Dedication
For Mandy, because without you this book would never have seen the light of day
Chapter One
LOGAN
“What are you going to tell them?” Rachel asks. She sits beside me, her scuffed boots touching mine while long strands of her hair rise in the early morning breeze like fine lengths of copper wire. The dark bulk of the Commander’s compound crouches on the hill behind us, and the charred remains of Baalboden stretch out nearly as far as the eye can see.
“The truth.” My voice sounds stronger than I feel. The truth of the situation facing the tiny group of Baalboden survivors is a complex creature full of shadows and secrets. I don’t want to be the one to explain it, but I’ve done a lot of things I didn’t want to do. Including accepting the job of leading these people in the absence of the Commander, who ran into the Wasteland the day of the fires and hasn’t been heard from since.
I suppose it’s too much to hope that he fell off a cliff or got eaten by wolves.
“All of it?” She sounds strong too, but her fingers clench into fists as if she’s bracing herself. She looks past our camp—four rows of shelters made from cobbling together jagged slices of canvas, dead tree limbs, and bits of salvaged material that huddle beside the Commander’s compound like an outcast beggar too bedraggled to have any pride—and gazes south at the ruins of Baalboden itself.
“Almost all of it.” I take her hand and rub my thumb across her skin as I look away from the city. We’re responsible for calling the Cursed One to Baalboden, hoping to use the device Rachel’s father inadvertently took from Rowansmark to control the beast and destroy our brutal leader. It doesn’t matter that we never intended for the monster to enter the city itself. It only matters that it did. And everywhere we look we see death and destruction. We’re responsible, but I can’t say that to the survivors who sit scattered around the clearing at the center of our camp eating their breakfasts and thinking their own thoughts as they stare at what’s left of the lives they once knew. “I’m going to tell them what we’re up against, and what we have to do to stay safe.”
Her fingers tighten over mine. “They’re going to argue.”
“I’m going to win.”
She smiles, a slow lifting of the corners of her mouth that makes me wish I could turn back time to happier days when her smile was as impulsive and honest as she was.
She’s right. They’re going to argue. And complain. And question my judgment. I’d like to think that after three weeks of being their leader I’d be used to it. That it wouldn’t matter. But every argument, every sliver of doubt, simply amplifies my own.
I’m too young for this. Too inexperienced. What do I know about leading people? Until the fires destroyed our city, killing thousands of people in the process, I’d been an outcast. I have no formal education, no job experience beyond apprenticing with Rachel’s father, and am far more comfortable balancing a chemistry equation than dealing with most people. I keep waiting for Baalboden’s survivors to figure out my deficiencies and change their minds about electing me to lead them.
Three days ago, thirty-one of Baalboden’s survivors did just that. They declared me unfit to lead and headed east in hopes of finding shelter at one of the three eastern city-states, all of which are allied with the Commander.
I watched them go with what felt like needles in my chest, expecting the rest of the group to find me lacking and go east as well. Half dreading it. Half hoping for it. But one hundred fifty-seven stayed. And now I get to put their faith in me to the test.
My stomach feels like I swallowed an unstable chemical solution on a dare. I let go of Rachel’s hand and push myself to my feet.
The food wagon, one of only a handful of wagons we managed to salvage from the city’s wreckage, perches on the eastern edge of the clearing. I climb onto the driver’s seat, where I can be seen and heard by all.
The first time I addressed the group was the afternoon the survivors elected me as their new leader. Drake, the man who met with a small group of revolutionaries in the dark corners of Thom’s Tankard and who sent his daughter, Nola, to bring me medicine and food while I was locked in the Commander’s dungeon, gave a rousing speech that somehow resulted in a group of otherwise sane people voting a nineteen-year-old into a position of authority.
Maybe it was because he reminded them that I’d stood up to the Commander on the Claiming stage, escaped the dungeons—the only person in Baalboden’s history to ever do so—and then blew up the gate to save us from the Cursed One. Or maybe it was because out of a city-state of thousands, only a handful remained, and most of us didn’t know each other before the fires. Thanks to my public confrontation with the Commander, mine was the only face every survivor recognized. When Drake made me sound like a hero, like someone who knew exactly what to do, somehow nobody remembered that until that moment, I had been nothing but an outcast to most of them.
I doubt I’ll sound like a hero now.
“Attention!” I do my best to sound as crisp and authoritative as Rachel’s father, Jared, used to when he was teaching me how to use a sword. The hum of conversations slowly subsides. My stomach squeezes painfully as one hundred fifty-seven faces turn toward mine and wait.
“It’s been three weeks since the Cursed One destroyed our city and the Commander disappeared into the Wasteland with his entire army of guards.”
Everyone watches me in silence.
“We’ve buried our dead and mourned them. We’ve searched the buildings that weren’t destroyed and stockpiled what we could salvage. We have enough medical supplies to hold us over for several months. We have canned and dried food to supplement the game we bring in each day. We have weapons, and thanks to Quinn, Willow, and Rachel, twenty-three additional people are now learning how to defend us.”
Here and there people crane their necks to see Quinn and Willow, the Tree People Jared trusted to give the device to Rachel and me, but still, no one responds. I’m betting that’s about to change.
A brisk breeze kicks through the camp, tugging on loose flaps of canvas. I shrug my cloak closer to my shoulders, take a deep breath, and continue. “And we need people to defend us if we’re going to stay alive long enough to get to safety.”
The crowd shifts restlessly, and people begin whispering to each other.
“You mean we aren’t staying here and rebuilding? You’re taking us into the Wasteland? That’s a death sentence,” someone calls from the left. I turn and see Adam, a boy about my age. I recognize him from the group who meets daily to spar. He stands a little apart from everyone else with his arms crossed over his chest, a clear challenge in his dark, almond-shaped eyes. The uncomfortable squirming in my stomach settles.
A challenge is much easier to face than the expectations I see written across almost every other face.
Frankie Jay, a bear of a man who worked closely with Drake before Baalboden burned, folds his huge freckled arms across his chest and stares Adam down until he looks away.
I raise my voice above the murmurs spreading across the field and say, “Rebuild with what? We don’t have those kind of supplies. Besides, we’d never get the gate repaired in time to save us from our enemies.”
“What enemies?” another man calls from my right. “We’ve never hurt anyone.”
Others voice their agreement and soon conversations erupt across the field.
“Quiet!” Frankie’s voice cracks through the air like a whip, and silence descends. He slaps one large, freckled fist into his other palm in a clear message that he’d be happy to gain their cooperation with or without their consent.