The sound of blades pulling from sheaths rings through the night, and Seth and I both raise our hands.
“Eyes down! Eyes down!” a gruff voice calls. “Hands in the air!”
Seth and I both comply as a group of guards races out of a watch tent, blades raised.
“Look up and we’ll open your throat,” the gruff voice says.
“Okay, calm down, McCreatine,” Seth mutters.
The guard puts a mirror below my eyes, and I keep my gaze down.
“Clear,” he says, letting me stand.
They clear Seth, too, and we both stand. We walk through the fence, and I rake my eyes over the camp. It’s much bigger than I thought, even with Seth’s warning.
It goes on for at least a mile.
“We need to see Abel immediately,” Seth says.
“Abel Lassiter isn’t here,” the gruff guard shoots back.
We walk past fire pits, past soldiers who sit around them, tin cups in their hands.
“He’ll want to see us. Believe me,” Seth orders, the annoyance in his voice growing.
“Sir, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t sir me, asshole. This is the Chosen One.”
I feel a shift in the entire energy around me as they look up at me. I don’t pay too much attention, because I’m stepping around the fires, desperately searching. Alan said they were headed to the Torch, but I know Harlow. If there was an army gathering, she’d head there.
A shriek cuts through the night, and a body launches itself at me. All around me, blades and shouts raise, but the smell that envelops me is a shock to my system.
“Nessa!” I cry, and we both fall to the muddy ground, my arms wrapped around her shoulders.
Vanessa squeezes me so tightly I think I’m going to bust a rib, but I hold up a hand. “It’s fine! We’re fine!” I order over her shoulder.
“What are you doing here?” I cry, my chest so tight I feel like it might crack open. She’s here. She’s alive.
She pulls back, putting her hands on my cheeks. “We thought . . . we thought you were dead.” She mutters the word like a curse. “I have to tell you something, Char—” But her voice stops as Harlow steps out from a nearby tent, dressed in all black and armed to the teeth. But her face relaxes as she crosses over the muddy ground and drops to her knees. She wraps her hand around the back of my neck and puts her forehead to mine.
“You crazy bitch. Don’t you ever do anything like that again,” she whispers, but there’s no anger in her voice.
Vanessa laughs, pulling back and wiping the tears off my cheeks.
Thomas calls Seth’s name, and Seth turns to embrace his friend. Lucia and Rielle come up behind him. They’re here. They’re alive.
“Char,” Vanessa starts again, but I hear Seth calling my name.
“Later, okay?” I say, and I follow the others as they walk to the war room.
The tent is almost bigger than our grandmother’s house.
All eyes turn to me when I walk in, Harlow to my left and Seth to my right.
Lucia and Thomas follow behind. Maps and candles are spread over a huge table, red markers and tacks scattered over the yellowing pages.
Abel turns as I enter, his face collapsing as he sees Seth and I in the doorway. “What the hell,” he breathes, though his expression is guarded—unreadable.
“Sorry we’re late,” Seth says. “But I think the intel we have will be worth it.”
Abel’s eyes flick from my face to Seth’s, and understanding slinks over his expression. His yellow eyes brighten, and he turns back to the table as Seth and I take our place at the end of it.
“This is Charlotte.”
The room shifts, just like the camp had outside. Some straighten, some narrow their eyes as they watch me.
“The Chosen One,” a woman with light brown skin and dark blond hair says. She looks younger than me. “I thought you’d be taller.” Her emerald eyes glint with mistrust. “What took you so long?”
“She’s here now, Cam,” Seth says, taking a place alongside the table. Lucia and Thomas join him, and Harlow crosses her arms at my side. I fidget, hating the weight of their eyes on me.
“We’re discussing movements,” Abel starts. “Best possible places to attack. Until we get the Heart, we—”
“The Heart is at the Blood Market,” Seth says. Abel freezes, and the room goes still.
