Page 2

“What’s going on in here?”

Father barks, shoving through the doors of the barn.

I step back into the shadows outside the halo of torch light, my bloody hands clasped behind me, out of view.

“We were getting the body off my horse,”

Liam says gruffly. Which doesn’t explain why we barred the door.

Thankfully, Father doesn’t push for more information as he crouches near Farron’s waxen face. He examines him with a sneer.

A terrifying thought hits me. What if he touches him? Farron’s still-warm skin would be proof that he wasn’t dead when Liam arrived. It would beg more questions—which could lead to the discovery of the worst secret of all.

I tried to save Farron.

Little burrs of anxiety barb and hook under my skin. In the heat of the moment, I couldn’t see past saving a life or preventing a war. But I realize now how our actions will be perceived: treason—a crime punishable by death. A very painful death.

My gaze slides back to Farron. Not only is his shirt ripped open but rolls of bandages lie on the ground beside his chest. Not far away is the small bag of poppy extract. Sweat breaks out above my upper lip.

Father seems to stare for an eternity, something I can’t read written on his face. “Excellent,”

he whispers.

“This him?”

Gerald asks, kicking up pieces of hay as he strides into the barn. With a bow and quiver of arrows, and multiple knives strapped to his thick chest, the leader of the Maska clan looks every bit our fiercest fighter. But despite his capabilities, a stench of neglect follows him, wafting into the small space. A common symptom of the clansmen forced to raise themselves as children. He scowls at the lifeless man he had hoped to murder tonight. “He doesn’t look dead to me.”

Drawing his blade, he stabs Farron precisely through the heart.

“Stop!”

I cry, unable to hold back.

Gerald chuckles under his breath but complies, giving me his attention. He stands, eyes sliding over me with a deep curiosity. It’s most unpleasant.

Wiping his knife on his pants, he turns to Father. “You know there’s no way this wood-whittling boy-child killed Farron. His voice goes hard. “We need another—”

“No. It’s done,”

Father says with the ghost of a smile on his lips, as if he still can’t believe Farron is dead. “Bring the body. I’ll meet you at the house.”

I refuse to look anywhere but at the ground as Liam and Gerald do as they’re told. But the moment their footsteps disappear, I scurry to get the bandages back into my medical bag, hiding my crimes. It leaves me breathless. A tear drips down my cheek. But more than the sadness welling up inside me, I’m angry. Overwhelmed. Every part of what happened tonight was senseless.

And now, we’re all going to pay.

I plunge my bloody hands into a barrel of rainwater and wash them, forcefully scrubbing the skin with my nails. It doesn’t make me feel better. Nothing will make this better. My legs ache to run. To weave through the forest until I’m past Hanook’s border. Past the enemy and the violent vagabonds waiting to rob me or stab me through the heart for fun. Past the bomb-tainted badlands. To somewhere, anywhere—

I pause, suddenly knowing where to go.

Carefully, I select four knives from the weapons chest in the corner of the barn, then slip into the darkness and run, following the dirt trails to the edge of the forest. To distract myself. Alone.

After throwing my first blade, I sense something, a presence.

Slowly, I reach for another knife and pause with my ear tilted toward the evergreens just outside the ravine I’m standing in. The tops of the trees sway gently in the spring breeze, nothing but black smudges against the dark, star-speckled sky. New leaves and wild grass rustle around me as my lungs burn from holding my breath.

My hearing picks up nothing out of the ordinary. But if the Kingsland retaliates and breaks through our line of soldiers, what would an assault sound like? Would they come quietly like a creeping fog, methodically slitting the throats of every person they encounter? Or would they arrive in rage, a crashing wave of death for stabbing and taking their leader?

My eyes close as Farron’s face, twisted in the pain of asphyxiation, flashes in my mind. They’ll know he’s dead soon enough.

I tighten my grip on the knife until my knuckles ache, relishing the strength that comes from brandishing a weapon—even if I can only do this in secret. The need to control something—anything—is palpable. If it can’t be my life, then an inanimate object will have to do.

Two men on horses trot by on the path above me, and I squat lower into the gully. One of them holds a torch to search the shadows, allowing me to see the braided tails of their stallions. Clan soldiers, patrolling.

Minutes pass as I wait for them to amble farther away. Then I unleash my weapon into the air with all my frustration. Anger.

