Page 41 of To Cage a Wild Bird (Divided Fates #1)

“You’re what ?” My voice came out a strangled whisper, and I stumbled before catching myself on the tunnel wall.

I couldn’t have heard Vale right—wouldn’t get my hopes up until he confirmed I hadn’t hallucinated.

“I’m going to help you with your plan to get out of here,” Vale repeated, easing back to walk beside me. “And go with you

to the North Settlement.”

“You do remember the part where you’re a guard, right?” I asked, incredulity woven through my words. “In case you’ve forgotten.

You want to escape with a bunch of inmates?”

I didn’t give him time to answer, instead turning my accusatory glare over my shoulder and onto August. “And you. We’re supposed

to be working together. But you conveniently failed to mention that you planned on bringing a guard along. Didn’t you think

that was an important detail? Do the others know about this?”

“They all know about Vale,” August answered, leaning heavily against Jed and limping along after us. “You need to understand

that I would never do anything to jeopardize Yara or Kit or Momo. When you first arrived, I didn’t trust you. You’re a bounty hunter , Raven. And more than that, your desperation to save Jed made you a liability. How did I know you wouldn’t turn us in for

your own gain if it would help Jed?”

My mouth fell open, but no words came out. August was right. It would have been foolish of him to tell me anything. Before

I’d gotten to know them, I probably would’ve turned them in if it had meant gaining some sort of leverage that I could use

to escape.

Silently, I turned to Vale, seeking an explanation on his part.

“I asked August not to tell you,” Vale admitted. “I didn’t know if I could bring myself to help you when I thought you were a rebel. And by the time I knew you weren’t... I didn’t think you’d be able to trust a guard. It wasn’t until I got to know you that I was willing to risk the truth.”

His instincts had been right. I would’ve spat in his face if he’d tried to convince me he wanted to help me when I’d first

run into him at Endlock.

I shook my head. “So what is the truth, then? You told me you’re not with the Collective, and you just want to help people. That extends to helping inmates

escape?” I paused. “Or does this have something to do with you being indebted to Eris? The night we met, you said you owed

him. Is this you paying your debt?”

“You met him before Endlock?” Jed hissed behind me.

I cringed. “At Vern’s. I’ll explain later.”

“I didn’t say I owed him,” Vale answered. “I said I needed to repay him.”

I stared, eyes narrowed. “We don’t have time to argue over semantics, Vale.”

“He killed my father.”

My heart clenched in my chest at the raw grief in his eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, unable to stop myself from reaching for him. But he stepped ahead of me again, and I clenched

my jaw to keep the hurt from showing on my face.

I knew what it was like to lose a parent, though. Knew how hard it was to share your grief. Even still, his words swirled

through my mind, the puzzle pieces working to click into place. If Eris had killed my parents, I’d hold no love for the Collective, either.

“Were you at Vern’s to kill Eris?”

I whipped around, surprised at Jed for asking the question I’d been too afraid to voice.

Vale paused for a moment and then nodded. “I was, but he never showed. I had to come back to Endlock the next day.”

“Do you still plan on going after him?” I whispered.

Vale didn’t hesitate. “I won’t pass up an opportunity to kill him.

A life for a life.” None of us had an answer for that, and a long silence ensued before Vale spoke again.

“As for helping you... I never wanted to be a guard. I was raised on the idea that everything the Council did was for the greater good—at least that’s what I heard from my mom.

But we had a rough relationship and hardly anything in common, and as a teenager, all I wanted to do was rebel against her. ”

He let out a harsh laugh. “My mom got fed up and asked my dad to talk some sense into me. Only instead, he told me he was

a part of the Collective. He’d been hiding it from my mom for years and asked me to keep it a secret from her, too.”

I gasped, turning to look at Jed. Vale was the child of a rebel, just like us.

“My dad—” Vale broke off for a moment and cleared his throat, the glow from his flashlight bouncing off the tunnel walls.

“We were close. I wanted to be just like him, really. But he didn’t want me anywhere near the Collective. Said it was too

dangerous to join the cell in the Upper Sector, and he wanted me to keep my head down instead. Look for small ways I could

help Dividium citizens without being a part of the Collective.

“About a year and a half ago, I was given the chance to become a guard,” Vale continued, eyes far away, living in the past.

