*
DAPHNE AND I RIDE north until the mountains begin their steep decline. I don’t know why she’s come with me, but I don’t ask. The truth is, I want her to stay. It’s better than being alone.
At night we make camp against a landslide overlooking Glasscaster. From here we have a clear view of the Witch Camps and the sinister gray-green smog that blankets the bright lights of the Black Lanes.
The city spills out into the distance, impossibly big. My family is somewhere inside those walls. There are as many places they could be as there are stars in the sky. It’s almost funny. I never worried about finding them in the mountains, but in the city, I’m overcome by the feeling that they are truly lost.
The crack of a branch behind me makes me turn, and I blink as a red-haired girl with her arms crossed comes into focus.
“You should get some sleep,” Daphne says.
Her saying so reminds me of how exhausted I am.
My feet drag as we walk back to where the palomino is tied, and I can barely keep my eyes open as I build a small fire. The camp is secure, we haven’t seen any other tracks since noon, but that doesn’t stop me from walking the area with Brax.
When I return, Daphne’s sitting beside the flames, twisting her neck from side to side, trying to place each rattle, yelp, or whir of the forest’s song. The hardest part of a new place is the not knowing.
“Did you eat?” I ask her, looking down at the charred jackrabbit I left to cool on a stone beside the fire. She stares at it, then lunges forward and digs in like she’s famished.
I blink, realizing that she’s been waiting for my permission. Daphne has never lived anywhere someone wasn’t telling her what to do, when.
After a while she stops and wipes her mouth clean. Her shoulders sag and she won’t look me in the eye. At an owl’s hunting cry, she jolts to a stand. When I don’t move, she sits.
“When I first came to the Garden, I thought there was a monster outside,” I say. “I swore I heard it stomping down the streets.”
She smirks. “What was it?”
“Music,” I say. “From the Black Lanes. It took me a while to figure it out.”
She gives a small laugh.
“Maybe he … the old Driver can help you find your cousins,” she says as she scoots inside the bedroll from Lorcan’s saddle. I notice how careful she is not to say the word father.
I shake my head, trying not to think about how we left him with nothing—no horse, no supplies.
“He seems decent,” she adds.
“He’s not.”
It never mattered what kind of man he was before, but now all I can feel is betrayal when I think of him.
“Well at least he didn’t sell you to the Garden.”
I face her, surprised, and find her picking the leaves out of her hair. My feet tuck under Brax’s belly while he happily tears apart a fish he pulled from a nearby stream.
“I thought that’s what you wanted. A nice home. People to look after you.”
She shrugs. “Maybe I want something else.”
She tilts her head up then, and I remember the night before auction when Buttercup turned her away.
“Someone who’ll fight for you,” I say.
She nods. “Who doesn’t care who you are.”
The crickets have begun to sing, but Daphne doesn’t even flinch. I wonder if things would have been different if Kiran hadn’t known, or cared, who I was.
“I bet it was hard giving you up.” I don’t know why I say this. I don’t know anything about her father.
“My birth mother was my father’s forever wife,” she says quietly. “He kept her and sent me away. I lied when I said I was his favorite. He was capable of love, he just didn’t love me.”
Daphne once told me how rare it was to become a forever wife. I don’t think she ever really thought it would happen to her. In that moment, I feel worse for her than I ever have.
Images of Nina on the auction stage plague my dreams, and when I can’t sleep anymore I sit on one of the logs by our fire and stare ahead, watching how the leaves that dance in the breeze are sucked into the flames and twist into tiny glowing flowers. Lilies, sweetpeas, daphnes. They flash gold for just an instant, just long enough to catch your eye, before burning to ash and disappearing forever.
*
DAPHNE AGREES TO KEEP watch while I sleep through the early morning, and when I wake, she’s braiding strands of tall grass beside me. Rubbing my eyes, I squint over at her work and a grin spreads across my face.
“What?” she says, lowering her hands.
“That’s it!” I count out the days in my head since the last auction. Trader’s Day is only four nights away; all those who made enough in the farmer’s markets in the outliers will be there. If the girls have been captured, they won’t be sold until the auction in two weeks. I’ll be able to find them by then.
I hope.
I’m going to make jewelry, like the kind I used to trade with Lorcan. I don’t have the booth fees to get past the city-gate guard, but if I can make enough pieces to sell, maybe one of the other merchants will let me go with them if I promise them all the profits. If not, I’ll have to steal the credits—and right now, I don’t care if it’s honest or not, I’ll do it. I look enough like a Driver; I’ve got a horse. If I muddy up my face enough, they won’t be able to tell I’m a girl.
I’ll get them out the same way Daphne left. We’ll make them all look like they’ve got the plague.
For the rest of the day I teach Daphne how to make simple snares from whittled branches. When the first catches a rabbit, I show her how to clean the kill and scour the pelt of flesh and hair, and then soften the skin with the animal’s brains.
She vomits twice and then tells me to do it on my own. So much for being helpful.
By sundown we’re cooking rabbit stew in Lorcan’s pot, and I’m cutting the hide into long strips that can be braided into a necklace. I tell Daphne we’ll need to gather precious stones tomorrow, and she only snorts and says, “We’ll see.”
It helps to have a purpose, but my thoughts keep pulling back to my family. I don’t know how long they’ve been in the city or what’s happened to them. I don’t know if they’re still together or if they’ve been pulled apart. Nina could be at one of the dorms preparing to come to the Garden. Tam could have already started treatments to become a Pip. Thoughts of Salma working the Black Lanes make me ill.
I think of Kiran, too, much as I wish I could shut him out.
Just after nightfall, Brax rises abruptly and sprints south. His instincts are just as good to me as the security fence at the Garden. There is no doubt in my mind that someone’s broken our perimeter.
Daphne and I are on our feet in an instant, stamping out the fire and preparing to escape. As soon as she’s mounted, I’m kicking through our tracks and cursing the Drivers that took back the bow. I only have twin knives from Lorcan’s pack.
I keep my ears trained after Brax, but hear nothing. It starts to worry me; he would’ve given me a signal if Trackers were coming—a growl or a bark. He knows the difference between what’s dangerous and what’s not, and his silence worries me. Daphne mounts the horse, reaching for my hand to pull me up, but I keep staring in the direction Brax ran off.
“What are you doing?” Daphne whispers. “Let’s go!”
“I’m going to go check it out,” I say. “It might be an animal.”
“A bear?” Her green eyes are as round as saucers.
I doubt it, but I’m not sure. I don’t tell her this though; the last thing I need if we have to move fast is a panicked Daphne.
“Be ready,” I tell her, and with a knife in one hand and a palm-sized rock in the other, I creep around the boulders guarding our southern side.
I can make out the outline of a horse by the water. If it’s a Tracker, he’s come alone or his friends are somewhere nearby. Silently, I move on, keeping low and moving fast.
It doesn’t take me long to find our intruder. The night shadows leave only a silhouette; a figure crouched low over an animal lying still in the space between two trees. From here I can hear Brax panting. My blood runs cold—whoever it is has hurt my wolf.
Without another thought I launch the stone with full force.
A hand snaps up. Even in the fading light he catches it.
There’s only one person who can do that.
“Kir … Varick?” A moment later I remind myself that we’re not friends or anything else and steel myself for a fight.
He’s marching through the mounds of rotting leaves towards me, a bow in one hand, the arrows slung over his shoulder. I’m still not used to seeing his face so clean. Brax the traitor trots behind him, tongue lolling out of his mouth.