Page 57

57

Thomas

L eaving the barn felt like peeling off armor.

The wood had become almost familiar. The dusty beams, the creak of the old hayloft ladder, even the smell of straw and mold—somehow, it all felt like safety. It was absurd, really. We’d slept on the floor, eaten cold rations, listened to rats scurry across the rafters. And yet, stepping through that wide slat of a door into the freezing dark was like being cast out of the last sanctuary we’d know.

The air was colder than it had any right to be, pressing tight against my skin and biting at every seam in my coat. The stars were cloaked in gauze-thick cloud, and the only light we had came from the faint shimmer of frost on the grass. Every step forward felt like breaking something sacred.

Will stayed by my side, his hand near my back but never quite touching unless I faltered. I didn’t want to lean on him, didn’t want to need to, but every jolt of pain in my shoulder, every crunch of my boots over half-frozen dirt, reminded me that my independence was an illusion.

We’d been walking maybe twenty minutes—slipping along fence lines and half-eroded livestock trails—when the first pair of headlights crested the hill behind us.

“Down,” Will hissed.

We dropped where we stood, our bodies low in the ditch, brambles scraping my cheek and tugging at the hem of my coat. Sparrow pressed Eszter into the earth, shielding the girl with her body. Egret flattened out behind a dead tree stump, his eyes flicking toward the road.

The car rolled past, a black sedan, its engine barely above a whisper. It moved slowly— too slowly.

“Keep still,” I breathed, unsure if anyone even heard me.

And then a door opened.

Not all the way. Just a creak.

I braced myself to run.

Then it shut again, followed by the faint crunch of tires warring with gravel. The car accelerated and disappeared over the hill.

We waited another few minutes before moving. No one said anything.

Eszter was curled inside Sparrow’s coat, shivering from cold or fright—or both.

“Let’s keep moving,” Will whispered, then added the most unnecessary words spoken that night. “No flashlights.”

We pressed deeper into the fields, avoiding the main roads.

The ground turned ugly fast—wet with thaw, riddled with ditches and collapsed fence posts half hidden in the dark. At one point, Egret stumbled on a root and nearly took Sparrow and Eszter with him. Sparrow caught herself on her knee, whispering a curse and brushing mud off her coat. Eszter clung tighter, her face pale and drawn.

We passed a small apple orchard. The trees were mostly skeletons now, their gnarled limbs reaching skyward like mourners. Farkas limped more with every mile, clutching the box under his coat like it might vanish if he let it go. He wheezed, breath tight in his chest. Will offered to carry the box for a while, but Farkas refused.

“I made it,” he said, hoarse. “I’ll carry it.”

“No one’s questioning your worth,” Will replied, but he let it drop.

I gritted my teeth with every step, the ache in my shoulder climbing toward agony. My vision blurred once, and I almost went down. Will caught me by the elbow.

“I’m fine,” I said automatically.

“You’re not,” he said. “But I’m here.”

I didn’t reply, just nodded and kept moving.

Somewhere near the halfway mark, we crested a narrow rise and heard voices.

Russian voices.

We dropped again, this time into a thicket of dead brush that tore at our clothes and pricked our skin. The sounds came from across a shallow valley—two men speaking in low, clipped tones. I didn’t catch all the words, but I understood enough.

“ . . . orders to patrol the crossing . . .”

“ . . . if anyone’s spotted . . . shoot first.”

Shoot first?

The words echoed louder in my mind than they had in the valley.

Sparrow pressed Eszter’s head down into her coat. Will’s hand found mine in the dark. I squeezed it.

We waited.

The men moved on, their flashlights carving brief windows of light through the trees before vanishing again. When we moved this time, we were slower, more cautious, with the kind of silence that made your ears ring.

Then—snap.

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.

Egret’s and Farkas’s eyes met across the narrow hollow we huddled in, and something passed between them. It wasn’t a threat, not quite; but something raw and unspoken, a warning, maybe, or a promise, or both?

I could feel it like static on my skin.

Will’s hand brushed mine briefly—just enough to ground me again.

A flashlight beam swept closer, dancing across the water not twenty feet from where we hid.

None of us breathed.

Not until it passed, and the voices faded again into the hush of the trees.

I looked at Egret. His face was stone now, unreadable again. Whatever he was thinking, he’d buried it.

Farkas shifted away, pressing himself back into the hollow as if the mud might protect him.

And that was when it hit me—not just the weight of the box, or the mission, or the danger waiting across the river—but the fact that trust, real trust, was dissolving between us like ice in the current. All it would take was one poor decision, one hard shove in the wrong direction, and this team—this family, fragile and blood-worn—would break.

I closed my eyes for a moment, just a moment, and tried to imagine a world where we all made it across.

Only darkness stared back.