I turn before he can see the tremble in my lips. Before the image of yet another person I care about bleeding to death in front of me can bring my breakfast up the back of my throat. I’ve walked five steps in the opposite direction when his hand descends on my shoulder.
I whirl and swing my Switch at him before I realize what I’m doing. He disappears. One second, he was standing before me, about to be hit with the weighted end of my weapon. The next, he’s rolling across the grass and coming up to stand a yard to my left.
My fingers tremble as I grip my weapon, and sick horror crawls up the back of my throat. I could’ve hurt him. But stronger than the horror is the rage that begs me to take another swing at him. To change his mind, through force if necessary. To make him see that he can’t make me care about him and then take risks like it’s nothing.
“Want to take a swing at me?” he asks. “Will that cure the nightmares and let you feel alive again?”
I throw my Switch to the ground and charge, my fists flying toward his chest. He blocks the blow with effortless grace, faster than I expected. Faster than I’ve ever seen.
I swing again and again, but he parries every blow. His movements are controlled and powerful, and I realize he could hurt me. He could hurt me badly, and I’d never be able to stop it.
He catches my fist as I take one more halfhearted swing, his grip gentle. My lips are salty, and it takes a moment to realize I’m crying.
“Do you feel better?” he asks, and the compassion in his voice makes me want to hit him again.
I don’t need his understanding and his sympathy. I just need to be left alone to pick up the pieces of my life, deliver the survivors to safety, and then kill the man who ruined me.
My tears dry slowly, and the rage disappears with them. The silence within me absorbs them both. Stepping back from Quinn, I wipe my hands on my pants and refuse to look at him.
“You don’t have to worry about me.” His voice is still gentle. “I can handle myself.”
I want to hurt him for making me worry. For making me cry when I have to be strong. I want to, but he doesn’t deserve it, and I’ve had enough of hurting those who haven’t earned it to last me for the rest of my life.
I bend to pick up my Switch, and then say, “You’ve clearly been well trained.”
He remains silent.
I meet his eyes, feeling raw inside at the way he watches me. “You’re more than qualified to choose which trainee should carry which weapon. I have something else I have to do.”
Without waiting for a response, I walk away. Across the clearing. Through the eastern edge of camp and deep into the shadowy depths of the Wasteland with its scrubby ferns and spongy moss, its reverent stillness and its well-kept secrets. I keep my head held high and my shoulders straight, though there’s no one left to see it. I won’t look weak and broken again. Not for Quinn. Not for anyone.
Chapter Sixteen
LOGAN
It’s been four days since we left Baalboden behind, and there’s still no sign of the Commander and his army. My steps feel lighter with every day that passes, even though whoever sabotaged the machine is still playing stupid pranks around camp. A bag of grain sliced open and spilled. A wagon canvas slashed. Petty things. I even found another note lying on my bedroll when I entered my tent one night. It said, “Justice requires sacrifice.” I refuse to allow some disgruntled prankster with a penchant for drama to get to me. Not when we’re still enjoying the triumph of outwitting the Commander and breaking his control over us.
We’ve traveled northeast, following the broken outline of a road from the previous civilization. Thick weeds and clumps of grass shove their way through the faded gray stone, and monstrous tree roots reduce entire portions of the road to crumbled pieces. In some sections, the path disappears completely, overtaken by the ever-encroaching vegetation of the Wasteland.
Rachel walks beside me, twenty yards ahead of the group, her cloak billowing in the stiff wind that plunges through the trees. Skinny maples and scattered evergreens creak beneath the onslaught.
While every step we take away from Baalboden and the Commander buoys me with a sense of freedom, the opposite seems to be true for Rachel. She grows more and more withdrawn—turned inward toward whatever thoughts haunt her until she realizes I’m watching her. Then she’ll smile and talk and focus on the task at hand, but it’s a thin mask that barely covers the truth.
I don’t know what to do about it when she refuses to tell me what’s bothering her.
Ian walks a few yards behind us, a girl on each arm. He talks to them as they walk, and the girls blush and giggle like he just offered to Claim them. I don’t know how he does it. I have a hard enough time figuring out what to say to Rachel, and I’ve known her most of my life. The thought of carrying on a flirtatious conversation with two girls at once makes my stomach feel like I ingested an unstable element.
The rest of the group lags behind Ian and his girls by a good ten yards. I’ve asked Quinn and Willow to hunt for tonight’s meal, and they’ve promised to catch up to us again by sundown. If I had my way, we’d travel without stopping until twilight, but most of the survivors won’t make it another two hundred yards without a rest.
“We’ll stop for lunch soon,” I say to Rachel as another gust of wind slaps me in the face. “Jeremiah’s map shows a large clearing of some sort about fifty yards after an old sign.”
Rachel glances around us. “What old sign? There’s nothing out here but broken-down road and Wasteland.”
As if to prove her wrong, several yards ahead something gleams copper and brown beneath the thick carpet of moss that covers the forest floor. I stride forward and crouch to pull moss and vines away from what looks like a narrow road made of two parallel metal bars nailed into rotting planks of wood. The corroded metal is rough beneath my fingers as I run my hand along it. The road bisects the path and disappears into the Wasteland, where vines and tree roots hide it from sight.
“It’s a railroad track,” Rachel says, shoving the toe of her boot against the metal bar I’m touching. “Dad showed me one on a trip once. He said the earlier civilization had giant wagons called trains that hitched together and ran on fuel instead of horses and donkeys. This was the road the trains used.”
I stand slowly, my eyes still on the track. “Can you imagine being able to travel from city-state to city-state without walking? Of course, we’d have to build better roads. And we’d have to figure out a way to build trains that are quiet enough to escape the Cursed One’s notice—or maybe equip the trains with the same sonic pulse that repels the beast. I bet I could—”
“Hey!” Rachel snaps her fingers in front of my face, and I realize the rest of the group has nearly caught up to us. “Before you decide to invent super-quiet trains with sonic weapons mounted on the front, maybe we should find that old sign and stop for lunch.”
I grin. She smiles back, and the shadows momentarily lift from her eyes.
“You’re right. Besides, I have enough inventions to worry about at the moment without adding another one to the mix.”
“How’s that going? Are we still going to be able to drop these people off at Lankenshire and then go hunt down the Commander?” She steps across the tracks, and I follow as the broken road beneath us curves through a sparse clump of trees.
“If Lankenshire makes an alliance with us—”