I want to take her into my arms until both of us forget why we’re even here.
Dip the stack in salt water.
She shifts her weight, and I close my eyes.
Connect the wire to the terminals, copper on one end, silver on the other.
“There.” She breathes the word against my neck, and my eyes fly open. We turn six degrees to the right and see another rabbit hopping slowly along the edge of the clearing. Our fingers relax away from the wire, and the arrow streaks across the space to bury its tip into the rabbit’s side.
“Got it,” she says, and her lips brush the side of my neck.
All thoughts of assembling batteries fly out of my head.
I spin away from the rabbit, toss the bow onto the ground, and pull Rachel against me before she can open her mouth to tell me she was right—for once, poetry was the answer instead of math.
Kissing Rachel is like discovering a new element—one that turns my blood into lava and sends sparks shooting straight through every logical thought still lingering in my head. Forget math and poetry. Especially poetry. This is much more fun.
Her hands dig into my shoulders, anchoring me to her. Her lips are softer than her hands, but she kisses me like she’s trying to win an argument.
I decide to let her.
She clings to me, and my knees are suddenly unsteady. I push her against the closest tree so that I don’t do something supremely stupid like pull her down to the forest floor.
Not that there’s anyone in the Wasteland with us to see what we’re doing. For the first time in three weeks, we’re absolutely alone, and I don’t plan to waste the opportunity.
I lift my mouth from hers long enough to say, “You were right.” My voice sounds like I’ve just run the length of Lower Market at a hard sprint.
“I know,” she says, and the smug little smile at the corner of her mouth makes me want to do things I shouldn’t do, even though I know the probability of being interrupted is so insignificant, it defies mathematical calculation.
She lifts her lips toward me, and I kiss her like I never want to come up for air. A strange hum fills my head.
This is what I want. Just Rachel and the wide-open space of the Wasteland. Nobody asking my opinion. Questioning my decisions. Looking at me like somehow a nineteen-year-old boy can save them from their worst fears.
This is what I want, but it isn’t the life I’ve been given. It isn’t the path my choices—and the choices of others—have put me on, and until I see it through, until the one hundred fifty-seven survivors in my care are safe and the Commander has paid for his crimes with his life, I can’t turn back.
I can, however, wish with everything in me that things were different.
The rough bark behind Rachel scrapes against my knuckles as I fist my hands in the back of her cloak and tell myself I can’t do more than kiss her. Not now. Not here. Not while the ruins of our lives are a mere seventy yards away.
Not when she still screams herself hoarse every night in her sleep and refuses to discuss it with me when she wakes.
Her hands slide down my shoulders and over my chest until they come to rest on the Rowansmark device I wear strapped beneath my tunic every day. She scrapes her nail over the rope binding the button that sends the sonic frequency used to repel the Cursed One and pulls back to look at me.
“You tied down the button that sends the monster back to its lair.” She raises a brow. “That was smart.”
“I have my moments.”
“Yes, you do.” Slowly she pulls her hand away from the tech. “Are you sure the device is working again? I know what you said at the camp meeting, but maybe we should test it before we actually need it.”
“You want to call the Cursed One? A hundred yards from a group of survivors who might drop dead of heart failure if they have to deal with one more shock?”
“I’m just saying if I have to put my faith in something, I want to be sure it works.”
“I checked the device but didn’t see any reason for it to malfunction. I’m building a booster pack that will significantly increase the power of the tech’s sonic pulse. Once I’ve finished that, we should be able to use it without any trouble.” I lean closer, my eyes drifting toward her lips. “Give me a little more time, and it will be ready. You can put your faith in me, Rachel.”
Before she responds, I kiss her again, and this time I’m the one trying to win an argument. The bark scrapes my hands, the hum fills my head again, and I lose myself in her. She’s in every breath I take, and somehow I feel stronger than I have since I watched the last flame gutter into ash inside my city. When I pull away, she’s smiling.
