Defiance (30 page)

I was right. It hurts like hell. Every leap strains my ribcage. Every landing rattles it until I want to curl up, swallow enough medicine to obliterate the pain, and sleep for hours.

But I don’t dare stop. Any second now, someone will find the dead guard and raise the alarm. I probably should’ve dragged his body into the woods, hidden it, and then doubled back to hide the trail, but the pain and weakness in my ribcage would’ve made that too time intensive. Better to flee as quickly as possible.

I’m maybe sixty yards from the encampment when I hear a shout go up. They’ve found him. And I can’t leap quietly enough while I have Rowansmark military combing the woods for me. Quickly assessing the trees around me, I choose a tall silver maple with plenty of leafy coverage but no low-hanging branches and make the three leaps it takes to reach it.

Pain clouds my thoughts and dulls my instincts as I climb into the upper reaches of the tree. About two thirds of the way up, I find what I need and settle into a secure cradle of branches. Two of the limbs are thick enough to hold me should I need to leap, and both reach into the surrounding trees. I’m high enough that no one from the ground can look up and see me through all the foliage.

It’s the best I’m going to get for the moment.

Quietly pulling my bag around, I take out the half-gone pack of medicinal powder and a Rowansmark-made cloaking device I once traded for with the highwaymen outside Baalboden.

A quick pinch of powder takes the worst edge off the pain, and I clip the cloaking device, which looks like a small oval disc, to the front of my tunic. When I flick the tiny switch on the side of the device, it vibrates once. I hope the blocking system contained within it is strong enough to withstand the technological might of Rowansmark’s military.

M
elkin and I haven’t spoken since I demanded he choose a course of action. I’ve decided to take his silence as compliance, though it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. My purpose is set. If he wants to give this device to the Commander, he’ll have to do it over my dead body.

Quinn and Willow are sleeping in the trees close by. I suppose in the morning they’ll return to wherever it is they live. That doesn’t matter to me either.

All that matters is that I finally have a way to force the Commander to pay for everything he’s done. The rage within me is viciously triumphant at the thought.

Leaving Melkin to keep the first watch, I unroll my travel mat over my father’s grave and lie down with my face beside the carved wooden cross. Moonlight gleams on its surface, gilding his name with a beauty that should wound me. I reach out and grasp the wood with my bare hand, holding it tight as slivers gouge my palm.

It’s a welcome pain, but it isn’t enough to relieve the silent weight crushing me from within. Letting go, I turn my face away from the cross, away from Melkin, away from everyone, and close my eyes.

The wind sighs along the treetops and whispers over my skin like a lullaby, but I can’t sleep. Soon, I’ll have justice. A life for a life. It won’t be enough to seal up the edges of everything that’s undone within me. It won’t be enough to shatter the silence and let me grieve in peace.

It won’t be enough, but it’s all I have, and I cling to it with desperate strength.

The wind dies down, and I hear a soft
crunch
on ash behind me. Tensing, I try to listen for it again, but I can’t hear anything beyond the sudden roar of fury-laced adrenalin screaming through me.

My knife slides free of its sheath without a sound, and I brace my left elbow beneath me, flip the knife blade-side out, and shove off the ground.

Melkin stands behind me, his knife down at his side, his eyes pits of rage and misery.

He means to take the device from me. Destroy any chance of justice. Make my Dad’s sacrifice worth
nothing
.

I raise my weapon. “Get back.” I snarl at him in a voice I barely recognize. Cold. Empty.

“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.

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.

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 the 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.