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Nina’s eyes flared, likely ignited by the instinct to run.

She still had that coiled look, her body tensed to spring. Years on the run had left marks everywhere on her. “You don’t look so different,” Patrick lied. “Wetter, perhaps. Should’ve cut your hair. Ain’t it the thing to do in hidin’?”

The flares went out. Her expression flattened, exactly as it had when she was twelve and she’d thought him an imbecile.

Her eyes flitted to the west.

“You won’t have much luck out that way,” he told her. “These hills aren’t safe. Trigger mines everywhere. You ever seen a mine blow a person apart?” He hollowed his cheeks to mimic detonation. “Not a pleasin’ sight.”

The shattered stare Nina gave him indicated she’d seen quite a few mines. Only war gave a person that look. “You buried mines around your own town?” She sounded disgusted.

“It’s wartime, darlin’. Never know what’s comin’ round those bends.” Patrick pointed to the place where the train tracks bent into the hills and disappeared. From this height, at this distance, all of Kenton Hill was just visible, fading into the encumbering night.

Small. Unassuming. Weak. That was likely how the town looked to her, how it looked to anyone from the outside.

Patrick turned to Nina once more. “Shall we?”

“When did you figure out I was the earth Charmer?” She didn’t move an inch, didn’t avoid his stare the way others did. Her glare burrowed deep and clung on, and Patrick was glad. It gave him permission to stare back.

So he stared for as long as he liked.

A smatter of remaining freckles. No yellow left in her ringlets. Her hair was limp and wet but still tightly curled, the color of spun gold. Her hands were clenched, her legs now long and distractingly feminine. All of her now shaped and carved into the valleys of a woman.

But some things she’d brought with her; the same discerning eyes, hazel-flecked and heavily shadowed in lashes. Her lips were fuller, but pressed into a familiar line when she scowled. She still spoke like bullets were loaded on her tongue, even if she’d learned to speak like a proper swank.

Patrick decided to tell her the truth. “I knew the day of our siphoning.”

And it was true. The second word got out that an earth Charmer had been siphoned, he’d been sure it was her. “No one spoke of anythin’ else on the train home—a Crafter girl turned into an Artisan?” He whistled. “As you and I both know, that almost never happens. And an earth Charmer, no less.”

She exhaled and looked back to the township below. “And what did people say when you told them?” she asked. “I bet you sung like a canary, didn’t you?”

There seemed little point in arguing. If she wanted to think of him in such a way, Patrick would let her. He buried his hands in his pockets. “Not many people take the word of a twelve-year-old seriously,” he said.

Nina scoffed, eyes wide. “You know, for the first few days in that school, I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. I was terrified someone would figure me out, someone would talk. But I never worried it would be you.”

Lord, those hazel eyes sank deep into a man’s skin.

“I had complete faith in you.” Her arms loosened a little, her shoulders fell. “Na?ve of me, wasn’t it?”

It wasn’t, but Patrick nodded anyway. “It was clever, changin’ your name.”

“It wasn’t my doing,” she said bluntly, though Patrick had figured this much on his own. It wasn’t a ruse a twelve-year-old alone could uphold.

There were endless things Patrick and Nina hadn’t considered in that courtyard, many of which he had since come to know. He didn’t question her further. He was all too aware of the tightening springs in her legs, the grit on her cheeks.

“You look a fuckin’ sight,” he said casually, then began down the hill without her, if only to drag his eyes away. “Come on. I got a place for you to wash yourself. There’s even a bed.”

“No dungeon?”

“Havin’ them remodeled,” he answered, grinning at the sound of her feet following. “The chains are all rusted up.”

The grass whispered around her footfalls as she walked, her breaths shortened. “What of the land mines?”

“No need to worry.” Patrick turned to walk backward. He tapped his temple twice. “Got them all memorized. Just walk where I walk and stay close.”

Her cheeks turned sallow and she quickened her pace.

Day waned, and weak sunlight turned the grass stalks flaxen.

Patrick led a complex and winding path through the deadly maze, unmarked by anything discernible.

They passed a sole apple tree, rounded a broken wagon.

He heard her breaths hitch with the decline of the slope, and for a moment he thought he felt her exhales hit the back of his neck. A lump rose in his throat.

“You’ve changed much more than I imagined,” she said without warning, the dirt paths just ahead.

Patrick thought it the most understated thing he’d ever heard. “That I have.”

“I read the papers,” she said. “Every week. When the rumors about the idium popped up, I wondered if you’d started them.”

Patrick scoffed quietly, darkly, though when he looked at Nina, her face was stricken. “Me?” he questioned. “No, Nina. We started them. You and me, the day we broke into that fuckin’ cellar.”

She blanched. “Those rumors started the first ripples of war.”

“That they did.”

“Yet I’m supposed to trust that you’ll see me safely out of the Trench?”

“You should trust no one, Nina” was his answer. “Not a single soul.”

In the distance, from the muddied alley of two brick town houses, came a swift-moving silhouette.

It bounded, barking madly, over a low-bearing fence and out in the fields toward us.

For a moment, it became sidetracked by a scent to the west. Only when Patrick whistled once, short and sharp, did the creature turn and resume its course.

Nina watched the dog leaping happily over grass stalks in every direction. She scowled as it circled Patrick’s feet manically.

“Hello, Isaiah,” Patrick said. The animal panted up at him a moment, then bounded away, running freely over the open land.

“There aren’t any land mines,” Nina said. “Are there?”

“There are.” Patrick grinned. “Nowhere nearby, though. That wouldn’t be safe, now, would it?” He found a stick in the grass and threw it toward Isaiah. “No dungeons, either.”

She made a noise of exasperation or sheer annoyance. It was difficult to tell. “Trust no one,” she muttered.

Lord, he’d hoped she hadn’t grown to be beautiful.

“We’re not villains, Nina,” Patrick said. “Just simple Crafters.”

“Simple Crafters who blow up schools,” she spat.

He sighed bitterly. “In our defense,” he said, “we told you we were comin’.”