“You’re sure?” Abel asks, turning his gaze to me. I don’t turn to look at Harlow, but I can feel her eyes on my back. Seth steps closer, and I feel his hand on mine. He grips my fingers, and I swallow.
I trust you.
Even if you don’t.
I take a deep breath, remembering the feeling when I saw Glimpse of Paradise burning in the water. And when the lock turned on the Cobalt.
I was right then.
There’s no reason I can’t be right now.
I nod.
“Where inside?” someone asks. I look over my shoulder.
“Get me inside, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Abel smiles, and titters go around the table as he looks at me. “You won’t be going in, Charlotte. You’re going to stay here.”
Irritation snaps into something darker, and I step closer to the table.
“Fuck that,” I say. “You want the Heart? I’m going with you.”
Seth raises his head, looking at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. I don’t know when I made that decision. There was no one moment, I think. It was a slow realization as I walked behind Seth in the woods.
I don’t know how we’ll find it once we’re inside. But I trust that we will. “I’m not your psychic or your war muse. I’m the Chosen One, and this won’t work without me. So you’ll do what I say.”
Abel is stricken, and everything is dead silent. Then, Cam looses a breath.
“Well, shit. I like you,” she says, looking from me back to Abel, who lets a hint of a smile curl up on his bearded face.
“Very well. Based on numbers sent from other settlements, we’ll have enough manpower here to march on it the day after tomorrow. Until then, get your rest.”
I nod and turn. Harlow follows, but I stop at the sound of Seth’s voice.
“I can leave tonight, General. I’ll bring the troops down from the north. We’ll meet you there in the morning.”
I whip around, and he doesn’t look at me. He’s leaving tonight, and he didn’t tell me.
Seems I’m not the only one who made decisions while we trekked silently through the woods.
We’re not even to our tent yet before Harlow’s voice growls low in my ear.
“What the hell was that?”
I pull away from her, twisting and swatting her off. We’re next to our tent, and I can see Rielle and Vanessa toasting hot dogs together over a nearby fire.
“What was what?” I asked.
“That whole speech, Chosen One,” she spits. Her eyes look bright in the dark, the thick eyeliner smudged perfectly, even now.
I sigh, and tell her Seth’s plan.
Her eyebrows shoot up, and then her expression tightens.
“Are you fucking kidding me? You’re going to get yourself killed. You’re going to get all of us killed. I’m stopping this, right now.” She turns, but I grab onto her wrist. She looks back, fire reflecting in her eyes.
“If you do that, then our one shot is over now. You need to trust me, Harlow. We have a real chance to end this.”
Harlow’s lip curls. “That’s not what this is about, and you know it,” she growls lowly.
I let go of her wrist. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She steps closer. “I saw you in there. You love this.”
Her words brush up on something inside me, something I’ve been ignoring.
She’s right.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I ask through clenched teeth. “I did this to save Vanessa. You were there.”
“Don’t lie to me,” she seethes. “You
’ve lied to everyone else. Do not lie to me. You did that to save Vanessa, but this? This is for you.”
That’s it. I don’t know if it’s the look on her face, or the fact that she’s right—but I can’t take it.
I shove her square in the chest, and she staggers back, tilting her head with the force she’s using to restrain herself from hitting me back.
Because she knows I probably wouldn’t get back up if she did.
“You want to go there? I think this is about you, Harlow. You couldn’t stand for one second to not be the center of attention. You couldn’t stand for one second to have people focusing on me for once in our lives.”
Harlow explodes, somehow keeping her words a scathing whisper.
“I am not going to apologize to you for living my life, Charlotte! I’m not going to say sorry for being tall! It’s not my fault you curled up in my shadow and gave up.”
Even she knows she’s said too much.
The fire crackles behind her, and the sound of far-off laughter mixes with the pleasant din of dinner.
She licks her bottom lip, frozen by the words she just said.
Without another sound, she turns and stalks off.
I shove the tent flap aside and walk in.
Dean sits on the cot opposite, and he stands when he sees me. “Well. I’ll tell you one thing. I’m happy to see you,” he jokes.
