the line of houses we’re using to start the fire and the road that leads directly to our shelter. I take those who are gathering materials to create a sustained blaze large enough to both camouflage our movements and force the army to find another path. We leave Frankie and Eric in charge of guarding the entrance to our shelter and make sure every volunteer understands that we have to work in pairs and stay alert.
None of us have forgotten that we have a Rowansmark tracker out there waiting for the chance to kill again.
Ian, Thom, Jodi, Cassie, Derreck, Smithson, and Sylph are on my team. The row of houses perched at the southern edge of the main road are leaning against each other like unevenly stacked books just waiting for a strong wind to push them over. Jodi, Cassie, Smithson, and Derreck gather armloads of flammable debris from the team creating the firebreak and from the streets closest to the houses. Thom, Ian, Sylph, and I create trails for the fire to follow straight into the Wasteland and toward the army camped on the bluff above us.
Hours pass. We work in near silence as the stars slowly drift across the night sky. Occasionally, we hear snatches of loud conversation and laughter echoing down from the bluff, as if the soldiers are already celebrating a victory. As if they’re so sure they can annihilate us.
Every word, every laugh, pours salt on a wound I don’t know how to bandage. Somewhere up on that bluff, the man who ruined my life eats his dinner. Gives his orders. Stares at the dark ruins of this city and congratulates himself on winning the game.
As I drag another branch into place and sprinkle rough stalks of grass over it, I come to a decision. We wouldn’t have to light this fire if the Commander was dead. We wouldn’t have to flee toward Lankenshire like deer trying to outrun a hunter. We could find peace.
I could find peace.
It’s not that far to the bluff. Without the group to slow me down, I can be there in an hour. Maybe less if I don’t run into any guards. I’ll scout out the army’s camp, find where the Commander is staying, and then shoot him in the head with an arrow. The army might come after me then, but I’ll have darkness on my side, and they’ll never find me. Dropping the rest of the grass onto the branch, I turn and silently melt into the Wasteland.
“Going somewhere?”
I whip my knife out of its sheath before I realize the person standing just yards away from me is Ian. “Don’t do that. I could’ve killed you.” I fight to keep my voice down. If I can hear the army, they can hear me.
“You could’ve tried.” He steps closer and the starlight gleams against the angles of his face. “What’s the plan?”
“The plan?”
“For killing the Commander. That’s where you were going, right?” He jerks his chin toward the bluff and says quietly, “I’m in. What’s the plan?”
“I sneak up to the camp, look for the Commander, and shoot him with an arrow.”
Ian is silent for a moment, and then he says in a fierce whisper, “That’s a terrible plan. One girl and one arrow against an army of hundreds?”
“Who says I have just one arrow?”
He grabs my arm. “Normally, I like your kind of crazy. But this is our chance. Remember? We made a deal. We can’t take down the Commander by sneaking into their camp. Don’t you think every single soldier is on the lookout for a girl with red hair and a nasty look in her eyes?”
“That’s the beauty of a bow and arrow.” I shake my arm free. “You can shoot from a distance.”
“And if you miss? Or if you can’t find him without getting close enough to be seen? Or if he’s out of range? Then what?”
I glare even though he can’t see my expression. “You’re starting to sound a lot like Logan. What’s your exit strategy, Rachel? What’s your backup plan?”
“Shh.” Ian looks over his shoulder for a second. Then he says, “We already have our backup plan. We use the device. Logan proved that it works. We destroy the enemy, and then it’s over.”
“I don’t have the device. Logan does. He wears it strapped to his chest, and he isn’t going to just give it to us.” I shove my knife back into its sheath. Time is slipping away from me. If I’m going to make it to the bluff, find the Commander, and hopefully shoot him where he sits, I have to leave now.
“And you can’t think of a single thing you could do out here in the dark to get him to take it off? We need it, Rachel.”
“What do you need?” Thom asks behind us.