Helplessness.

It lands with a satisfying thunk in the tree twenty feet ahead. I grab another knife, flip it so the handle is pointed to the sky with the blade out, then throw, letting it whip through the night before I stand back up. Thud. My hand goes to my pocket for the switchblade.

“Do you have night vision like a wolf or something?”

I jump and spin, my hand flying back, ready to throw.

In the faint light of the moon, Liam’s hands rise to show he’s unarmed. “It’s me.”

His voice is rich and deep and seems to reverberate too loudly through the forest. He steps down through the tall grass into the ravine. Our spot.

I lower my knife and grab my chest with my free hand. “Sorry. I’m on edge.”

A quiet laugh shudders out of me.

“We all are.”

Perhaps I should ask what happened with Father and Farron, but I really don’t want to know.

Liam stops in front of me, but he’s standing closer than ever before.

Right. Everything’s changed.

A thrill as if I’ve tumbled over a bluff zips through my chest. We’re betrothed.

Liam and I met the way all the children in the clans meet—at morning academy.

Freia and I remember him as the one who preferred whittling away on a stick with his knife to learning sword fighting with the rest of the boys.

As teens, he and my brother grew close, so I saw Liam more, and occasionally he’d give me one of the wooden figurines he was working on.

But it wasn’t until his gifts turned from wooden carvings to textbooks he’d get secretly from traders that we became friends.

Being around him was easy.

We shared a lot of the same hopes and frustrations—mostly, that the violence against our clans would end.

Soon, I was dragging him here to explain some of the restricted things my father wouldn’t tell me about, making him my source for clan news.

It was his idea to show me how to throw a knife.

His features blur in the dark, but there’s no missing the lock of black hair that perpetually falls over his forehead.

I’m tempted to push it back from his blue eyes.

He wouldn’t stop me, that much I know.

Even as friends, there was always a certain energy between us, and I’ve caught him looking at me more times than I can count.

Still, I don’t know how to do this—make the jump from friends to something so much more.

And unfortunately, being forbidden from pursuing a romantic relationship—until minutes ago—has left me severely unprepared for this moment.

I decide to start by looking at him. Studying him the way he so often does me.

The low light doesn’t allow for much discovery, but it highlights the boldest parts of Liam.

The ledges of his cheekbones.

His broad-shouldered frame.

He towers over me with strength in every line of his body, honed from long days of logging and building houses by hand.

Rugged is the word I’ve used to describe him to Freia.

Ruggedly handsome is what she’d correct me with.

“I’m sorry. I had to get away,” I say.

“Ah. That’s why you’re here wounding trees in the dark.”

Though I can’t see his eyes, I know he’s smiling.

It brings a blush to my cheeks, causing me to dip my head. I tuck a lock of long, blond hair behind my ear. “Well, it’s not like I can do it in the light.”

Not without getting an earful for setting a bad example to the other women in the clans. Woman are to be protected. Leave the fighting to the men.

It’s a sentiment I used to stand by.

With the extra danger women face of enslavement or unspeakable cruelty if captured by the Kingsland, it made sense we were kept away from the battlefield.

Besides, we had our own important work, like doing the healing, cooking, and cleaning, the birthing and raising of the children.

But I’ve since realized that this prevents our healers from treating the wounded on the battlefield, and it leaves us women unprepared to defend ourselves if the Kingsland breaks through our boundaries and attacks.

Though this has never happened, that could easily change. Especially now.

“You’re really very good at throwing knives. It’s scary.”

“That’s because I had a very good teacher.”

Although when Liam taught me, he never stood this close.

“The student has surpassed the teacher. You could join the front lines with a throw like that.”

There’s pride in his deep voice.

I almost snort as I imagine the fit Father would have. “Blending in might be a problem. I don’t exactly look like a soldier.”

He laughs softly. “I’ve noticed.”

I go still as a tingling warmth blooms in my stomach. And there it is. The change. The shift between us. I don’t know what to do with it.

He clears his throat at the awkward silence. “Actually, I take back what I said about the front lines. I don’t want you anywhere near there.”

“I don’t want to fight any more than you do. But . . . I could help the wounded on the battlefield. I could make a difference.”

He groans playfully, sensing the warning shot of a familiar argument.

