Finally, however, the figure managed to push through. It was a short and stocky young girl with a mess of purple hair—Rose wondered if it was always like that or if the crowd had gotten to it. The girl strode forward with force, her shoulders barreling forth, her hands in tight fists. As the people called her a traitor or a disgrace or a joke—there was also a lot worse—she just pushed on, a scowl on her face, her boots stomping the ground. Rose noticed that she had wings on her back, but they were cut almost to the stumps. If she had once been able to fly, she never would again.
The girl reached the platform and, forgoing the stairs, jumped to the surface, a height of nearly eight feet.
“I will see that peace befalls us once again!” she shouted, and everyone howled with laughter. The crowd started up in their mockery again, objects were thrown, but Bethesda calmed them with a simple wave of her hand.
“This will not buy you redemption, Meadowrue,” she said, speaking, it seemed, for everyone. “Your sins can never be forgiven.”
Meadowrue stared her down. “I’m not seeking redemption or forgiveness. And I don’t want praise either. I don’t want anything. I have skills to offer, and that’s what I’m doing. You have a problem with that?”
Bethesda stared at her, and Rose wasn’t sure if she was angry or startled or both. Finally, she said, “Very well.”
Meadowrue stepped over toward Rose and gazed at her. Gazing back, Rose thought she saw something in her that might connect them. A common ground, a shared history of pain and isolation. Finally, she thought, someone who will get you. She offered a slight smile, and in response, Meadowrue said, “If you don’t cooperate, I’ll eat you myself.”
Rose swallowed hard and turned away. Then again, maybe not.
Bethesda waved her hand at the group and said, “Then we have our Order. There is no time to waste—you must depart at first light. As you know, the Abomination destroys at an unfathomable pace. Good luck.” She approached Rose and placed her hands on her shoulders. “And you, Rose Coffin, will not be forgotten. Thank you for your sacrifice.”
“But … but …”
The dragon woman abruptly turned around. As she rejoined the two she arrived with and walked across the platform and down the steps, the round one, in a balloon of a voice, added, “I wonder how she tastes.”
Because she had refused to budge from the platform, Rose was stuck atop Ridge once more, his branches the bars of her cage, the birds her wardens. Apparently, she thought, you’re going to exit this world the same way you came into it.
Night was coming on quick—far quicker than it had any right to, as if it just fell atop them—and she was carried through Lamarka toward an isolated place in the Craven Hills section of the city, which had been set aside for her to sleep. According to Coram, it was an area full of history with many sacred areas and landmarks. He went on about devils without tails, the Alder Church and ghost priests, but Rose was having none of it. Sitting atop Ridge, she was like a trapped animal scurrying to break free of her cage. Her chest was thumping, her face panic-stricken, as she kept trying to climb down from the tree at every chance, cutting her hands and legs along the sharp, writhing branches only to be ensnared again and again. At one point, she even attempted to jump, but the branches, like tentacles, snatched her out of midair and pulled her back in, setting her high in the tree.
“I don’t want to tie you down!” Ridge shouted up to her as the rest of the group laughed at her feeble escape attempts. “Those branches wrap tight! Don’t fight it! Be like a rose and stay in one place, why don’t you!”
“Like a tree?” she snapped, which elicited even more laughter from the group.
Rose, however, heard none of it. With her back against the branches, hands grasping two thick boughs, she trembled with a mix of rage and terror. The beauty of the land was gone. Nothing shimmered, nothing shined. At night, it seemed, the demons came out in full. The shadows danced, twisted images and withered figures making all kinds of sounds, snorts and squeals, gasps and croaks. From her high vantage point, she spotted the robed worms slowly trailing the group in a single file, arms folded before them, hands hidden in their billowing sleeves, their heads bowed. If she knew what the Balbot Sect actually wanted of her, she might have preferred being captive in Ridge’s branches. Luckily, Coram and Meadowrue spotted them as well and, after a long conversation with the sect, of which they minimally informed Rose, managed to drive them off.
