“Is she alive?” Corin’s breathing is labored.
I pick up her wrist. Her arm feels so insubstantial, like there’s nothing there.
Viktoriya opens her eyes.
“How did you do it?” Taras stares at me as he asks the question for what seems like the hundredth time since the reindeer herders carried Viktoriya back on a makeshift stretcher. He pulls at the sparse wiry hairs on his chin. “Child, how?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I say. The room we’re in appears to have been an infirmary. There’s running water at the sinks, and long, red curtains—though faded—hang down, creating divisions between different stalls.
“I cannot feel any internal injuries,” Melissa’s healer says. “Yet this is inconsistent with the state you found her in.”
“And look at her.” Marina points to where Viktoriya is sitting up, a few feet away on an old mattress, talking to Bea.
A three-year-old boy from Melissa’s group is on Bea’s lap, and Viktoriya smiles at him as he reaches out to touch her hair.
“Seven, I was so sure she was dead.” Taras reaches for my hand, squeezes it. “I thought I felt her loss.”
“We always fear the worst,” Melissa says, striding into the room. Several people are behind her, and I pick out Quinn, Siora, and Elf. The others, I don’t know. “How is she?”
“Doing remarkably well,” the healer says.
“What about the pregnant woman? What’s her name?”
“Esther.” I turn to look at the other end of the infirmary, but the curtain there is still firmly drawn.
“I gather there’s no more progress,” Taras says. “Last I heard she’s still not in active labor.”
“What?” Corin says. “But she’s in pain.”
“The baby will be born soon,” Marina says. “It’s a slow labor.”
I clear my throat, look around. “We need to make the rest of this place habitable if this is to be our home.” Just saying the word—home—feels weird. I don’t think I ever used it for Nbutai. Because home implies safety, and nowhere in a world where we’re hunted is safe.
Except this place. This place is, and the word both fills me with excitement and fear.
“You mean cleaning?” Quinn rolls her eyes and sniffs loudly.
I nod. “Did anyone find any food? Tins or anything?”
Blank stares.
“Okay, well there must be game in the forest.” I’ve already heard birds call to each other. “Bea, what about the plants? Do you recognize any?”
“I can have a look,” she says. “Some may be familiar, even here.”
I nod and cross to the window, look out. The spirits are still up there, still around us. They’re protecting the settlement—because I couldn’t? I try to see past the wall of spirits. But I can’t.
“We have a safe place now,” Taras says. “From which to grow our numbers. From which you’ll win the war.”
So long as nothing more happens with the timelines. There’s nothing to suggest that if we are in a safe time-pocket now—as well as having the spirits—how long it will last for. It could easily be temporary, and we could find ourselves back on the Enhanced Ones’ current timeline. A jump of more than a week.
Taras is looking at me, and the heavy gaze makes me uncomfortable. Because it makes me realize how heavy the air is here, like it’s waiting. Like it knows. Because before, when we were traveling, the end of the war was far off.
And now, now it isn’t, even though we’re technically farther back in time.
But we’re safe. We’ve got a group. A base.
Raleigh doesn’t know where we are. But he still has my powers. And I don’t. Because my body and soul has remained the same. It’s not just my memories and mind that I’ve kept, not like the other Untamed here.
Raleigh’s got my powers. Definitely the spirit-controlling power, possibly time-manipulation, and other ones too. I frown. Powers that weren’t given directly to him by the Gods and Goddesses. Taras said that’s why I’m at risk of Seer instability; does that mean Raleigh is too? Or is that too much to hope for?
I pull a hand through my hair—it is definitely longer—and I frown.
“I don’t know how to win the war, Taras,” I say.
“You will.” His look makes me shiver. “Time is rippling—we have proof of that. I’ve heard Seers can reach beyond the now into the after. Subconsciously, you know what to do. You just have to wait for the rest of you to know. Trust your decisions, child. Trust that you’ve brought us to a safe place. The bison’s already said as much. Trust that you will save us all.”
