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I will away the throbbing pain in my arm and the back of my head and gather up my nerves. “I’d never forgive you for dying on me. Don’t you fucking dare.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” He turns his head, and his hot breath meets mine.

“You should be.” I squirm in the sack, the rough fabric chafing my skin. “We have to get out of this thing. This is our chance.”

“There’s no point. It’s tied shut.” His calm voice scrapes over me, and I reconsider how capable I am of taking a life.

Water sloshes in the direction of the footsteps, and my fear liquifies. No shape, no walls to hold it back.

“PleaseKelt.”

“I don’t have anything to cut the sack.” His tall body shifts against mine. “Don’t worry, I have a plan for when he takes us out.”

“Ifhe ever does.”

“He will.”

“I’m not waiting here forhimto decide what’s next. He could drown us…or beat us. Kelter—” I swallow the terror rising in me. “He could rape us. Anything he wants.” I plant my feet and thrust backward, only managing to smack my head into the edge of the cart.

“He’s not going to—” Kelter goes quiet.

The lower half of our captor comes back into view through the small holes in the sack. He carries a bucket of water, spilling onto his leg as he walks.

I hide my face in Kelter’s neck and press myself against him, his heartbeat grounding me, but the tightness works its way around my chest, and I fall into a vision.

Black gloves grab my ankles. My lungs won’t let me scream. I grab on to Kelt, my nails ripping through the velvety skin of his arms in red lines as I’m pulled away. His thighs smash together around me, an attempt to keep me for himself. Fists strike the sack, hundreds at once, beating the blood and life right out of us, beating us into one. Bones crack and snap back together, crooked and jagged, marrow mixing with blood. Red tears paint his face so beautifully, his hazel eyes gleaming until the light flickers out, and I’m not sure which of us is gone.

I shake away the illusion, returning to reality, but it creeps back with such ease, blood and bones, fists and fear. It always comes back. I escape behind my eyelids, only finding winding pathways leading deeper into darkness.

I squeeze Kelt’s hand, the sweat on our palms blending.

“I got you.” He delivers the warm whisper to my ear and returns a squeeze.

“No you don’t, Kelt, unless you mean you plan to hold me through our gruesome death,” I hiss.

“I would.”

“That’s not helpful.” All I can do is focus on the tightness of his hand until the boulder lifts from my chest. The panic stays.

Our captor’s back is to us, so untroubled on the mountaintop, no fear of death. I long for ease like his—the looseness of his stance, the surety of his hands that lift away his shirt. He squats down, barely more than a shadow, only his back illuminated in the moonlight.

I can’t see clearly through the holes in the sack, forced to rely on the noises of the warm night and my violent imagination. A splash of his shirt in water. A flash of a knife in his hand. The scraping of steel on stone. Over and over, sharper and sharper, a skin-piercing, muscle-slicing, bone-chipping blade. He rolls his back, wrings out the shirt and slips it over his head, smothering a large tattoo—two dark towers.

This is it. He’s going to slice us to pieces. He’ll cut through this sack, and the last face I’ll see will be his before the knife goes straight through my middle, then splits my heart in two.

But death doesn’t come.

He slides his fingers back into the gloves, picks up the handle and drags the cart onward overmymountain, throughmyforest. They hold my secrets, my footsteps, my tears, and he can’t take those from me.

A sensation crawls over my body, thick and constricting. I’m flattened. No room for air. Only strangled notions. Fragments of thoughts. Broken feelings.

As soon as the tightness surrounds me, it’s gone, as though I imagined it.

“Kelter.” I rummage between our bodies for the security of his hand. He may not have answers, but he’s my certainty when all else falls away, like now…

The forest I know by heart is left behind, the red-barked trees and moss-covered boulders replaced with the obstructed view of jagged branches and a craggy path that promises deception and disaster. And somehow, it calls to me. The sudden assault of wind summons me, and the trails beg to be trodden.

Kelt’s fingers lace with mine, but it does nothing to stop my spiraling mind.Don’t just hold my hand, do something.Anything.