Page 85

“You look… new,” he says, failing to duck beneath a broken branch. “Like a different person.”

She smiles tightly. If only he knew.

“What happened to you?” he asks now. “After your Selection?”

She sighs. It feels like an eternity ago and yesterday, all at once. Either way, the days between then and now have been so altering that she doesn’t know where to begin, and doesn’t much want to. “It is a long story,” she tells him, and sees the way his eyes glaze with irritation. “And I owe you its tale, I know. But not now. For now, all you need know is that those with us are allies,” she says, hoping it is the truth. “They will not harm us. We are safer here in Terrsaw, but there are still threats.”

“What threats?” asks Hector, immediately searching the forest. “Who threatens us?”

“I will explain everything to you, I promise. Unlike others, I don’t hold a penchant for gate-keeping certain facts,” she says rather loudly, and rather on purpose.

“I would never accuse you of such,” Hector huffs, eyeing her warily.

“I assure you, you are better off here. What I said to Polson was true.”

Hector nods. “I’ve never known you to tell tales, Dawsyn. I believe you.”

Dawsyn smiles ruefully. “I am sorry we could not save your mother,” she says, for she knows how closely Hector had always guarded her. It must pain him now, to have been wrenched away from her.

“She… she is dead.”

Dawsyn stops on the path, eyes on her friend. Hector pauses alongside her, but neglects to meet her eye. He fails to hide the sorrow. He has always been inept at concealing his feelings.

She rests a careful hand on his shoulder, squeezing it. “I am sorry, Hector,” she says, knowing nothing better to say. There is nothing that could quench such an acute ache.

He shrugs – a useless attempt at bravado – but pats the hand that rests on his shoulder. Dawsyn wonders how long he has gone without any form of comfort.

“How?”

“Some illness,” he says. “I had never seen it before. It took her quickly.”

Dawsyn nods lamely. Some sickness bred by the cold, perhaps, or the food from the Drop.

Dawsyn pats Hector’s shoulder once more. “We should keep going,” she tells him, nudging him. “We must find shelter.”

“How far will we travel?” he queries, his face reddening with the heat. He still wears his many layers, and like Dawsyn, his body is unused to the warm temperature. The fertile season is reaching its peak. Neither of them has ever felt air so stifling, still and humid. Air that clings to their skin.

The mixed seem to struggle as well. Ahead, Ryon adjusts his shirt, wiping sweat from the back of his neck. Tasheem outright curses the sun every few minutes. The only one who seems unfazed by the temperature is the captain.

She walks with her many layers and weapons, finally at ease on ground she knows, one that doesn’t shift or change beneath her. “The Fallen Village is ahead,” she says casually, her breath steady while the others pant, taxed and irritable.

“What is the Fallen Village?” Hector questions as they clear the forest, rounding the bend in the path to see rolling green hills.

“Where our people lived, before they were taken,” Dawsyn tells him, nodding to the first sight of a ruin – a crumbling home, its roof long ago caved in.

The party traverses the Fallen Village slower than they ought to, but some sights are not to be ignored. Even the mixed tread lightly over the household items that have been left in their places and reclaimed by the wilderness. Their eyes do not stray from the sights of homes, black with ash, wagons crushed and splintered, now tangled in covetous vine and weed.

Dawsyn looks over her shoulder and finds that Gerrot has stopped.

The man stands before a ruined cottage, its door missing, the stone chimney strewn along the ground. There is a great hole in its thatched roof, where a tree now grows clean through, rising toward the sun.

Dawsyn sees the man’s eyes become wet, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

She doubles back, allowing the rest to walk on. “Gerrot?” she calls softly.

The man – widower to a medicine woman, prisoner of the Ledge, slave to the Glacian King – does not turn to acknowledge her. He swallows convulsively, eyes shining, and only blinks when a tear escapes, tracing the many lines of his face.

Dawsyn looks to the ruins before them. “This was your home?”