“Why would he want to help us? He’s part of their army!”
“Army? Do you think he volunteered for this?” I edge backward, not sure he’s done inflicting violence on me. I could take him, no doubt, but what would that accomplish? I’m in a prison cell, at long last.
I feel something warm dripping down from my nose. Blood. For some reason the taste of it helps me to focus. Of all the times I have tried to convince Liam that the thing to do is to get the hell out of here, this is the most critical. This is the moment where he can choose to fight, to kill the Nahx he has in captivity already. Or to use his enemy to help us get to safety.
Of all the persuasion I’ve tried, all the arguments, all the begging, this is the most important. I need to appeal to Liam’s sense of reason, his survival instinct, if he has one. But maybe, like Topher, he is nothing but fight.
“You need to listen to me,” I say. “This is our last and only chance. August will not bring the Nahx here. But they will come eventually. I don’t really understand what their project is, what their goal is. What this is all about. But I’m pretty sure that their main idea is that no humans are left alive. Not in the high lands anyway. Maybe eventually they will take every human on Earth. But for the time being we’re pretty sure it’s safe on the coast. If we can get there, we can live. All these people in the base. All the people that your mother swore to protect. They can live.”
Liam stares at me. He does look as though he’s considering what I’ve said. But then his lips turn into a smirk and I know I’ve lost him. Or that maybe I never had him. Maybe he never had the well-being of all people on the base as his priority. Maybe watching his father get killed, watching his sister die, watching his mother’s body being brought back from a raid destroyed him in the same way that Tucker’s death destroyed Topher.
I suppose because we grew up so safe, deceptively safe, without war, with little crime, with everything we needed to survive, we never learned what this kind of life would do to you. I wonder how many people there are left at the base who have any desire to escape, who haven’t had their spirits turned to anger and revenge. I think of my stepfather’s stories of the badass hunters and trappers he knew up north, and the darker stories he had. There must be people in the base who have stared down despair, hunger, and cold before too. I’ll make them my allies if I ever get out of here.
But that doesn’t seem likely. Liam leans over and spits on me, his saliva mixing with the blood on my lips. “Bring her into the Nahx’s cell,” he says. This time Xander reaches down and gently lifts me to my feet.
AUGUST
Blood. My face mask reflects back up at me from the pool of blood on the floor.
Blood. When you break a dandelion stem, it bleeds white. Like the milk the humans drink. I drank milk once. Sixth said I could. It made me sick too. Dandelion blood. Her smell is overpowering, intoxicating. My mind swims back through the thick mist of syrupy memory to those days in the sky, those days she died slowly, skin on fire, bloody and blue with bruises. She didn’t die.
She didn’t die.
“Wake up!”
Have I been sleeping? That’s not normal.
I lift my head up and blink the past from my eyes.
Blood. Blood on her face.
The guards stumble back as I hiss and pull at the chains.
“Settle down, Nahx, unless you want another arrow in you.”
It’s the pale, thin one again, the one who gives the orders. The one I tried to surrender to. I tried to show him Dandelion’s book. He put the first arrow through my knee.
Blood. He smells of her blood.
Rage surges through me. I’m more awake now than I’ve been in days. Weeks. As awake as I was the day I left her. That took all my strength, to not carry her away with me and keep her.
Blood. Blood. Her blood on him. Blood on her face.
My right shoulder pulses with pain as I pull my arm forward. There’s a creak; and the humans recoil as the chain bursts from the wall. As I yank down the other chain, someone fires an arrow into the wall behind me. My own blood sprays the room as I pull the arrow from my shoulder. One fist connects with the boy’s head while the other lashes out with the arrow at a girl with a crossbow. She falls in a heap.
Then Dandelion is screaming. Screaming. The other girl has an arrow in her eye—an arrow dripping with my oily, gray blood. The thin boy lies crumpled on the floor. I pull his pistol out of his hand and point it at the black-haired one.
“August! NO!”
The black-haired one drops his crossbow and raises his hands over his head.
I count time with her breaths. One, two, three, four.
Blood. Ah no. What have I done?
“Xander? Are there more guards outside the door?” she says, not taking her eyes off me. Her eyes. “Xander?” Her voice is like the rushing river. But tight. Like the rushing river pushed through a crack in the ice. The black-haired one was in the river with her. I remember him now. I remember her bravery in pulling him down, saving him.
“No,” he says. “Topher’s putting together extra sentry teams and attack squads. Everyone was called up to the command level.”
Dandelion takes a tentative step toward me, her hands outstretched.
“August? Can I have the pistol?”
My breathing makes a bubbly sound. There might be blood in my lungs. I’m trying to figure out what just happened. I think I killed two people. But they were . . .
“August?”
. . . hurting her.
I flip the pistol and hold it out. She steps forward and takes it, tucking it into the back of her belt.
“Xander is my friend, okay? Please don’t hurt him.”
I shake my head. I pull arrows out of my wrist and knee. The blaze of pain is like lightning. Blood drips off my fingers as I drop the arrows and sign her name.
Dandelion.
“I don’t know what that one means, August.”
Something about flying. Black flying night feathers feather never nevermore.
Raven. I thought I’d see you nevermore.
She touches my face, and I wrap my aching arms around her.
“I’ve missed you, too,” she says, and lets me lift her up.
RAVEN
We stay like that, me lifted up, floating above the horror August wrought. His armor is almost too hot to touch, and yet I cling to him. Cradled in his arms, time stops for me; the world disappears and I don’t have to face what is next. It is Xander who eventually breaks the spell.
“Rave? Liam is still breathing.”
August moves. Lunging forward onto one knee, he somehow manages to tuck me protectively behind him while simultaneously shoving Liam’s limp form across the cell. One hand lashes out and grabs Xander’s crossbow from the floor.
“No! August, no!”
He stops and looks back at me, still coiled up like a snake preparing to pounce.