“We’d better go back.” I shade my eyes as I peer up at the sun, just visible beyond the canopy of branches above us. Three hours until nightfall. Just enough time to return to camp, let Rachel run another sparring practice, and check on the tunnel’s progress.
She walks across the clearing to collect our catch. I grab her Switch from the forest floor as she pulls the arrow out of the rabbit. We work in companionable silence as I clean the arrow and she stuffs the rabbit into a burlap sack with the other small game she caught today.
I’m sliding the arrow back into its quiver when I realize the silence between us has extended into the surrounding Wasteland as well. The hush is weighted with tension as all of the little noises that usually fill the forest fade into nothing. There’s only one reason forest wildlife suddenly go silent: They’re hiding. And since they’d long since adjusted to our presence, they aren’t hiding from us.
Rachel meets my eyes as the realization hits us: We aren’t alone.
Handing over her Switch, I grab a low-hanging branch and swing into the tallest tree I can find. The bark scrapes against my skin as I dig my boots into the trunk and shinny my way toward the top. I climb nearly fifteen yards before I’m up high enough to see over the trees around me and into the Wasteland beyond.
For a moment, all looks peaceful. But then I catch movement to the east. The sharp glint of the sun glancing off metal. A flash of red.
Make that many flashes of red.
My heart pounds, and my fingers dig into the bark as a massive flock of crows explodes out of the trees twenty yards east of us and spirals into the sky, screaming their distress.
“Logan?”
A large group is traveling through the Wasteland, heading straight for Baalboden. I stare at the eastern trees for a moment, trying to count. Are we dealing with highwaymen? A battalion? Something worse?
The flashes of sun-kissed metal and red uniforms stretch as far east as I can see.
We aren’t dealing with highwaymen or a battalion.
We’re facing an entire army.
Chapter Five
RACHEL
We run hard, weapons slapping our thighs, underbrush clawing at us, while more birds spill out of the trees to the northeast. Whoever is moving toward the city is traveling fast.
A thorny bush catches my cloak, and I rip the leather free without pausing. Our people are as good as dead if we can’t reach them first.
Unless Logan already has a plan in place for something like this.
I leap a fallen branch and skid around a bend in the trail I’m hoping will get us to Baalboden’s gate before we get cut off. “If we don’t make it in time—”
“Drake knows what to do.” Logan grabs my hand when I slip on a moss-covered rock. “If anyone attacks, he’ll blow the gate.”
When we were trapped inside Baalboden’s Wall, surrounded on three sides by fire, we blew up the gate to escape death. How ironic to think we might have to blow it up again and seal ourselves back inside the Wall for the very same reason. Logan, Drake, and Thom spent days lacing explosives taken from the Commander’s personal supply and threading fuses into the gate’s rubble. Some are buried in the slabs of steel and stone that are piled across the opening. Some line the jagged walls on either side.
If Drake lights the fuse, no one will be able to get inside Baalboden.
No one will be able to get out, either.
“They’ll be trapped,” I say as we near the rough seam of land that joins the overgrown Wasteland with the flat stretch of ground between the forest and Baalboden’s western Wall.
“They’ll leave through the tunnel.”
“But if you aren’t there to protect them from the Cursed One—”
“You and I will go to the northern Wasteland, just beyond the city’s perimeter. The tech’s signal is strong enough to protect them even if I’m not underground.” Logan’s voice is breathless. Mine is too. And we still have fifty yards between us and the gate.
I fall silent as we reach the edge of the Wasteland, directly opposite the western corner of the Wall. I strain to hear something. Birds. Footsteps. The metallic kiss of a sword leaving its sheath.
Nothing.
It’s as if the army traveling through the Wasteland has disappeared.
Or as if they’re lying in wait. Assessing their target. Watching for the perfect moment to attack.
I figure that perfect moment is going to be the instant Logan and I step out of the tree line.
A twig snaps somewhere behind us, a loud crack that has Logan reaching for his sword even as I spin around, searching for movement.
