“Three . . . two . . .”
“We wanted to know what the Compound was,” I manage. The words come out hoarse and ragged from how much I’ve screamed. “I saw everything we were after downstairs.”
Forged Me looks pleased. “Good, good. This is progress. And when is your team coming?”
“Gage would have killed them by now, and if not, they should have been here yesterday.”
He lowers his weapon. “That was perfect, Gray. You see how this works? You give me what I want, and I don’t have to shoot anybody. Remember that. It will make tomorrow’s session go much smoother.” He holsters his weapon and hauls Emma to her feet. “Take him back to his cell, Maldoon.”
Harvey waits for them to leave. Then, rather than dragging me out, he opens a door that connects the two rooms.
“It’ll be your only chance,” he says, “if you want to say good-bye.”
I step through the doorway in a trance. Blaine’s just lying there and already the sobs are clawing their way up my throat. My hands are shaking, my legs unsteady. I sink to my knees beside my brother.
“I’m so sorry,” I manage. “I love you and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it—what I said in Pine Ridge. I never mean half the things I say and I just—” I pull him to my chest. “I don’t know why this happened,” I choke out. “We put each other first. Always. And that’s what I did. I put you first and now . . . and now . . .”
My throat’s grown too tight and thin, my breathing completely erratic. I rock with Blaine in my arms and cry into his hair and keep mumbling his name over and over like he might hear me and wake up. Like he’s just dreaming. Like I saw it all wrong.
Harvey steps into the room and says it’s time to go. I tell him I’ll go when I’m ready. He insists, and that’s when I lose it. I bolt up, shove him. When he advances again, I grab a wooden stool by the lip of the seat, holding the legs out to fend him off. As Harvey backs away, I notice the blood. Blaine’s blood. Coating my hands. Staining the front of my shirt. Splattered against the stool’s wood grain from when . . .
I throw the stool at the glass window. It bounces off like a toy. I pick it up and try again. And again. And again. But the window won’t break.
Still, I keep trying.
Even when it’s pointless.
Even though I’m powerless.
Even though Blaine won’t come back no matter how much I scream.
I give up eventually. Throat ragged, lungs heaving, I glance toward the doorway. Harvey is still standing with the guards, surveying me like I’m a rabid animal that needs to be put down.
They take me back to my cell.
Harvey slips something into my hand: a scrap of paper, folded so it’s no larger than the pad of my thumb.
“For tomorrow,” he whispers.
I slump to the floor, my head against the wall and my arms around my middle like I’m holding in my organs. Maybe I am. Maybe if I move I’ll fall apart and never come back together.
I feel small and helpless and scared and alone.
Like a child.
Like a little boy.
Blaine saved me when I was nine.
It was late fall and we were at the lake so he could practice setting snares for rabbits. Xavier Piltess had spent most of the summer teaching him how to hunt, and because I still believed I was a year younger than Blaine, I could only daydream about joining the lessons the following year. The bellflowers that usually carpeted the tall grass beyond the lake had transformed into brittle spokes with the changing temperatures. No purple petals remained. No green flushed their stalks. They were dirt brown and crunchy, like the leaves littering the forest floor.
“This is boring, Blaine. I wanna shoot your bow.” It was lying behind him, the quiver stocked.
“You can catch things without wasting an arrow, you know,” he said. “And it’s important to practice both.”
“Xavier said you can reuse arrows if your shot’s good enough.”
“When did you hear that?”
“When you guys came back yesterday. Xavier said not to worry about that shot you took that broke the shaft. Said when you get better you won’t waste an arrow or an ounce of meat, that’s how good you’ll be.”
Blaine kept his eyes on his work, trying to cover his embarrassment with a stern look.
“You’re a nosy rat,” he said.
“You’re a boring slug.”
“At least I know how to set a snare.”
“I’ll know next year, when Xavier teaches me.” I toed Blaine’s quiver, watching the arrows rock with the motion. “I hate waiting. It’s not fair that you get to do everything first. I’m just as big as you.” It was true. In size, we were shoulder to shoulder.
“Not in years. And stay away from my arrows.”
I nudged them harder and the quiver spiraled away from me, spilling its contents as it rolled down the hillside.
“Hey!” Blaine jumped to his feet. “Pick those up.”
“I’m not old enough to touch them, remember?”
Blaine folded his arms over his chest like he was our ma. “Gray, pick them up and quit acting like a baby.”
“I hate you,” I shouted. “You think you know everything.” I kicked over the snare he’d been working on for good measure and fled. He chased me.
I didn’t hold my lead long. Somewhere between the lake and the village, beneath the canopy of shedding trees, Blaine was practically breathing down my neck. He didn’t have to pick the path—around a thicket, over rocks, beneath low-hanging branches—only follow me. I hopped a fallen tree, but having judged it poorly, my back leg caught on the trunk and sent me tumbling. I hit earth hard. The wind went out of my lungs and I felt a terrible heat in my chest, not far below my collarbone.
I coughed and gulped for air, but none came. My shirt grew damp. Blood, I realized.