Page 3

The cart comes to a halt again. Hands drag us to the ground with a painful drop. Face down, pine needles poke through the fabric into my mouth. A slice of knife at the drawstring near our feet lets in a rush of icy air.

Death. Next comes death.

“See you tomorrow,” our captor says, then pushes us headfirst into a tunnel.

We careen down and down and around, too shocked to scream. Cool, pitch darkness consumes us. My stomach leaps tomy throat, and I dig my fingers into any bit of Kelter I can reach, not releasing my nails from his skin until we shoot out of the tunnel and tumble across a rough floor, crashing into a stone wall and racking up uncountable scrapes and bruises.

Kelt doesn’t say a word—typical of him. He works his feet into the loosened opening of the sack, pedaling them up and down, forcing our exit into existence, then wriggles out, leaving me behind in the dark.

He grabs my ankles and pulls, the sack dragging along with me. Laughing softly, as ifhe’sthe one walking the fine line between sanity and madness, he lifts me upright, grabs the bottom edge of the sack and works it up my body. He hesitates, holding it suspended over my head, as though reconsidering my freedom.

Chapter

Two

The room is a perfect cube, six sides of rough gray stone. The kind of room you never get a chance to describe as the last place you ever saw. Because you die there.

Moonlight beams through the opening in the ceiling, but despite the glow, the room embraces darkness, seeking it out and spreading it. Shadows with no apparent source skitter along the walls, and frigid air surrounds me. It smells like damp wood and the end of time, but tastes like the past—stagnant and stale and stuck.

Lovely.Where the fuck are we?

The crumpled sack on the floor haunts me. We went from one prison to another. But I’m not staying here. I’m not waiting forthe man to return, to beat or rape or torture and kill us in this death trap of a room.

I reach for my backpack and realize it’s still in my forest, leaning against a tree near where Kelter and I stopped for a drink. That was right before the sack. We’d been hiking for hours, like any other afternoon with me mapping the expanse of the forest and Kelter scanning for predators at my side. But not abductors. No one else goes into my forest. Or didn’t. Until the madman. And the boy.

I begin to search, as limited as it’ll be in a ten-by-ten-foot room. There has to be a way out. I scan the walls. Baskets, woven from untrimmed twigs, moist and rotting, discarded on the stone-carved shelves. A toilet and a sink, both strangely made of stone instead of porcelain, chipped and bathed in a grayish grime. Three wooden wheels, their broken spokes jutting out like splintery threats, softened by blankets of gray spider webs, heavy with what must be hundreds of years of dust.

That’s it. That’s the decor of my death.

Unless I can escape.

“Aren’t you going to help?” I ask Kelter, my numb fingers groping the underside of the shelf.

“No.”

I sweep away dust and crunchy insect carcasses from the corner, finding no way out, no crack to hint at a door, and turn to him. “You’re just going to stand there while I get us out of here?”

He knocks a single knuckle against the wall, a resigned look on his face. “There’s no way out.”

“So damn optimistic of you.”

“Realistic,” he says with a gentle nod of acceptance.

“Fine. You wait for death, and I’ll escape.”

I explore crevices and chase shadows. I climb shelves, roll wheels and press my ear against every inch of the cold wall. No trapdoor. No hidden knob or handle. A tunnel too steep to climband a metal grate out of reach. The room is as much a prison as my mind, plagued with visions of death. Every day. Over and over.

I’ll never make it out of either.

I lean against a bare wall, icy stone and defeat rippling through me. I’m stiff and hurt all over. My favorite jade green pants are ruined, the corduroy dirty and ripped from crawling on stone. I shiver, my bloodied white T-shirt not cutting it. It had been warm in my forest, even as night crept in. I’ve never felt the air this cold.

“Are we even still in Caldera?” I ask, poking at the fleshy edges of a cut on my arm and cleaning out the dirt with an even dirtier nail. Caldera—my home, my realm, one huge city where my rented room above the coffee shop is waiting for me. It’s only a little bigger than this room, but it’s all I need.

Kelter doesn’t move from his resting place on the opposite wall, arms crossed and knee bent, the sole of one shoe flat to the stone behind him. His loose blue jeans fared as well as my pants, and the deep blue of his fitted V-neck shirt only hides some of the dirt and blood, making him look rugged and rough and tough—which he’s not. He takes in my appearance with discerning eyes, as I do his.

Even now, trapped with no way out, he has that same air about him as always—arrogant and sweet at once. Twenty-three years old, like me, a man of few words and little spine, often unseen and forgotten, but loyal and loving and not at all bad to look at. He’s confident in his tall body, owning his tan skin, his movements as slick as a lion’s prowl. It all comes together like a masterpiece, even his ears that stick out far enough that I get the urge to press them down and see what happens when I let go.

“You look cold,” he says, pulling me from my musings and not bothering to weigh in on our whereabouts.