“You don’t think so? I don’t know anyone who could have made it back here alone the way you did. Not in the face of what was chasing you. Not through land as dangerous as this. You talk about what I can manage, but I don’t think I am anywhere near as capable as you are.”
“Then maybe it’s a good thing we found each other. What do you think? An Elf and a human? Do you think there’s any kind of chance?”
“I think there’s always a chance.”
He kissed her, and she laid her head against his shoulder. They stayed like that as the storm raged, and he found himself thinking of something he hadn’t told her. When the once-men had stormed the bridge and it had seemed as if they were using Simralin and the other Elves as shields, he’d had to make a choice, one based almost solely on instinct. He had believed that what he was seeing was an illusion, that Simralin and the others weren’t real. But he hadn’t known for certain. Even so, he had ordered them fired upon, a death sentence if he was wrong.
And if he had been wrong, he would have been forced to live with the knowledge that he had killed the woman he loved.
It was a stark reality, even in a world where reality was never anything but hard-edged and brutal. He had chosen the lives of the many over the lives of the few. But the truth he was forced to confront in retrospect was darker still. If he had it to do over again, even knowing that what he was seeing wasn’t an illusion, he would make the same choice.
He thought suddenly that he should tell her this, that she deserved to know. But he couldn’t make himself. Besides, didn’t she already know how it was with him? Didn’t she understand him well enough by now to realize how it was always likely to be? He considered several explanations and rejected them all. He didn’t want to talk about such things with her. The world was a dark enough place; he didn’t need to speak of the particulars of that darkness.
He stayed silent instead, holding her, taking advantage of moments that might not come again.
CANDLE HAD GONE BACK with Cheney to join the others, hunkering down in the AV as the fury of the wind increased, thinking through what Hawk had told her. Maybe he was right. Maybe her instincts were just taking a rest, and she needed to give them time to recover. She knew she hadn’t been the same since that boy with the ruined face had kidnapped her. Though she hadn’t told anyone, she was still haunted by nightmares of being taken, of being forcibly separated from her family. She still dreamed of what it had been like. She still dreamed, as well, of his screams as whatever it was that had been stalking them had caught up to him.
She didn’t want to hear screaming like that ever again.
Glancing out the window, she saw Hawk walk by, head down, shoulders hunched, heading for the rear of the column as the caravan closed ranks and prepared to wait out the storm. Something about him bothered her, but she couldn’t decide what it was. A little while later, Angel Perez stopped to look in on them. Candle huddled against Owl, a silent presence, as the Knight of the Word spoke a few words of encouragement and departed. The little girl was still thinking about Hawk when she saw him coming back again, appearing unexpectedly out of the haze. She hesitated, and then for reasons she didn’t fully understand, she bolted from the vehicle and went after him. She wasn’t sure what she intended to do, only that she needed to reach him. It was an impulsive and mysterious act, tied to what she was feeling, though not in any way she could have explained.
Owl’s protestations trailed after her, but she didn’t slow. The wind gusted in stinging swipes, blowing clouds of dirt into her face. She squinted, lowered her head, and ran as best she could. But Hawk was striding ahead determinedly, and her calls to him were swallowed up in the wind’s booming howl.
She had almost lost him when he stopped and stared between the encircling vehicles and wagons at something moving in the haze. She caught sight of a familiar figure slipping through a gap between the wagons, there one moment and gone the next, moving out into the empty landscape. Was that really Tessa? She watched Hawk hesitate and then rush after the other girl. She called to him once more, but he didn’t hear. A second later, he had disappeared.
Almost instantly, she knew that something was wrong. She could feel it the way she used to. Just like that, she could tell. Her heart began to pound, her nerves caught fire, and in the blink of an eye her instincts kicked back into life, returned from wherever they had been hiding. She didn’t need to be told what was happening. She didn’t need to second-guess what she was feeling. She recognized it for what it was.
She knew, too, with a certainty that was frightening, that Hawk was in trouble.
Come back, Hawk! Don’t go!