“Even though Raleigh’s got some of my powers?” What if he has got the time-manipulation power, and I can’t reach beyond the now into the after to know what to do?
But, no. If he had that power, he wouldn’t use it to make us safer, create this time-pocket. It has to be me who’s done this, even if I don’t know how.
“Even then,” Taras says. “He can’t have the important ones, or we’d know by now. We’d be in a much worse situation—not a better one.”
Either that or he hasn’t discovered them yet.
I swallow hard.
I need to know. Need to know what Raleigh’s doing. We can’t just wait for his next move. We have to take control. We can get this information, we don’t need to be in the dark anymore. I can body-share with him.
But look what happened last time.
“Come on, we need to eliminate the health hazards here before we do anything else,” Taras says, and he says the words in such a way, gives me a stern look, that makes me think he knows what I was thinking. He doesn’t want me body-sharing with Raleigh.
We move to the end of the infirmary, then out the door to a much bigger room, but with less things in it. No tables or sinks. Just curtains.
I watch as Yani beats the dust out of the curtains and then two of the herders bring in a bundle of clothes. It’s the ones Corin and I already found, and Taras says they should be washed—there’s a creek near the south wing, according to him.
Disgust fills Siora’s face when she realizes Corin’s wearing one of them already.
“But think of all the insects and parasites that could live in it,” she says, eyes wide. “They could be spreading, infecting you.”
Corin laughs, but I don’t join in. My imagination is all too strong, and I think of the beetles I saw in Raleigh’s mind—the beetles that spread to mine. That are inside me. Still?
I breathe deeply. But it makes me think more about Raleigh, about his plans—his plans for all of us—and how much easier it would be if we knew what those were. We could be one step ahead then, rather than trailing behind.
“Don’t even think about it,” Taras says a few minutes later, catching my eye. “One body-share with him made things so much worse. If you connect with him again, he could get all your powers. A transference channel never properly closes.”
By the time night falls, we’ve made good progress. Most of the settlement is clean, warm. Yani found a working power-generator, and some of the rooms have electricity, electric lighting. We’ve sorted out reasonable places to sleep. The immediate area around the buildings has been searched, and one of Melissa’s group found what looks like wild boar hair caught on some bark. Bea’s identified a few plants she knows are edible, and we had a brief meal of asystasia leaves, wild bananas, and raw green papaya which we cooked over a fire in the center of the settlement.
Corin casts a look around the candlelit room where the others are as I snuggle into the blankets, feel their softness against my skin.
“It’s not very private,” he says, as he takes his shirt off.
My gaze goes to him, and I feel myself blush. Feel things inside me, feelings awakening. My breath catches in my throat, and I want to reach across, place my hand over his chest, his stomach, his muscles.
I want to feel him.
I want his hands on me.
The certainty of the thought shocks me, makes me b
lush even more.
Then I see a teenage girl from Melissa’s group on the other side of the room, blushing as well. Two other women make no attempt to hide their gazes on Corin.
I look away from them, focus on Corin, my breathing fast. But their eyes burn into me.
“Why did Taras insist on it?” Corin shakes his head as he climbs into the blankets next to me. His arm brushes mine. “It’s safe here. We don’t have to sleep in groups now.” He sighs, then raises his voice. “Can we put the lights out?”
One of the men on the other side of the room grunts, then there’s darkness.
It’s amazing how dark it gets.
I feel Corin against me, shirtless, and his arms slide around me. Having so much Sarr power active inside me is a reassurance. This is him. No mistakes.
This is Corin, and I am safe.
I smile, and part of me can’t believe he’s here. Corin, with me. That he’s chosen me. And now we’re wrapped up in each other, and it’s mad, because we’ve slept in each other’s arms many times before. This should be no different—and yet it feels it.
