Page 153

A twig broke beneath my boot.
Everyone froze.
A flashlight beam I hadn’t seen until then swept in our direction from the riverbank. It was too far away to spot us clearly—but close enough to catch our silhouettes in the darkness.
I held my breath.
The beam passed.
Then again, this time slower.
Will ducked and pulled me down behind a rise, just as the flashlight stopped.
And lingered.
Then it swept away, accompanied by a muttered curse from a soldier and the bark of a distant dog.
We didn’t move from that spot for a quarter hour. When we did, it was only in a crawl, half sliding through frozen leaves until the terrain shielded us again. I couldn’t put weight on my shoulder, so Will had to help me half crawl, half limp. It might’ve been the most painful, pitiful thing I’d ever done. By the time we reached the river, I was shaking—not from fear or cold alone, but from the weight of all of it.
We crouched behind a low rise, maybe fifteen yards from the water. The Rába stretched in front of us like a strip of black oil, slow-moving and deceptively calm. Across the water, the other bank was barely visible in the gray night.
We hadn’t seen nor heard any dogs, not yet, but I could hear the river lapping at the shore and the creak of boots on gravel.
The brush that lined the riverbank had long since given up pretending to be alive. It clawed at us with dead branches, brittle and sharp, and offered little in return but half-hearted cover and the smell of cold mud.
We’d found a hollow near the water’s edge—low enough to stay out of sight but high enough to watch. Our breath puffed in small clouds but remained hidden beneath the canopy of mist drifting up from the river.
The Rába wasn’t wide, but it looked endless, a black ribbon slicing through a land we didn’t belong in anymore.
There was no bridge, no ferry, just water and hope.
And patrols.
Two of them were sweeping the shoreline now—one on our side, one on the far. Their flashlights arced, as if boredom had made them sloppy, but that wouldn’t last. Complacency never did when you worked for monsters.
We crouched low, completely still. Even Eszter didn’t fidget, pressed close between Sparrow and Egret like she knew the wrong breath could give them all away.
I shivered, part cold, part pain, part fear I didn’t have words for.
Then I noticed Egret shifting beside me.
It wasn’t much, just a small movement, a subtle lean forward.
His eyes weren’t on the river.
They were on Farkas.
More specifically, on the box Farkas carried.
It was tucked under the scientist’s coat now, held against his chest like a mother’s babe. Egret’s gaze locked onto it like a predator sizing up a most delicious prey. He didn’t move, didn’t say a word, just stared with his jaw set and eyes unreadable.
Farkas noticed.
He turned his head, and for the first time since we’d left the barn, he looked scared—not of the soldiers on the banks, not at the water or the chance of death—but of us.
Of Egret.
He clutched the box tighter, adjusted his coat, pulled the flap over it with deliberate care, as if covering a wound.