I launch myself at him, wrapping my arms around his sturdy shoulders. He smells warm and safe. He smells like home. Tears prick the back of my eyes as I bury my face in the crook of his neck.
“I thought you were dead,” I cry, squeezing him harder.
“No way, man. I’m not going down that easy.” But I hear the tremors in his voice, and I know he has been through something.
Something he’s not going to be ready to talk about for a while.
“She didn’t mean any of that, Char,” he murmurs.
I pull back, and he wipes tears off my face. His rough thumb scrapes across my cheekbone, and I close my eyes.
Everything has gone to shit. Everything.
“When you ran for me, I—” His voice chokes off, and I force a sad smile on my face.
“What did you think I was going to do? I couldn’t just let them . . .” I break off as I look up into his eyes.
If I am going to tell Dean, it needs to be now.
I don’t know if I’ll get another chance.
His eyes burn as they look down into mine, though I don’t know if it’s from the emotion of seeing me again or from the thing I’ve been desperate to see for years.
I take a deep breath, waiting for the words to bubble up the back of my throat.
And I wait.
But they don’t come.
They aren’t there.
I spent years falling in love with this man. I had no clue that I could fall out of love in the space of weeks.
I didn’t know my heart could be full of something . . . someone else, but it is.
I let out the breath, and Dean smiles down at me. It’s the smile I’ve seen for years, and I return it for once, matching the same emotion without anything else behind it.
“Charlotte,” someone says, and I jump as the tent flap opens. Seth stops hard when he sees Dean and me. I step away quickly, but it’s too late.
“Hey. Seth,” I say stupidly, because I can’t think of anything else. “I—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Seth says, his voice clipped as he looks to Dean. “Nice to meet you, Dan.”
Seth turns on his heel and stalks through the camp.
Chapter 35
I TURN TO FOLLOW SETH WITHOUT SAYING A WORD to Dean.
“Seth!” I yell.
He doesn’t slow down. “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he yells over his shoulder.
I step around a group of soldiers running drills.
“You weren’t. Seth. Can you wait for a minute?” He walks into his tent, and the flap shuts behind him.
I ball my fists and shove it aside. Seth turns around, his yellow eyes bright. His bags are packed on the cot.
“You’re leaving,” I say softly.
“Yup,” he says, zipping up his bag. The noise is loud.
“Why?” I ask, and it comes out as a whisper. My head feels clear for the first time in months, though I’m more scared to face his answer than I ever have been.
I was just in Dean’s arms, his breath on my face, and the words died in my throat.
“Because I am yearning for the glory of battle,” Seth says sarcastically. He stands, his bag in hand. “I can make it to the Blood Market by tomorrow.”
He tries to step around me, but I don’t let him. He sighs, and I meet his eyes.
“Why are you leaving?” I ask again, not looking away.
His jaw ticks. “You know why.”
I shake my head. “I don’t. Tell me.”
Seth tilts his head, anger slipping over his face. “Why should I, Charlotte? What good what it do? You’re in love with him,” he says.
I feel a strange lightness and heaviness fill my chest at the same time. Tears spring up in my eyes as I smile. Seth clenches his jaw.
“I’m not,” I say with a shrug. The words feel like a death. They also feel like freedom. “I thought I was, but I realized that someone else has done . . . something. Something to me.”
Seth blinks once. Twice.
“So I don’t care why you were leaving, Seth. I just care that you . . . don’t.”
There’s hesitation in his eyes as I step closer.
“You said you trust me now. So. Trust me.” I reach up, putting my fingers on his chin as I tilt him down to me. His shoulders tense at the touch, and my hands shake.
“I want you,” I whisper, echoing the words he said to me by the railing all those nights ago. The words that singed my bones and unraveled something deep inside my chest.
Something breaks loose in him then as he drops his bag, his warm hand cupping the back of my neck while the other arm snakes around my waist. His mouth crashes onto mine, feverish and hungry. My hands tangle in his hair, and his tongue parts my lips. I open to him, letting him devour me.