We’re in a town—our own settlement. So many rooms still standing, more than we’d thought. I do the calculations—enough for everyone to have their own room, easily.
Yet now we have less privacy than in all the years at Nbutai. There, it was predominantly a family to a hut, but there were plenty of time the huts were empty of other family members. I remember Keelie telling Five about the first time she slept with Nico, how amazing it was to have a whole hut to themselves as Yani had gone on a two-day hunt with Rahn and Kayden.
Right now, I want to be alone with Corin, like we were earlier.
I want to turn in his arms and kiss him. It’s a yearning within me.
The energy between us buzzes.
His bare chest sears me through my shirt.
I turn a little, feel the warmth of his hand on my hip.
My eyes, now adjusted to the darkness, pick out the curve of his head, then the shape of his eyes. A moment passes, and I think we’re staring into each other’s eyes, then he nuzzles my neck.
My body jolts, and I breathe in deeply.
His mouth moves to my own, and his hand moves above my hip as he pulls me closer.
We kiss. We kiss deeper. And deeper.
I pull away.
“Corin, we can’t,” I whisper. “The others are here.”
“They could move to another room,” he says—and not quietly either. His breathing deepens, and his hands roam over me. “It just seems like such a waste. We’re finally safe, got security, and everyone’s too scared to appreciate it. Why don’t we move?”
“Corin.” I give him a stern look I’m pretty sure he doesn’t see. “We’re on the farthest side of the room. We’d disturb everyone if we moved now. Let’s just sleep, okay?”
My words feel like traitors, because my body is alive.
I pull him a little closer and whisper, “We can do stuff tomorrow.”
“Okay,” he murmurs.
“Tomorrow,” I say.
I’m sure he smiles.
“We need to be better at fighting,” Corin says the next morning. His gaze brushes over me, and, instantly, my heart warms as I think of the quick kisses we had this morning, after the room had emptied, before Taras came looking for us. Corin’s gaze deepens. “All of us.”
“But Seven’s going to win the war,” a woman in her thirties says. I think she’s called Kyranna, but I’m not sure. She’s from Melissa’s group, and a lot of them are blond with long, thin faces like Melissa. Hard to tell apart, remember who’s who. “The augury doesn’t say anything about anyone else needing to fight.”
“There’s always a fight,” Corin says, folding his arms. “Seven may have the powers that end the war, but…” For a second, he looks uncertain, and I know he’s wondering whether I’ve still got them, but then he shakes his head. “We can’t leave it all up to her. We’ve got to fight too, protect ourselves. If the Enhanced kill us before she ends the war, we’re not going to come back to life. We’d still be dead. We have to be able to protect ourselves while Seven kills them. Because they’re not just going to focus on her in the final stage. They’ll be going for us too. There are billions of them, and they all need to die.”
Kill all the Enhanced?
I balk a little. Billions of deaths.
But no. I look at Taras. I took his addiction, made him Untamed again. That has to mean something. It has to. Everything means something. You just have to find out the meaning.
In the end, we divide into several groups. One lot, led by Melissa, continues tidying up the settlement. A second, headed by Corin, concentrates on weapons and improving combat skills. Bea takes charge of another group, sending them out to gather plants she’s seen, and others go out farther afield, looking for meat.
For hours, Taras leads a small group discussion, trying to work out how many other Untamed might still be out here—we count the names of ones Taras and the others know are still out there, but I’m sure there are more—and then he quizzes me about ways I may be able to unite these other Untamed.
“But I haven’t got a personal connection with any of them,” I say. “I already knew you. And Jana. And I grew up with Bea and Yani and Elf. Even your group, I knew of them, had seen them. And the man we heard screaming, and that other woman with the dangly earrings, turns out they’re related distantly to one of Melissa’s group.” I pause, can’t remember when I heard it. “We’re all connected.”