After many meandering paths through the narrow Lamarkan streets, the group entered a field of rolling hills, eventually stopping at a small wooden door carved in the side of a steep slope. As the Order was arguing about who was going to sleep in beds that night and who was going to keep watch outside the room, Ridge reached up and placed Rose down. “Go get yourself some rest!” he said. “It’s been a long day!” But as he opened the door for her to enter her new quarters, guiding her inside with a gentlemanly bow and wave of his hand, Rose had already taken off.
She knew that once Ridge got the others to stop arguing long enough for him to alert them of her escape, they would gain fast, particularly the doglike creatures. There was no way she would outrun them. Instead, she was going to have to find a place to hide. But glancing around, she saw there was nothing but hills.
At the top of the highest hill, she noticed a few small streets in the distance below. With no other options, she decided she’d head there. Racing down the hills, nearly tumbling head over heels, she soon reached the quiet neighborhood. Glancing back, she could see her pursuers at the peak. She’d have to hurry, though it turned out the streets were cobblestone, forcing her to be more sure-footed and slower than she preferred—once or twice she felt her ankle twist and her knees buckle. Still, it felt like she was flying, her strides long and powerful. She wasn’t sure if it was the product of fear and adrenaline, and she didn’t care. She was just happy to see no movement behind her, nor hear any sounds of people giving chase. She smiled, rounded a corner, and ran straight into the Balbot Sect. She crashed into them as if they were a concrete wall and fell backward, her head smashing against the cobblestone. There were seven of the hooded worms standing over her, motionless and silent. Rose backed away, and two of them lit up, bright red. Beams shot out of their hoods and sleeves, a strange vibration coming from them, a deafening hum, and Rose leapt to her feet and took off in the opposite direction, her scream stuck in her throat like a spike.
Racing down the street, she tried opening every door she passed, but they were all locked. She pounded on some, kicked others, but kept running, never looking back. Finally, just as she was about to give up hope, she threw herself against a door and it flung open.
She couldn’t believe it was unlocked. But then she saw the lock was broken, as if someone had ripped it off. She leaned against the door, her body slumping down, putting all her weight against it. The room was dark and quiet. Small. Only enough space for a tiny kitchen and a bed. A square table and two chairs. There was a smell that turned her stomach. In the far corner where the bed was, she heard someone breathing. But it wasn’t normal breathing. It was strained, troubled breaths. Don’t wake up, don’t wake up. Slowly, she rose, inched over to the window, and peered out to see if the Sect or Order had passed.
Everything seemed quiet until …
“Heeelllppp meee.”
Nose against the windowpane, Rose went ice-cold. The voice was fractured, shards of syllables stretched out into a kind of monstrous song. She couldn’t move, not an inch.
Behind her, the bed creaked and she heard it again. “Help meeeeeee.” Slowly, Rose turned from the window. By the faint light of the moon, she saw a ghostly figure approaching. He was deathly pale. Like his body was dipped in white paint. He kept making his way toward Rose, feet dragging across the floor, one larger than the other.
Rose backed away toward the door, her fingers grasping the handle. She turned it but heard a commotion out in the street. Shoot! Rose thought her body was going to crumble. It felt so loos
e, so wobbly. The pale man kept coming toward her.
“It got me,” he groaned, his voice wrapped in a deathly rasp. “I’m sick. Help me.”
“Wh-what got you?”
The pale man’s hands grabbed her shoulders and squeezed. He looked her up and down, scrutinizing every inch. “What are you?”
Rose’s eyes narrowed, and she shoved him away.
“You’re not one of us,” he said, staggering. “You’re not from here. Are you … are you her? The sacrifice?”
“No,” Rose said. “No. I’m just trying to find my way home.”
“Help us!” he moaned. “Pleeaassee!” And he lunged for her.
Rose leapt out of the way, falling to the floor and rolling toward the window. The pale man turned for her, stumbling in her direction.