I grit my teeth and bend to grab another branch as if all I have planned for the evening is the task of laying fuel for tomorrow’s fire. “Nothing.”
“Didn’t sound like nothing to me.”
“Do you make a habit of eavesdropping?” Ian asks, and there’s an edge to his voice.
“If you hadn’t been so focused on trying to convince Rachel to do something for you, you’d have heard me come up,” Thom says. “We still need to work on the eastern fuel trails. Let’s go.”
“I’m going to finish up here. I’ll be there in a few minutes,” I say.
“No one’s working alone. There’s a tracker out here. Might be army scouts, too. We’ll wait for you.” Thom folds his big arms across his chest and watches us both.
Perfect. Now how am I supposed to get to the bluff? If I just leave, Thom will tell Logan in a heartbeat. I have no trouble envisioning what Logan would do with that piece of news.
I also have no trouble remembering the hurt in his eyes when he begged me not to sacrifice myself for revenge and leave him with no one.
The silence within me presses close, hungry for vengeance, but I make myself walk toward the city instead. Logan and I have a plan. And we have people to protect before we can put that plan in action. If I try for the Commander and fail, I’ll be another tool the Commander can use to hurt Logan.
“Rachel?” Ian asks as I brush past him.
“You two can finish the eastern fuel line. I’m going to check in with Logan.”
I leave them there without a backward glance, feeling emptier with every step I take away from the bluff.
Chapter Twenty-Five
RACHEL
I find Logan inside the Wasteland inspecting one of the fuel lines. Quinn and Willow are with him.
“There you are,” he says, and there’s relief in his voice as he steps away from the others and moves toward me. “I sent the rest of your team back to the shelter, but couldn’t find you, Ian, or Thom. I thought . . .”
When he doesn’t finish his sentence, I say, “I know there’s a tracker out here somewhere. I was careful.”
He looks at me for a long moment, then says quietly, “I was more worried about the fact that the Commander is so close. I thought you’d be tempted to do something . . . unplanned. I’m sorry I misjudged you.”
For a moment, I consider lying to him, but I can’t stomach the thought. Quinn and Willow leave to inspect the next fuel line, and I’m grateful for the privacy.
“You didn’t misjudge me. I was about to sneak up to the bluff, look for the Commander, and shoot an arrow in his eye.”
He makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat and starts pacing. “You were . . . that’s just . . .” He draws in a deep, slow breath, as if he needs the time to find the words missing from his sentences.
“We could still get him. He’s so close. We could use the device with your booster pack attached. We already know it works—”
“Absolutely not.” He stops pacing and faces me.
“Logan, he’s right there.” I gesture toward the distant bluff, with its cheerful campfires and snatches of laughter drifting on the wind. “Every soldier with him would kill us without hesitation if they had the chance. Why can’t we do the same? We have the advantage. We could use the Cursed One and finish this.”
His voice is fierce. “Last time we called the beast it wouldn’t touch the Commander because of the necklace he wears. Instead, it destroyed our city. I refuse to take a chance with our lives again. We have a plan. I have an invention that will find him and kill him, Rachel. I just need a few more supplies to finish building it.”
“I thought you were building a tracking device. How would that kill him?”
“It’s basic science. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. The tracking device sends out a sound wave, which is essentially an oscillation of pressure traveling through an acceptable medium at various frequencies—”
“You’re losing me.”
“The tracker sends out a sound wave, searching for a specific signal. The Commander’s, in this case. For the tracker to find the signal, there has to be a receiver at the other end. Something to accept and translate the sound wave. The tracking device’s signal is strong enough to ping off of the receiver and bounce back to the original tech.” His words tumble over each other in his eureka!-I-just-invented-something-epic! voice. “But what if the signal was stronger? What if I could increase the sound wave to something the receiver couldn’t accept?”
“You mean you think you can overpower the Commander’s wristmark receiver? I don’t want to dump cold water on your enthusiasm, but what good would that do? Wouldn’t it just break the receiver and leave us with no way to track him at all?”