My eyes fall on Siora and Quinn. They’re at the side of the room. Siora’s got a pot of ground charcoal she collected from an old fireplace, and she’s using the powder to draw a map of the settlement on the wall, labeling the different buildings. She said it would make them easier to identify if we all call them the same names.
Quinn watches her, wordlessly, arms folded. Her whole attention’s on her sister, and the air almost seems to crackle with the electricity radiating from her.
I frown. I thought they were Sarrs, was convinced of it, but I was wrong. I didn’t know either of them, yet I still called them to me. Because I believed we had a connection? Or am I uniting us all, regardless of connections?
“How are you feeling?” Taras asks. “Your Seer instability?”
“It’s fine now,” I say. “I’ve still got the hole in my powers—I can feel that. But the rest of me feels normal. Stable. Nothing like before.”
He presses his lips together and makes a noise that suggests he doesn’t think it is as fine as I think it is. “It could be that having security and safety has stabilized it, but it is unpredictable. It will always be there. You may be fine for using your powers twenty, thirty times more. Then it may be that the next time you use them, it affects you. You have to always be ready for it, don’t let it stretch your mind further.”
I nod, and the door opens. I look up, see Bea.
“There’s an area of the settlement we can’t get into,” she says. “It’s blocked off by stone, where the wall’s fallen in. But when we were higher up on the mountain, we could see—it looks quite big. Some buildings in it don’t look too badly damaged.”
There’s a part of the settlement we haven’t yet looked at? I frown. I thought we covered it all yesterday, when we were clearing up.
“Should we try and make it accessible?” Bea asks. “It’ll take a long time to move the stone. Should we use our efforts on that? I can’t be positive, looking from such a distance, but some of the trees in there could be carambolas. You know, star fruit.”
“Show me,” I say, already heading toward the door. Taras gives me a look, rolls his eyes, but doesn’t say anything.
Truthfully, I’m pleased to get out. All Taras wants to do is make a plan, and all it does is worry me, remind me of how little I know about my powers or how the war will end. I can feel the anxiety sky-high within me.
Bea leads me away from the main buildings, heading north. We trek through knee-high foliage—Bea po
ints out various plants, smiling—then we sort of double-back on ourselves. It’s warm, humid, but not so much that it’s muggy. There’s a slight breeze. The whole time we walk, I think about how my dog would love it here. How he’d run around, barking, racing, chasing flies, and rodents, and whatever else there is here. How he’d love all the smells, the trails to follow.
But he’s not here.
My throat tightens as I think of him with Raleigh. My dog is a connection to me, a route, a pathway. Raleigh will know that, and I know he’s going to use him as leverage. It makes sense.
My dog was my family’s dog. A member of the family.
The last living family I have left.
And I left him with Raleigh—I’ve barely thought of him until now—so what kind of person does that make me? Because if he was a person, if he was my brother or sister, I’d have staged rescue mission after rescue mission until I got him back, wouldn’t I?
But you didn’t for Three, a voice says.
My chest sags. I didn’t know Three had been taken, that he was alive. I thought it was just an ordinary dream, a nightmare.
But my dog? I know Raleigh’s got him. I know he’s there.
He’s just a dog, Seven, another voice says. It’s not like he can be converted.
“There.” Bea stops in front of a mass of stone, all broken in fragments, and I jolt out of my thoughts, the war inside me.
In front, it’s like a large wall has fallen, but instead of falling flat, it’s fallen partly upright, filling a gap between two cliff ridges.
“From up there, you can see those two bits of rock that stick out then go right back,” Bea says. “There are several buildings built against them. With the formation of the mountain, this is the only safe way to get to them. We can’t climb down from up there, the mountainside is too sheer. But there are definitely buildings, and a lot more forest in there too. A whole area that’s inaccessible.”
I frown. “But there’s a lot of forest we can get to, right?”
She nods. “Though I haven’t seen any carambola trees elsewhere.” Bea shakes her head “But it’s like a secret land in there, all hidden off.” Her eyes shine, and she smiles.
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