CHAPTER 20
DAPHNE’S WAITING WITH THE horses. Her face is drawn tight, and even after just these couple days, her freckles are beginning to return. They make her look younger. She stands beside a fallen tree trunk, biting her nails and keeping her eyes on Lorcan.
“Is your Driver alive?” she asks.
“He’s not mine,” I say, still burning. “Why would you say that?” I untie Dell’s reins from the tree limb, knowing she’ll find her way the hundred paces back to him.
Daphne’s arms drop. “So he’s not coming?”
“No he’s not coming,” I snap. “We don’t need him.”
Lorcan lifts his brows at me, and I glare back.
“Is it true?” I ask him. There’s still a chance that he’ll say no, and maybe then at least one thing will be righted.
“Is what true?” interrupts Daphne.
Lorcan stands with one hand on the withers of the palomino, his stare deep enough to go right through me. I wish I had a shield so I could stop him from trying to read my mind. I don’t want him to wonder what I’m thinking. I don’t want him to know how I feel. I don’t want to know him at all.
He inhales slowly.
“Mine.” It’s just a breath. I doubt Daphne even hears him.
“Stop saying that!” I cover my eyes with the heels of my hands.
Kiran is gone; the second his people showed up he turned me loose like I wasn’t anything to him. And now Lorcan’s trying to claim me as kin. It’s like these men think I’m their property. It’s like they don’t know me at all.
A hand covers my shoulder. I shake it free, burning Lorcan with my glare.
“I’m not yours.” My voice is trembling. “You aren’t my family. You don’t even know what family is. You weren’t there when we were hungry. You weren’t there when she got sick.”
I lean closer, but he makes no attempt to back down.
“I couldn’t heal her!” I shove him, but he only rocks back on his heels. “Metea and me, we did everything we could, but it wasn’t enough. So I had to end it. I had to watch her die. I had to dig her grave. If you had been there you could have brought your Driver doc and saved her. But you weren’t. You let me kill her.”
My words are muffled into his jacket, and his wiry arms close like a vice around my shoulders. I lost my ma four years ago, but it feels fresh, like Lorcan just ripped that wound right back open. I hear a sound in his throat. Halfway between a choke and a sob. And I’m crying too. I want this nightmare to be over, but it just goes on and on.
“If I was yours you would have come for me at the Garden.” I push away from him, and he slumps forward like I’ve punched him in the gut.
“Where are they?” I demand. “Where is what’s left of my family?”
Very slowly he lifts his hand and points north.
“They wouldn’t have moved that way,” I say. “That’s the direction of Glasscaster.”
He nods somberly.
“You said they moved, not that they were taken!” My knees are feeling even weaker.
Lorcan shakes his head and points again towards the city.
Daphne moves behind me. “What if they weren’t captured?”
I turn on her, and she jumps back a step.
“That’s stupid. They wouldn’t do that. Salma knows better.”
Lorcan’s chest rises and falls in a slow breath.
“No,” I say.
Daphne is smoothing down the front of her dress. “Remember Rose and Lily? Both of them were from the outliers. Their fathers turned them in when they were of age for auction. Maybe your family did the same.”
The look on Lorcan’s face tells me it’s true.
I don’t believe it. I can’t. But it must be true because everything I’m afraid of is. My mind flashes to Salma, to all the times she resented our home in the mountains. Without me to stop her, would she have gone to the city? Looked for work? Turned Nina in to the Garden?
Everything I know is shattering apart.
“Clover.” Daphne’s voice is as gentle as I’ve ever heard it. “Where else would they go?”
She stands before me, red hair matted and wild, face smeared with muck, and for the first time maybe ever, I’m really, really glad she’s here.
Lorcan hands me the reins to his horse. I don’t say good-bye. I don’t even look at him. By the time Daphne and I are in the saddle, he’s gone.