Just then the door was kicked open and Coram hurried in. He scanned the room and grabbed hold of the man, forcing him back to the bed. “You slipped your cuffs,” he said to him in a voice far calmer than Rose expected. He almost sounded like a parent caring for a child. “The illness is eating away at you, Grenenbare.” Releasing a deep breath, he eased the man onto the bed and gently placed his hands through the cuffs, tightening them. “It’s for your own good. We’re going to fix this, I promise. I’m going to see it through. Now just rest.” He placed the blanket over him, tucking it in just beneath his chin.
Rose was crumbled on the floor, vibrating with fear and shock and confusion. Coram approached her, his hands up in peace. Crouching beside her, he gently helped her to her feet, though Rose immediately shook him off.
“What was that?” she cried when they were back on the street.
“A good Lamarkan suffering a horrible fate.”
“Good? None of you are good!”
Coram exhaled. “It’s the Abomination, Rose. It infected him and thousands of others far south from here. He lost everything. It’s a miracle he even made it back to us. But the disease is killing him now. Like it’s doing to all of Eppersett. The land and the people alike.”
“Maybe you deserve it,” Rose snipped.
“You don’t know what you’re saying. You know nothing of suffering.”
Rose, surprising herself, slapped him across the face. She was trembling, but she wouldn’t look away. “You don’t know me,” she said through a stiff jaw. “You have no idea what I’ve lost.”
Coram glared back at her—it was clear he had never been treated in such a way. Finally, he said, “Let’s get you back to your bed. You’re far too important to be wandering around at night.”
He and the group brought her back safely to the door in the hill. It was agreed they would take turns sitting outside the door. But the shifts weren’t easy for any of them. Throughout the night, they heard nothing but the sound of Rose’s tears.
The following morning, the Order of the Sacrifice had been followed out of Lamarka by a wave of raucous applause. There were plenty of well-wishers trailing the group along the wide stone path and out through Hessop’s Gate, though Rose supposed in her regard they were more like death-wishers. Spirits were high, save for hers, of course. Escape seemed impossible. Even if she did manage to get away, they would most likely track her down before she found a way back home. She had to face it: She would never see her family again. And what would that do to her mother? Her father? What would that do to Hyacinth?
You’ve already let him down, she thought. You can’t bear to even be in the same room with him. Because you’re scared. Well, how do you think he feels? It was hard to think of Hyacinth being afraid. He never was. He was always so strong, whether he was defending her from bullies or taking the blame when they broke their father’s bowling trophy or just making sure she was never alone. But the more Rose thought about this, the more she wondered if he really was strong. Maybe he was just strong for her. Maybe she still needed him to be. If he were here, Rose, he’d help you get home.
The moment the crowds were gone, the arguments among the Order, initiated the night before, began in earnest. To Rose, it seemed like some things were quite common in both worlds.
“I’m leading this group,” Deedubs said, shaking his leash so that Eo would guide him to the front, briskly passing Coram and Ridge, who were busy discussing the best route to take.
“Look at you,” Meadowrue said. “You can’t even lead yourself.” She showed no fear, not even when Deedubs bared his teeth and growled in her direction—it wasn’t even meant for Rose, but every hair on her body stood on end.
“You think it should be you, do you?” he asked. “The girl who has been cast out of every town she’s lived in? The girl whose entire life has been one bad decision? No one would follow you anywhere, Meadowrue. You shouldn’t even be here with us. You are a risk, a plague.”
Meadowrue’s face remained impressively stoic. Not even her body language changed. Rose imagined this was a girl who had heard such comments and faced such threats often, and then some. It must have been so constant that it all rolled off her now. But was that even possible? Every name Rose had ever been called echoed in her still. Every poor decision she made, every moment of being bullied, was still ringing in her ears like a siren. It wasn’t easy to shake these things off; in fact, she was still stinging from what Coram had said to her the night before. How did this girl do it? And she’s so young too, she thought. She can’t be much older than you. How did she get so strong?
“Tell me,” Deedubs went on, his voice like gravel, “in Stammandy, how many innocents died because of you, how many families, how many children?” He dug into the questions, scooping each word up onto his long, rough tongue and letting them rumble out his mouth.
