“Because Liming helped us.”
He looks at his hands. “What if she isn’t the abused little girl you think she is? She isn’t . . . like you, if that’s what this is about. She wasn’t abandoned by her parents. She doesn’t seem to want to come with us. What if she’s out there marking a trail for her family to follow?”
“If the point was just to get hold of the Mantis or food, then why are we still alive?”
Howl shakes his head. “We don’t know what they want.”
“We can’t abandon her.” She might not be like me, but I can’t believe June is a cold-blooded killer. “Reds will find her, or if she ends up back with that zoo of a family . . . We are her best chance of survival.”
“True. But right now, she might be the biggest block between us and survival.” Howl closes his eyes. “Look. I know I haven’t been completely open with you and that it’s been hard, but I know something isn’t right here.”
“I’m not leaving her. We aren’t Outsiders, and I’m not going to act like one.” Tendrils of anger lace through the words, and by the way Howl flinches, I know he feels it.
We stare at each other. Finally, he bows his head. “We’ll take turns watching every night. She can’t prepare our food or ever be alone with the packs. She can never see you take Mantis. And you’re still Wenli, violently in love with a man way out of your league.”
The halfhearted joke doesn’t quite take away the anger stinging in my veins, though I try to reply in kind. “You wish. I don’t even know how to act in love. Back when that was an option . . . oh, wait. It never was.” My star brand almost looks like a normal scar under all the dirt. “I have a target painted on my forehead, remember?”
“Let’s start by pretending that we’re friends. You can tell yourself that I’m Tai-ge and I’ll pretend you are my little sister.”
I grit my teeth, Tai-ge’s name rushing through me like a sickness. That knot is still waiting to be untied, pain loosed. Something I’m not ever planning to do. “Little sister?” I cough, trying to shake the gravel out of my voice. “I’m the one who suggested that in the first place.”
Howl shrugs. “Wouldn’t have worked with the Wood Rats. June won’t know the difference, though. She’s only twelve.”
“Fourteen, actually.”
The words have both of us on our feet, dull knife in Howl’s hands, poised two inches from June’s freckled nose. Her voice is lower than I expected.
She doesn’t flinch as the knife twitches between Howl’s fingers. He puts it away.
“I found these on the ground over there. I think they’re still good,” she says, holding out two apples.
“Talking now?” Howl takes the apples, looking them over.
Her green eyes go back down, lips pressed together.
I reach out to touch her shoulder and ask, “Are there more up in the tree?”
But June’s human moment is over. All I get is a shrug.
CHAPTER 13
THAT NIGHT WE STRING OUR packs up in a tree out of animal reach, spreading our sleeping bags out atop a rock. For some reason, sleep won’t come, Howl’s worried expression lodged firmly in my brain.
When June looks safely asleep, I slide down to where he’s sitting, watching the darkness all around us.
“I’m sorry for getting angry,” I say, worried the words won’t come out, stuck like sugary candy in the back of my throat.
Howl looks at me for the first time since the argument, surprise flitting across his face. “Is she asleep up there?”
“As far as I can tell. She couldn’t get into the packs without making any noise, could she?” All of the sudden I know I did the wrong thing, that she is already rifling through our few possessions. That we’ll be dead before morning.
Howl’s mouth opens in a huge circle of a yawn, hands occupied with rubbing his eyes instead of covering it. “I hope not.”
“I’m sorry that things are so . . . wrong. I want to help June, but I’m willing to take precautions.”
Leaning his head back against a tree, Howl doesn’t speak for a moment, fingers tracing patterns in the bark. “Can we be on the same side again?” he finally whispers, shifting toward me, accidentally planting his hand on top of mine. He pulls his hand back, not speaking for a moment as his fingers flex at his side. “Sorry. Not us against June. Just us.”
“Yes.” I ignore the flutter in my stomach as he looks at me, the hand that touched mine balled into a fist. “But with conditions.”
Howl leans in, whispering low enough that June won’t be able to hear us, but so close his breath tickles against my cheek. “You want me to trust her? I want her to be what she says she is too. Or . . . what Liming said she is.” He glances up at her sleeping bag, peeking over the edge of the rock. “And one point in her favor: I think we can both agree that she isn’t infected.”
“Unless she has a stash of Mantis somewhere.” He sets his hand down again, so close our fingers are touching.
I don’t mind. It’s funny, because we’ve been much closer than our hands touching, but this feels different. As if it’s on purpose, and without the cover of trying to help me or pretend for Cas and Tian, Howl doesn’t seem quite so sure of himself.
I like it. Howl a little unsure. His hand creeping up onto mine. But it seems a bit sudden, almost purposeful. As if he’s trying to distract me.
I pull my hand into my lap. “My conditions have nothing to do with her,” I inform him. “I need you to come clean.”
“Have I led you wrong yet? Trust me a little longer.”
I shake my head. “I have no idea what we are doing or why. You call Seconds ‘Reds’ like old women in the Third Quarter who have had enough of washing uniforms. You aren’t acting like a First, or like you’re even from the City. You shouldn’t even know how to turn on a stove, much less how to track down Wood Rats and dig up tubers. Or see a head of blond hair and not flinch. Up until a few weeks ago, light hair meant the enemy. Dead men with hair like June’s, strung up on our walls as a warning against spies.”
Howl leans away from me, rubbing his eyes again. “Fair enough.”
I wait for him to go on, but he just sits, staring for a few minutes. Thinking.
“Is that the end of this conversation?” I ask. “Trust goes two ways, and if you can’t give it, then I’ll leave.” Even saying it out loud sends prickles down my arms. “I’ll find your mountain all by myself.”
He shakes his head. “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s a reason Liming didn’t just send June out on her own to find the Mountain. You have to have a guide to even find an entrance. And someone to vouch for you.”
I wait.
Howl closes his eyes, his hands tying knots in his hair. “I’ve lived Outside before.”
That night down in the wine cellar, I wouldn’t have believed it. But now that I’ve seen him climb trees and find food, there isn’t really another explanation that would make sense.
“I came out with some Reds on patrol a few years ago and we were attacked.” Howl’s eyes are on the ground, words so slow and careful it’s as if he’s machine. “We didn’t expect a full-blown raiding party right outside the City walls. One of the rebels recognized me and decided to take me back to the Mountain instead of shooting me. For ransom.”
Rebels? I want to laugh, but I don’t want to wake June. What is there to rebel against? Sometimes down in the Third Quarter there was rebellious talk. Asking for shorter hours, better food. But it never amounted to much more than a day or two of missed shifts and avoiding the Watch. No one wants to get thrown Outside. No Seconds to protect you from Kamar or Firsts to make Mantis for your infected kids. Outside is worse than being worked to death.
Only, if there is no Kamar . . . Howl said I wouldn’t understand. That I hadn’t seen enough yet.
He’s quiet for a long time, thinking the words through. “If you had known the army was fighting rebels instead of far-off, foreign Kamar, how would you have felt about your place in society? The star they burned into your hand?”