Dandelion murmurs in her sleep, and I gently let her head slide off my knee and onto the ground, tugging the hood of her jacket up to protect her from the dust and ash. I pull myself to standing and stretch out my aching limbs. At the cave opening I see a wisp of movement and have weapons in each hand before even taking a breath. But when I step forward to investigate, I see that the movement was only a fat snowflake drifting onto the ledge outside the cave. Another follows it, then another, until the air is full of snowflakes, each one like a . . . a tiny human with wings. A magical creature . . .
Fairy. I capture the word and hold it a moment in the dungeon of my ruined mind. Something about this small rescued memory along with the glinting snowflakes fills me with a sense of peace and resolve. My objective is clearer than it has ever been. Dandelion must reach the human territory.
If, for me, that’s a path to death, so be it.
RAVEN
I wake to shouts. It takes a moment for me to interpret the noise as bad news. A moment to remember that I’m with August, and he neither shouts nor speaks. That shouting means trouble. Leaping up, I look around to see I’m alone. I tuck my pistol into the back of my belt and poke my head out the cave opening. My throat clenches back a yell as I duck backward and process what I caught a glimpse of.
On the plateau below us, twenty feet away, is August, hands above his head, a crossbow pressed into his neck.
A crossbow that Topher is holding.
“Where is she?” I hear him shout again. August, of course, is silent.
“They don’t talk,” another voice says. Xander. Thank God. A voice of reason.
“He’s darted her and left her somewhere. WHERE IS SHE?!”
I hear the crack of metal on metal, then the unmistakable clatter of August tumbling over on the rocky ground. “Get up!” I risk another look.
Topher and Xander have August hemmed in, facing him, weapons raised and a steep cliff face behind him. I know August could scale that cliff effortlessly, but beyond climbing slowly back to his feet, he doesn’t move or make any attempt to escape. Because of me. He could run, get away easily. If one of them managed to get an arrow into him, he would pull it out and be good as new in a day. But he won’t leave me. And Topher looks like he would kill him.
I step out of the cave. “Hey!”
“There she is,” Xander says. “I told you.”
All three of them seem to relax a bit. As I step out of the cave, I catch a flash of movement from the other direction. And the still morning air precisely frames the unmistakable sound of a bowstring being pulled back. In one movement I turn my head, shouting at the shape in the shadows of the rocks and leaping recklessly down to the plateau.
Gravity bends, slows down, and I feel that I hover in the air for far too long, my head still turned toward the movement in the rocks. Liam, an arrow nocked, bowstring drawn. He looks at me as I yell, his face lighting up with recognition.
Time stops then, and I start to think maybe August was right. I’m stuck in the second I jumped out of the cave, in the moment I’m suspended above the plateau. The moment I meet Liam’s eyes and see his surprise that I would attempt such a leap. The surprise that makes him jerk backward, lose his aim on August, twitch his bow and arrow slightly upward in my direction. The arrow sails toward me in slow motion as I turn in the air. When it hits, I expect a noise, but it slices through me like a warm knife in butter. Silent.
I land hard, my knees giving way under me. I just manage to stop myself falling on my face with my hands. And I have this tiny thought in the moment before everything falls apart.
August, I’m so sorry.
I would do the “sorry” hand sign, but the arrowhead is poking out of my chest in the exact spot where the side of my hand would go. Instead, I look up at him as he turns. As Topher turns. As Xander takes a tentative, stunned step forward.
August hisses, a loud, harsh hiss, and in the microsecond that Topher loses his concentration, August lashes out, grabs the crossbow, and smacks Topher hard in the face with it. Then he dives for me. Dives and catches me as I slide downward.
As he lays me on my side, the noises he makes are terrible. Growling, woeful hisses. Vaguely, behind him I see Xander helping Topher to his feet. I feel August snatch the pistol out of the back of my pants.
“No,” I croak, but August ignores them, pointing the gun instead at an approaching shadow, hissing, his free hand cradling my head.
“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hit her. I swear I was aiming for him.” I’m not sure Liam is talking to August. He seems to be directing his words to Topher and Xander, who step toward us cautiously. August pulls back the safety on the pistol, snarling, making Liam take a step back. “I didn’t mean to hit her,” he says, raising his hands up. “She surprised me. I lost grip on the arrow. I swear.”
I turn my head as much as I can to look at him, standing there five feet away in the thin snow, looking as insipid as ever. His face is bruised, one eye circled in black. Concussed, pale with shock and fear. Cold, scared. I almost feel sorry for him. He lost all the things I hope to find again one day.
Hoped.
I have a second, which stretches out like a slingshot, in which to see that Liam is wearing one of the helmet cameras. And I half complete the thought that one day maybe he’ll let go of his lust for blood and glory before the question becomes irrelevant.
August hisses once, I feel his fingers twitch in my hair, and he pulls the trigger.
The world disappears. For that second the sound of the gunshot erases everything—the mountains, the snow, the sun, the sky. The past, present, and future shrink down to the size of a mote of dust and then nothing. Nothing but the red spray of Liam’s life exploding out of the back of his skull, and the slow, almost graceful fall of his body.
“Oh, August . . . ,” I say. I watch him breathe as the world slowly returns. I turn back toward the boys. Topher unarmed, blood dripping down his face from a cut near his hairline, and Xander, behind him, his own weapon dropped carelessly to the ground.
I blink, but it seems to take a long time. While my eyes are closed, I hear a soft snip and feel the swish of the arrow being pulled out from between my ribs. I assume that the person who screamed in pain was me.
When I open my eyes, August has pulled me up into his lap, hanging over me with the hand holding the pistol pressed to his head. Above him Xander tosses the remains of the arrow away.
“Can I take a look?” he says. August nods. He’s shaking, his armor pulsing scorching hot and freezing cold. Xander crouches down and lifts up my hoodie and shirt. They’re both soaked with blood. I try to curl my head up to see, but that effort seems to push more blood from the wound. I feel it dribble down my side.
“Oh fuck,” Xander says. “Try not to move. Uh . . .”
Topher appears, stepping into my field of view. This seems to snap August out of whatever trance he’s been in. His hand whisks out, pointing the pistol in Topher’s face.
“No!” I cry, pushing another bubble of blood out. “No more. August, give Xander the gun, okay?”