“I didn’t want to do it, but I knew it was what was right—it was the kind of opportunity my dad had told me to look out for.

I knew I could use my status as someone from the Upper Sector to work my way up through the ranks and have access to conversations

that other guards wouldn’t.”

I shook my head. I could hardly keep myself from insulting Larch for the few minutes I had to be in his presence, let alone

imagine going undercover and having to pretend I agreed with what went on at Endlock.

“How did you go from wanting access to high-level conversations to helping a group of inmates escape?” I asked.

“We knew each other,” August supplied, out of breath behind me. “Before Endlock.”

I inhaled sharply, jerking to a stop in the middle of the tunnel. Jed slammed into my back, nearly knocking me to the ground, but Vale grabbed my wrist, pulling me into him and holding me upright.

His golden eyes scanned my face, but I could only shake my head, my mouth slightly parted.

They’d known each other.

I’d been so careful in my conversations with Vale, trying not to give too much away, and they’d known each other.

Jed barked out a harsh laugh behind me, and I turned to find him shoving his hair back from his face, his forehead wrinkling

in the way it did when he had a lot to say but didn’t know how to put it into words.

I knew how he felt.

But I also knew that this was another thing Vale and August had kept to themselves until they were sure they could trust me.

“I told you I was a doctor at a Middle Sector health center.” August cleared his throat. “Vale volunteered there for a while

before I was arrested. We became friends.”

I scrubbed at my eyes, frustrated that I hadn’t managed to piece any of this together. Of course, they’d known each other

before Endlock. Vale called August by his nickname. They whispered together like old friends. Because they were . And I remembered how Vale’s face had lost all color when he’d first laid eyes on August’s injury.

“I stopped volunteering after August was arrested,” Vale said, and he gripped his flashlight tighter, his knuckles whitening.

“I couldn’t walk into the medical center, let alone stomach a career in medicine, while I knew he could die any day at Endlock.”

I softened. If I hadn’t followed Jed straight to Endlock, there’s no way I’d have been able to go about normal life without

him back home, either. I put a hand on Vale’s shoulder, and this time, he leaned into my touch.

There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but I knew we had to be running out of time, and my focus had to be on our escape.

“How did you find the tunnels?” I asked, waving my flashlight toward the earthen walls surrounding us.

“We knew they existed,” Vale said, some memory turning his lips up on one side and making my stomach flutter.

“But I wasn’t able to find any maps to tell us how to access them.

August and I started taking turns searching the grounds during hunts when he was a target or when I was on duty.

It felt like a ridiculous task at the time, given how vast the grounds are.

Miles to cover. But one day, I fell through the opening to the pit we just came from. ”

A small smile tugged at my lips at the image.

“I followed the length of this section of the tunnel, and it led me to another entrance near the Blood Tree.”

“Vale showed me,” August chimed in. “And we started using the tunnels during hunts, when we could. We don’t use them all the

time—we’re too worried about drawing attention to them. But we’ve used them to help Momo, Kit, and Yara survive a lot of their

hunts. When we use them, we split up at the beginning of the hunt and then meet up at a rendezvous point and access the tunnels

together from there. That day you saved Momo... a hunter must have caught up to him before he got to the meeting point.”

August shook his head, his eyes haunted.

“We believe there’s another segment of tunnels that leads completely off the grounds,” Vale whispered.

“Then I don’t get it,” I said. “Why even entertain my idea of escaping through the fence if you knew this place existed?”

I paused, and then another thought dawned on me, and I looked at Vale. “You risked letting me bring the wire cutters onto

the hunting grounds to try to cut through the fence.”

Vale grimaced. “That was before I knew the warden had gotten permission to electrify the fence.”

“We wanted to see if the fence was a viable option because we haven’t been able to access the other tunnels,” August said.

“Or even find them. If there was another escape route, we would have taken it.”

So that was what we had to do, then. Find a way to access the tunnels. It sounded simple enough, but Vale and August had already

spent months trying.

I blew out a long breath. “So you know everything, then?” I asked Vale.

Vale shared a glance with August, then nodded.

I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. So much time wasted, all because my efforts to gain their

trust hadn’t been enough.

But it was pointless dwelling on what I couldn’t change, especially when we had a path forward.