Her father began to speak, but she shook her head.
“You don’t get to talk,” she said. “Remember?” She paused. “I was going to have X drown you in this lake, but I love him too much to make him do that. So I’m going to let you keep running and hiding and ice fishing or whatever, although—honestly?—it seems like you’re really bad at it.” Zoe looked at the auger, the fishing rods, the holes. Her father had caught nothing at all. “I never want to see you again, Dad,” she said. “I mean it. And that’s the last time I’m ever gonna call you ‘Dad.’ I’m going to try to forgive you—not because you deserve it, but because I don’t want you to mess up my heart the way Stan messed up yours. I’m going to try to remember the good stuff. There was some good stuff.” Zoe stopped, and stood. “Okay, that’s enough. I’m done talking to you. I’m gonna go and … I’m gonna go and have a life. I’m going to have a life with X and Mom and Jonah. X and I won’t give up until we figure out how. It’s going to be a good life—and you won’t get to watch.”
Zoe went to X. He put his arm around her shoulder, pulled her to his chest, and spoke to her quietly.
Ripper approached Zoe’s father.
“I would advise you to run, little rabbit,” she said. “X may not be hungry for your soul, but my own stomach is rumbling.”
Zoe’s father got to his feet. He was sobbing, but he must have known Zoe wouldn’t listen to another word.
He scrambled into the woods without looking back. The trees quaked and shed some snow, then settled once more.
X had felt no joy when Zoe said she would make a life with him, for he knew how unlikely it was. He had let her father go free, so the lords would almost certainly haul him back to the Lowlands. He suspected Dervish was lurking in the forest even now. He could picture him gouging the bark of a tree with his nails, barely able to contain his glee.
X listened. He waited. He looked to Zoe and Ripper, and saw that they were waiting, too. But everything was silent. There was nothing but the sound of their breathing and the tiny puffs of smoke it made, like steam from a train.
He stooped to collect his clothes, and began pulling them on.
No one spoke, for fear it would unleash something. Their eyes scanned the blackening woods.
Nothing.
Maybe the lords wouldn’t come? Maybe Regent had convinced them that X had been punished enough? With each moment that passed, X became more and more convinced that it was possible. He was still in the grip of the Trembling. He was still feverish, still dizzy. His body was not his own. But Zoe had nursed him before, and he felt sure that if he could just lay his head against her—if he could just feel her cool breath settling over him—they could defeat the Trembling forever. Her father would be free. So would X. The lords would not own him any longer.
But then the buzzing began. They all heard it. It was faint but insistent. It sounded like a blackfly circling closer and closer.
X whirled toward it.
It was coming from Zoe.
She searched her pockets. It was her phone.
It was only her phone!
Zoe and Ripper stared down to read what was written there. Their faces looked eerie in the screen’s yellow light.
X was about to look away when Zoe gasped.
The noise hit him like a punch.
She seemed unable to speak, so Ripper spoke for her.
“The lords are striking,” she said.
X had known Ripper virtually his whole life. He had seen her fight and curse and flirt and sing. He had seen her tear out her fingernails and beg to be beaten. He had literally seen her in hell—but he’d never seen her afraid.
She was afraid now.
X wheeled around. The sky, the woods, the lake—they all spun before his eyes. But he found nothing to fear. The world was empty. He was certain of it.
“I see no threat,” he said.
Zoe held out her phone, as if he could read it.
Her palm was shaking.
“I d-don’t think they’re coming after us,” she said haltingly. “I th-think they’re going after Jonah.”
twenty-two
X and Ripper dove into holes in the ice. Zoe had begged them to take her with them but they left her standing on the lake—she would only have slowed them down.