“I’m not just going to break the receiver. I’m going to obliterate it. Use sound as a weapon.”
“Explode his receiver?”
“Yes.”
“In his wrist.”
“Yes.”
“Next to his artery.” My breath quickens as something brilliant and sharp surges through me.
“Exactly.”
I throw my arms around him. “You’re a genius. I don’t tell you that often enough, but you really are.”
His voice is quiet. “We agreed to a plan. I told you I could build something we could use after we delivered these people safely to Lankenshire. Why didn’t you trust me? Why go off on your own?”
“I didn’t go.” My voice sounds small. “Ian stopped me at first, but then I thought about what you asked of me back in Baalboden. How you didn’t want me to risk myself without an exit strategy because if I die, you’ll have no one. I decided not to go, but a big part of me still wishes I had.”
He wraps his arms around me and pulls me to his chest. “You don’t have to face him alone.”
“I don’t care if I face him alone. I just want this to be over. I want him to suffer and die. I want to stop running for our lives. I want to stop seeing . . .” Melkin’s dark eyes, burning with fury as I drive my knife into his chest. Oliver’s neck bleeding and bleeding. The white cross on my father’s grave.
“Stop seeing what?” His voice is gentle, but he holds me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he lets go.
I tell myself I want to shatter the deafening silence inside of me and feel, but I know I’m lying. I can’t wait to shove the guilt and grief away from me. Can’t wait to take a breath without suffocating on the blood of everyone I’ve lost. I flinch away from truth and into the silence.
The comfort it offers is cold and empty. A barren tomb cutting me off from the rest of the world. I should be clawing at the sides, screaming my lungs out, and fighting to escape.
Fighting to live.
I dig my fingers into Logan’s cloak and breathe. The air smells of musky tree bark, rich, dark earth, and the faint sweetness of the flowering sweetshrubs that dot the landscape.
“Please talk to me,” Logan says quietly, and something heavy lies in his voice. “Tell me what’s hurting you.”
/> I step back and my heart thuds against my chest.
“It has something to do with your nightmares, doesn’t it?” He reaches out and traces my cheek with his finger. “What do you dream about, Rachel?”
Blood. Pouring endlessly. Those I’ve lost. Those I’ve taken.
Guilt writhing through me like a poisonous snake, killing me slowly from the inside out.
He’s silent for a moment, and then he says quietly, “Don’t you trust me?”
“Of course I do.” I do. I just don’t trust myself. I can hold myself together during the day. I can take charge of what needs to be done; I can say the words everyone seems to want to hear; and I can pretend real feelings live inside of me instead of the vast wall of silence. But I can’t pretend at night. I can’t hold myself together when everything the silence keeps from me floods into my mind and brings me to my knees.
If I put words to it, if I let it cut me like I deserve, how will I ever keep the two parts of me separate again?
“If you trust me, then let me in. Please. I want to help you, but how can I when I don’t know what you’re facing?” Hurt crouches inside his words.
I swallow the automatic protest that rises to my lips. Once upon a time, I told Oliver everything. Told Dad almost everything. And I’d like to think if my mother had lived, I’d have shared almost everything with her, too. Maybe that’s what love is. Giving others the power to hurt you and trusting that they’ll use it to heal you instead.
Stepping forward, he cups my face in his calloused palms and says, “I know you aren’t okay. How could you be? I’m not okay, either. But hiding from it isn’t going to solve it.”
Something hot and painful throbs inside my chest. “Nothing’s going to solve it, Logan. I can’t . . .”
“You can’t what?”
“I can’t be strong enough to face this”—I gesture toward the bluff behind us and hope he knows that I mean everything. Oliver. Dad. The Commander. Everything—“if I start talking about my nightmares. And you need me to be strong. Everyone needs me to be strong. Falling apart isn’t an option.”
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