Everything is still.
“They must be getting into position,” Logan breathes against my ear. “We have to go.”
I turn back around and stare at the heap of ruined stone that marks the entrance to the city. Gulping in deep breaths of air, I wipe the sweat from my face and nod.
The gate is fifty yards ahead of us, facing west into the Wasteland. We can move out of the trees, race across the flat land separating us from the corner of the Wall, and then run along it until we reach the entrance. A movement catches my eye, and I see Thom’s wide shoulders beside Drake’s smaller frame as they pace along the top of the Wall beside the opening, guarding the entrance from predators they didn’t really think would come.
“Let’s go,” I say, and run out of the trees, Logan on my heels.
We’ve covered half the distance between the tree line and the Wall when the entire western edge of the Wasteland explodes into motion. Wave after wave of soldiers dressed in red and gold pour out of the trees, swords drawn, and charge the city.
“Blow the gate!” Logan yells.
For a moment, I think Drake will do it. He and Thom disappear off the top of the Wall, and we wait for an explosion that never comes. Instead, Willow vaults over the pile of rubble, arrows already flying from her bow. Thom, Drake, Quinn, Ian, Frankie, and five others rush after her, swords gleaming in the dying rays of the sun, and create a small perimeter around the entrance.
“No!” I scream as I run for the gate. They’re going to die. All of them. At least twenty soldiers are already closing in, with hundreds more behind them. Trying to fight them off is suicide.
“Blow the gate.” Logan runs beside me, his sword out. “Blow the gate!”
The first wave of soldiers crashes into the tiny band of survivors and the scream of metal against metal shivers through the air. Two of our men go down immediately. Quinn, weaponless, spins with terrifying speed, swiping the legs out from underneath soldiers and kicking their weapons away. Willow’s arrows slam into the attackers, though her aim seems to be off, as most of those who get hit keep rushing forward. Thom grips a sword in one beefy hand and a thick, jagged board in the other. He swings both like he’s felling a tree. Ian and Frankie stand back- to-back, their swords flashing in the sunlight.
They’re fighting with skill and courage. The small opening into the city works to our advantage as the fighting between our people and theirs creates a barrier the other soldiers can’t penetrate or flank. But already our people are showing signs of exhaustion. And it doesn’t matter how many soldiers go down, more just keep coming.
We’re twenty yards from the gate when we reach the army’s fringe. I swing the weighted end of my Switch into a soldier’s knee and leap over him as he falls. Logan slams into another man, and their swords clash. We lunge, swing, hack, and parry with the Wall at our backs, and slowly gain ground toward the gate.
We’re still ten yards away and tiring fast when a group of soldiers breaks through the perimeter as another one of our men falls to the ground. Ignoring those fighting around them, the soldiers crawl over the gate’s wreckage and swarm inside Baalboden.
“Drake!” Logan’s voice, furious and desperate, rises above the sound of battle. “Do it before it’s too late!”
“Not without you two,” Drake yells, his dark eyes lit with a fervor that turns his mild, ordinary face into something dangerous as he swings his sword into every red-and-gold uniform he can see.
I take a sharp blow to my shoulder and spin into the side of the Wall. The stone scrapes my skin as my breath leaves my body. Pain rips a path from my shoulder to my jaw. I turn my face to look at my attacker as he whips his sword toward my neck.
Instantly, I drop to the ground, feeling the sword slice the air above me as I fall. My Switch is useless now. Too long and too heavy to do any damage unless I can gain some leverage. With my back to the Wall and my attacker directly in front of me coming in for another blow, leverage isn’t one of my options.
I dive forward, slam into his knees, and reach for my knife when he staggers back a step. He raises his sword. I press one hand into the ground for balance and gather myself. His sword flashes through the air, and I roll to the left, my knife hand slashing as I go.