A growl rises from the back of his throat, and the thing he woke up in me in the woods roars in response. I lift my legs and wrap them around his waist, and he stumbles back to the cot. He lays me down, hovering above me as he skims a thumb over my bottom lip.
“See? Told you keeping it simple was the best play,” he whispers against my lips. I reach up and pull him down, fusing our mouths together again. I reach over and turn out the gas light, and the orange glow of the fire bleeds through the fabric of the tent.
His skin is on mine, his lips on my neck.
And for the first time, the thought of tomorrow is driven from my mind.
I wake up with a groggy, pleasant feeling in my bones. Sore, swollen lips and a new lightness in my chest.
I roll over, jumping out of the cot at the sight of the familiar figure standing in the doorway of my tent. Familiar, but not Seth.
“Morning,” Maddox says.
Chapter 36
I PULL A BLADE OUT FROM UNDER THE COT, BRANDISHING it in front of me. Maddox rolls her eyes and steps out of the tent. “Get your ass up,” she says.
I tear out after her. Maddox strides ahead of me, not bothering to look back as she heads toward the tent where we all met last night. Without a word, she steps inside.
“What the hell?” I yell, sprinting after her. I tear the flap open and rush in, my blade tight in my hand. Seth is inside, his hands raised as he steps between us. Ragnar and Pollux sit by the edge of the table, both dogs still as though they’re waiting for orders.
“Whoa, whoa. Char. Hold up.” He looks to Maddox. “I told you to wait,” he orders.
I look around the room. Harlow sits at the table, her eyes tired. Cam and a couple of the other men look down at the maps on the table, talking in low voices. Lucia paces toward the back of the tent, her eyes wild.
My eyes dart from Seth to Maddox as I lower my blade, but only slightly. Seth’s face is drawn, his expression dark as he moves closer to the table.
“What the hell is this?” I whisper. “What happened?”
“Abel is gone,” he says.
My stomach drops, an uneasiness creeping into my bones. “Like . . . he left already?”
Seth shakes his head. “No. His tent was empty this morning.”
My eyes dart to Maddox, a string of curses building in the back of my throat, but Seth steps in front of her. “It wasn’t her, Charlotte. She arrived with her crew this morning.”
“How the hell do we know that?” I bite out.
“Because it wasn’t just Abel,” Seth says gently. The sick feeling in my chest spreads, and I lower my blade. “Dean and Rielle are gone, too. It looks like they snatched as many people as they could while keeping quiet. Dozens were taken.”
The words hit me in the chest, and I stagger from the sheer force of them. I struggle for breath, forcing myself to take deep pulls of air as I sink into a chair. I want to ask why they’d risk trying to take more than just Abel. But I don’t, because I already know the answer, and if I hear it spoken aloud, I might throw up. The Vessels are hungry.
“Do we know where?” I ask finally.
“Thomas is following the tracks with a scouting party,” Lucia replies. I look to Harlow. Her eyeliner is smeared below her eyes, and her hands are fisted on the table.
I glare up at Maddox.
“And why the hell are we trusting her now? She tried to kill us. And Dean is Curseclean. He’s worth something to her,” I cry, shoving myself to my feet.
“You don’t know shit, Chosen One,” Maddox growls out. I lunge at her, and Seth steps between us, keeping me back.
“She wouldn’t hurt Rielle, Charlotte,” he shouts, his voice strong. I stop, looking at Maddox over his shoulder. There are dark circles under her eyes, and she wears a drawn expression I know well. It was the same one I had when Dean was gone.
Together, we were going to change the world. Rielle was talking about Maddox. I meet the Runner’s eyes, and she glares at me as Seth explains.
“I checked the channels to see if Rielle was there. I used her sign, and Maddox answered. She’s going to help, Charlotte. And she’s agreed to turn herself over to the Torch if we let her.”
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