“You may have lost your way, but you”—he points to my heart—“aren’t lost. You’re still in there. And you have everything you need to heal. You just have to find the courage to do it.”
“Sit down, Quinn, before you fall down.”
I pull my knees up to my chest, and he eases himself onto the middle of my cot and sits cross-legged, facing me.
“I don’t like to tell my story,” he says. The words are full of pain. The kind of pain I know runs deep beneath my silence. “But I think you need to hear it. Will you listen?”
He waits for my answer, his dark eyes watching me with a strange mix of dread and compassion. I nod.
Leaning his forearms on his knees, he splays his large hands over the white blanket, careful to avoid the blood I left behind. “My village is different from other Tree Villages. When we were formed in the aftermath of the Cursed Ones, the founders had to decide on a system of government. They chose to assign duties to each family based on that family’s skill set. So someone who was good at baking would then become the baker, and someone who was good at farming would be in charge of growing the wheat. Make sense?”
“Yes.”
“Whatever job your family was assigned, that was your family’s job for the duration of your life in the village. If you were a schoolteacher, then you trained your children to be schoolteachers. If you were a leader, then you trained your children to be leaders. No one was allowed to switch jobs. Our leaders decided this would help our society run without conflict. From birth, every child knew his place and had no aspirations for anything different. And only those specifically trained to be experts in a field would be doing that job.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
He looks at his hands as though he can see something I can’t. “Our family was in charge of protecting the village from outside threats.”
“That makes sense, too.”
His hair slides along his cheek as he raises his face to look at me. “Why?”
“Because you and Willow are scary good at fighting, weapons, and basic survival.”
He laughs, but it sounds like it hurts him. “Scary good. Yes, we are that. My father was a boy when the previous civilization was destroyed. He was only fifteen when he joined the village. He couldn’t farm, couldn’t build, and couldn’t fix things. He was good at only one thing: killing people.”
I don’t know what to say to this. Quinn’s long fingers clench handfuls of blanket.
“He taught us only to be good at killing people, Rachel. That’s all we knew. We hunted humans like you hunt animals. Learned their weaknesses and how to exploit them. How to extract every possible ounce of pain if we needed information from them.”
He falls silent, and the cords on his neck stand out. I reach across the blanket and cover his hands with mine. “You can’t help who gave birth to you. You can’t blame yourself for what he taught you, or what he expected from you.”
He looks at me. “No, I can’t. And I don’t. But that doesn’t make the memories easier to face. Every time I killed, it took another piece of me until I was afraid I’d have nothing left. I didn’t take joy or pride in it like he did. And he saw that in me. He called it cowardice.”
My lip curls. “He’s a fool. I call it courage.”
He turns his hands over and laces his fingers through mine. “Your father called it courage, too. I’d started to stand up to my father. Started killing people quickly even when he wanted them tortured. Started refusing to search for highwaymen or trackers to kill unless they were actually threatening the village.”
“And he punished you?”
“He punished Willow. He gave her the duties he’d formerly given to me. He expected her to stalk and hunt and torture and glory in it. And she . . .”
“She did,” I say, because I can see it’s true. Willow wouldn’t back down, especially if she thought that by doing what was expected of her she could somehow save her brother pain.
“She did.” His eyes are steady as he looks at me. “And then we captured Jared, and I refused to kill him. I knocked my father unconscious and took Jared to the leaders so they could detain him while we tried to decide if he was a legitimate threat. And Jared was . . . kind.” His hands squeeze mine. “He was kind, Rachel. He didn’t see Willow and me as monsters like the rest of the village did. He treated us with respect, and my father couldn’t stand it.”
I know what’s coming, and a slick, icy dread fills my stomach.
“He turned Willow loose. Ordered her to kill Jared, and make it truly awful, or I would pay the price.” He pauses and then says quietly, “And so I killed my father.”
The breath I don’t realize I’m holding explodes from me in a rush. I’d thought he was going to tell me he killed my father to spare Willow. But instead, he’d sacrificed another piece of himself to save both his sister and a man he barely knew.
“Quinn . . .”
“I didn’t tell you that so you could feel sorry for me. I told you because I know what it’s like to make choices that leave you with nothing. I know how it feels to be so broken you think nothing will ever make it right.”
He leans forward. “Rachel, I know the pain scares you. It should, because healing is so much harder than being hurt in the first place. But you will never get better until you stop running and start looking things in the eye. Until you give the things that hurt you the label they deserve, feel the way they make you feel, and then let the pieces slowly settle until you can breathe again.”