“Oh, come on,”

I say. “You know it’s senseless that our soldiers are only trained to set a bone or tie a tourniquet, while us women healers aren’t allowed to leave our territory. The injured shouldn’t have to be dragged all the way home before getting proper care.”

“It’s that way because we’re protecting you,”

he says softly. “We value our women. Our families. It’s what makes us different from the Kingsland—that we’re decent human beings who don’t use fear and violence to control people. And I’m not sorry about that.”

My shoulders fall. He may not be, but I am. Sometimes. I mean, I do want safety, but at what cost? For our men to die when they’re injured?

“Maybe when I’m Saraf, it’ll be less dangerous and I can make some changes to the rules.”

I fight a grin. “Oh, yeah? You’d let women heal outside our territory? What if I said I’d also like to read a novel?”

One of the best things about Liam is that he doesn’t condemn my love of reading or my fascination with what the world looked like before the bombs fell.

He tips his head to the side. “I don’t see how one novel could hurt.”

My smile grows. “Just one?”

“Is there more than one?”

I chuckle, and he laughs. But my smile wilts with the cold reality that although his optimism for the future is beautiful, it’s also decades away. By the time Father dies and Liam becomes the clan leader who will be the ultimate authority over all the clans, an entire generation of people will have been raised with the same distrust of even the most benign parts of the old world. Including the parts that could expand our knowledge of healing and save lives.

Liam shifts. “You okay?”

“Yeah,”

I say a little too quickly, not wanting to bring the mood down. My gaze darts to the trees around us as they rustle with a gust of wind.

“Are we not going to talk about it?”

he asks softly.

It. Farron’s body flashes in my mind again, and I swallow hard. I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it. I’ve seen people die before, but this—this was different. Farron was assassinated by people I love, and no matter how I turn it over in my head, I can’t make it okay. I hate what the Kingsland is forcing us to do to survive.

“Us getting married will be a . . . big change.”

I look up at him, surprised.

“And I didn’t actually win the contest to be Saraf. I guess I just want to know . . .”

“I’m happy it’s you, Liam,”

I blurt. “There’s no other clan leader I would have wanted.”

He exhales raggedly. Then his calloused fingers find my face.

“Oh,”

I say, jumping a little at the touch I didn’t see coming.

He pauses, and when I don’t pull away, he draws me slowly to him for a kiss. My stomach flutters as his warm lips land a little off-center from mine.

It’s over as quickly as it began. I lean back and nod. “Thank you for that.”

“And thank you,”

he says, voice unsteady.

My thoughts jumble as I try to think of something else to say. Was that his first kiss too?

“I’ll get better at it,”

he whispers.

“No, it was fine. Perfectly fine.”

He doesn’t speak right away. “I can do better than fine.”

My head bows. I’m out of ways to convince him he didn’t mess up.

“I should go,”

Liam says, voice quiet, almost regretful. “Most of my clansmen have already left, but I wanted to find you first.”

As he turns to leave, I grip his arm. “Wait.”

If word gets out that Liam is responsible for Farron’s death, the Kingsland will target him. If captured, Liam will be tortured beyond anything even Gerald can imagine, then killed. “Maybe you should stay. I’m sure we have enough men protecting the border should the Kingsland retaliate. Besides, you’re not a fighter, and you hate this as much as—”

“I’m not a coward.”

I drop his arm. “I know that.”

Liam may not be a born and bred fighter, but he rightfully won his spot to become leader of Cohdor. It was no easy feat to prove himself an expert in carpentry, and he completed multiple physical feats to show his strength and bravery.

“I couldn’t kill Farron because he wouldn’t fight back. He hit the ground and just lay there as if he was waiting for me to extend a hand to help him to his feet. Like, how was this their ruthless leader? I thought we’d made a mistake.”

“Oh?”

The image he paints is disturbing. Why wouldn’t Farron defend himself?

Why? Because he’s a deplorable, gutless man who’s nothing without the barbarians he controls.

“But it won’t happen again,”

Liam promises. “You don’t have to worry. I know how to throw a knife and swing an ax, and I know what I have to do, especially now that I have someone to fight for.”

He squeezes my hand, then brings it to his mouth for a kiss.

I’m frozen as his words sink in. I don’t know what bothers me more: that he thinks he can take on Farron’s army, the most ruthless enemy we’ll ever face, and come out unscathed.

Or that, because of me, he’s now willing to do what he’s never done before—kill.