The sword whistles past my head. I leap to my feet, and he lunges toward me on legs suddenly too weak to hold him. I follow his gaze as he stares down at the deep cut on his thigh, at the blood gushing out of his artery with every beat of his heart. Before he falls to his knees, I’m already gone. Scooping up my Switch, I battle to cross the last few yards between me and the gate.
Willow stands on top of the rubble, firing arrows at the soldiers who’ve climbed into the city. Quinn holds the ground below his sister, disarming those who try to reach her. He fights with lethal precision. Like a machine whose sole function is to reduce grown men to nothing.
Thom, Drake, Ian, and the two remaining Baalboden men aren’t faring as well. They’re backed against the Wall, cut off on all sides by soldiers, and the space between them and the teeth of the soldier’s swords is steadily shrinking. Even as I watch, a soldier plunges his sword into the chest of the man beside Thom, and the man drops to the ground.
I slam my Switch into a soldier standing between me and Drake, then slice my knife across his neck as he turns. Blood spurts, and I stagger back as it arcs toward me. Logan leaps over the fallen man, his sword dripping, and together we shove our way to Drake’s side.
Soldiers press around us from all sides, herding us toward the city’s entrance.
I hope Logan planned for this, too.
“Get inside,” he says, and our men scramble across the rubble while Willow fires two more arrows into the soldiers surrounding us.
“Time to go,” she says, and leaps into the city.
Logan climbs after her, already yelling orders to whoever is on the other side of the gate to kill the soldiers who broke through or get out of the way and let him do it himself. In seconds, he’s over the other side.
I grab for a handhold in the pile of steel and stone, but someone behind me wraps a fist around my hair and yanks me back. The soldier holding my hair pulls me against him, trapping my Switch with his sword arm in a movement so fluid and fast, I don’t even register it until I’m already at a disadvantage. The soldiers around me step back, and a sudden silence falls across the field.
“Rachel Adams!”
My name, cut into bite-size syllables, echoes through the air, coated in fury. I know that voice. Terror and rage battle for control over my body. My limbs are too heavy. My head is too light. A distant roaring fills my ears as the soldier holding me pivots toward the Wasteland, and I see Commander Jason Chase, our former leader and the man who singlehand
edly destroyed my family and my world, riding toward me on a large brown horse.
Chapter Six
RACHEL
The Commander glares at me with palpable hatred.
My pulse thunders against my ears as I glare right back.
A slew of Baalboden guards dressed in crisp blue military jackets with shining silver buttons step out of the Wasteland and form ranks behind their leader.
We aren’t facing one army, we’re facing two.
Whose army is the Commander borrowing? I rack my brain, running through what I know of the southeastern city-states. All allied with the Commander. All places my father refused to bring me for fear one of the Commander’s many spies would mention the presence of Jared Adams’s daughter when I was supposed to be meekly learning domestic arts at home in Baalboden.
Red-and-gold uniforms. Horses. Carrington? Schoensville? I can’t remember which of them uses red uniforms—a tremendously stupid color to wear while traveling through the Wasteland since it offers zero camouflage—and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the Commander is coming closer, and I’m still pinned.
I need to be free of this soldier before the Commander reaches me, or I’m dead. I’m not about to die without taking the Commander with me.
“You took something of mine,” he says, his dark eyes burning while the thick scar that bisects his face pulls at his mouth.
The dull ache of missing Oliver and Dad throbs beneath my breastbone, and then slowly sinks into the icy silence that bloomed inside of me while I was lying on my father’s grave.
The Commander can’t hurt me if I refuse to feel it.
I let the memory of Dad and Oliver dissolve my terror and straighten my spine. Raising my chin, I tighten my grip on my knife while I say, “You took something of mine, too.”
His laugh is a bitter poison spilling from his lips. “I suppose you think we’re even now, you foolish girl.”
Soldiers step aside as the horse comes closer. I have forty yards before he reaches me. Maybe less. My knife is a reassuring weight in my left hand. I lower my arm, and the soldier holding me tightens his grip. I flip my knife blade around and aim for what I hope is the artery in his thigh.
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