“Sit down, Quinn, before you fall down.”
I pull my knees up to my chest, and he eases himself onto the middle of my cot and sits cross-legged, facing me.
“I don’t like to tell my story,” he says. The words are full of pain. The kind of pain I know runs deep beneath my silence. “But I think you need to hear it. Will you listen?”
He waits for my answer, his dark eyes watching me with a strange mix of dread and compassion. I nod.
Leaning his forearms on his knees, he splays his large hands over the white blanket, careful to avoid the blood I left behind. “My village is different from other Tree Villages. When we were formed in the aftermath of the Cursed Ones, the founders had to decide on a system of government. They chose to assign duties to each family based on that family’s skill set. So someone who was good at baking would then become the baker, and someone who was good at farming would be in charge of growing the wheat. Make sense?”
“Yes.”
“Whatever job your family was assigned, that was your family’s job for the duration of your life in the village. If you were a schoolteacher, then you trained your children to be schoolteachers. If you were a leader, then you trained your children to be leaders. No one was allowed to switch jobs. Our leaders decided this would help our society run without conflict. From birth, every child knew his place and had no aspirations for anything different. And only those specifically trained to be experts in a field would be doing that job.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
He looks at his hands as though he can see something I can’t. “Our family was in charge of protecting the village from outside threats.”
“That makes sense, too.”
His hair slides along his cheek as he raises his face to look at me. “Why?”
“Because you and Willow are scary good at fighting, weapons, and basic survival.”
He laughs, but it sounds like it hurts him. “Scary good. Yes, we are that. My father was a boy when the previous civilization was destroyed. He was only fifteen when he joined the village. He couldn’t farm, couldn’t build, and couldn’t fix things. He was good at only one thing: killing people.”
I don’t know what to say to this. Quinn’s long fingers clench handfuls of blanket.
“He taught us only to be good at killing people, Rachel. That’s all we knew. We hunted humans like you hunt animals. Learned their weaknesses and how to exploit them. How to extract every possible ounce of pain if we needed information from them.”
He falls silent, and the cords on his neck stand out. I reach across the blanket and cover his hands with mine. “You can’t help who gave birth to you. You can’t blame yourself for what he taught you, or what he expected from you.”
He looks at me. “No, I can’t. And I don’t. But that doesn’t make the memories easier to face. Every time I killed, it took another piece of me until I was afraid I’d have nothing left. I didn’t take joy or pride in it like he did. And he saw that in me. He called it cowardice.”
My lip curls. “He’s a fool. I call it courage.”
He turns his hands over and laces his fingers through mine. “Your father called it courage, too. I’d started to stand up to my father. Started killing people quickly even when he wanted them tortured. Started refusing to search for highwaymen or trackers to kill unless they were actually threatening the village.”
“And he punished you?”
“He punished Willow. He gave her the duties he’d formerly given to me. He expected her to stalk and hunt and torture and glory in it. And she . . .”
“She did,” I say, because I can see it’s true. Willow wouldn’t back down, especially if she thought that by doing what was expected of her she could somehow save her brother pain.
“She did.” His eyes are steady as he looks at me. “And then we captured Jared, and I refused to kill him. I knocked my father unconscious and took Jared to the leaders so they could detain him while we tried to decide if he was a legitimate threat. And Jared was . . . kind.” His hands squeeze mine. “He was kind, Rachel. He didn’t see Willow and me as monsters like the rest of the village did. He treated us with respect, and my father couldn’t stand it.”
I know what’s coming, and a slick, icy dread fills my stomach.
“He turned Willow loose. Ordered her to kill Jared, and make it truly awful, or I would pay the price.” He pauses and then says quietly, “And so I killed my father.”
The breath I don’t realize I’m holding explodes from me in a rush. I’d thought he was going to tell me he killed my father to spare Willow. But instead, he’d sacrificed another piece of himself to save both his sister and a man he barely knew.
“Quinn . . .”
“I didn’t tell you that so you could feel sorry for me. I told you because I know what it’s like to make choices that leave you with nothing. I know how it feels to be so broken you think nothing will ever make it right.”
He leans forward. “Rachel, I know the pain scares you. It should, because healing is so much harder than being hurt in the first place. But you will never get better until you stop running and start looking things in the eye. Until you give the things that hurt you the label they deserve, feel the way they make you feel, and then let the pieces slowly settle until you can breathe again.”