There was the tiniest of flinches, and it was all in Meadowrue’s eyes. But something told Rose the interrogation had struck her painfully hard. And whatever burdens Rose had felt all her life suddenly seemed so light.
With her hands gripping her two short blades, Meadowrue took a powerful stride toward Deedubs and, as if he could see her coming, the blind beast lowered his front legs, ready to pounce.
Rose almost wished for a fight, thinking it might provide enough of a distraction for her to escape. Instead, for the first time, Eo spoke up, and Rose suspected it wasn’t to protect his father or Meadowrue, but to save the mission. His voice was almost exactly how Rose figured it would be: deep and soft like a pillow, with a strange and hesitant locution, nothing like his father’s. “Um, maybe, Pa, I dunno, we don’t need a leader, and stuft. Maybe we can all just work together. Maybe. And stuft. You know?”
Turning his head, his father followed his nose and found his son close by. “You’re no warrior!” he barked directly into Eo’s ear. “You have no say!”
Whimpering, Eo cast his eyes downward. “No, you’re right, Pa. You’re right. Um, I forgot and stuft. Sorry.”
“No, he’s not right,” Coram said.
Deedubs’s ears perked and his head snapped toward the new target of his ire. “What did you say, boy?” Rose had no doubt the beast would take them all on at once if he had to.
Though Deedubs couldn’t see him, Coram stood tall, chest out, chin high. For the moment, his deep exhalations ceased. “I said you’re not right. We’re all risking our lives on this journey and that means we all have a say. I second Eo.”
“Third!” Ridge shouted.
The fur on Deedubs’s neck was spiking. “Have you no respect? No sense of living history? I have fought to keep this land safe for nearly two centuries now. It was I who brought down the Stone King. It was I who led the Thin Man’s army in the Battle of the Fallen Comet. From the day I was born, I have witnessed things that would strike you blind well before you ever reached my age, boy. This world has been in constant peril, and I have consistently kept that danger at bay. You are nothing but a pup, Coram. Like my pathetic boy. I know what we are facing. I know what we need. And none of you have it.”
Silence gripped the group, the tension palpable. They were not even a mile from Lamarka, and already the loose th
read had been pulled taut.
“What does the sacrifice think?” Ridge asked in his bellowing voice, shattering the silence like it was glass. His eyes drifted up toward her. “Hello, up there! What say you?”
Rose looked down, incredulous. “What say me? I mean I? What say I?” She closed her eyes and shook her head in frustration. “I say you take me home this second. That’s what I say.”
“Speak up, girl!” Ridge said. “Why do you always speak so low?”
“I said, take me home!”
“Your home is in the belly of the beast,” Deedubs said in snarling dismissal.
“Well, you certainly don’t get my vote,” Rose mumbled in return.
Eo laughed at this and, a second after he did, he must have realized what he had done. His expressive brown eyes grew wide, his long, floppy ears pulled back, and it was as if he wanted to shove the laughter back down his throat. He couldn’t even turn toward his father, who was growling something fierce.
“Careful, little sacrifice,” Deedubs said to Rose. “I don’t share the awe for you that everyone else does. To me you are meat and nothing more.”
Rose was sharply aware of the dangerous ground—or branch—she was currently on, but she didn’t care. Somehow, even held captive as a sacrifice, she felt stronger than she had ever been. Perhaps it was this place or, more likely, it was the cold force of facing certain death, but whatever it was, she found a source of courage that had never before existed within her. “I think you’re losing your mind in your old age, Dubsy.”
All Deedubs’s teeth were showing now. “Watch yourself, girl.”
Rose stood taller than she ever had. “Something tells me you’re not what you used to be.”
Then it all happened so fast, though Rose saw it before anyone else did. Deedubs’s head reared far back, and a deep howl escaped from his bowels. In an incredible flash of movement, he leapt toward Ridge—thirty feet through the air—landing high in his branches. The birds scattered as he snarled and snapped his teeth at Rose like a rabid beast.
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