I love Logan. A laugh bubbles up, even as tears sting my eyes. I reach up to clasp his mother’s necklace, the symbol of his promise to me, and hold the tender, vibrant thought of him close as the stars chase each other across the sky.
Halfway through the next day’s journey, we approach the clearing where Dad and I always stopped for a meal, and the ache of missing him throbs in time with the ache of missing Oliver. If I can find him now, the fierce edge of my grief will lessen. He’ll know how to save Logan without giving the package to the Commander. He’ll take the burden of this awful responsibility off my shoulders.
I don’t realize how much I want him to be waiting for me as we move past a thin line of maples and into the small field of yellow-green grass until I see he isn’t there.
He isn’t here.
I know it isn’t logical to feel so hopeless when I had no real reason to think he’d be camped at the edge of the clearing waiting for me, but I can’t help the tears that stream down my face. Loneliness eats at me, and for the millionth time since I left Baalboden, I wish Logan was with me.
Quickly swiping my palms across my cheeks before Melkin catches me crying, I start to turn away when movement catches my eye. A slice of deep purple shimmers gently against a tree trunk on the far side of the field. Veering off course without saying a word, I move toward it, my heart suddenly knocking against my chest like it wants its freedom.
“What are you doing?” Melkin asks behind me.
I ignore him and hurry, the crisp stalks of grass parting before me and shushing closed in my wake. The purple is a ribbon, wind torn and water ravaged, tied around the base of the lowest branch. The initials S. A. are embroidered in the corner.
I know this ribbon. It’s one of a handful that belonged to my mother. Dad always carried them with him when he went into the Wasteland.
I want to laugh. To dance. To open my mouth and let the fierce joy singing through me echo from the treetops.
He was here.
And he wanted me to know it.
CHAPTER FORTY
RACHEL
As if connected to my thoughts, the cuff around my left arm vibrates gently, and I glance down to see the blue wires begin to glow—a hesitant, flickering light that fills me with wild, buoyant hope.
Dad.
I can find him.
He can fix this.
I just have to hold on a little longer.
“What does this mean?”
Melkin stands to my right, watching me closely, and I scramble to find something to say. I can’t tell him I think we’re closing in on Dad. I don’t know how he’d react, and it’s best not to introduce any new elements into our precarious partnership until it’s already accomplished.
“It means we’re on the right track.”
His skinny brows crawl toward the center of his forehead. “I thought we already knew that.”
I shrug and step forward, as much to tug the ribbon free as to hide my face from his prying eyes.
“You mean this is a sign?”
When I don’t answer, he shifts his weight forward, his shadow swallowing me from behind, and says in a voice I scarcely recognize as the mild, courteous Melkin I’ve been with for a week, “Who’s working with you? Better come clean now, girl, or you’ll not get a second chance.”
I fold the ribbon carefully and stow it in an inner cloak pocket before turning to face him. He looms above me, all sharp angles and seething suspicion, his hand resting on his knife hilt.
“Calm down. No one’s working with me, but you had to know we’re following my dad’s trail since he’s the one who hid the package. You should be relieved I recognize his signs.”
Not that he had ever once deliberately left a sign before. But he’d never left without planning to return either. I give him kudos for knowing I’d follow him, and for knowing what would show me I’m on the right track.
Melkin’s hand slides off his knife and he steps back, though his eyes still look troubled. I turn from him and plunge into the trees again. I can’t bear to waste time. He follows me, and in a few moments, shoulders his way past me to resume the lead, his expression once more a sea of calm.
I’m not fooled. He’s afraid. Of the consequences if he fails his mission, yes. But also of me and any tricks I might pull. I want to tell him he has nothing to fear from me or my dad as long as he doesn’t stand between the Commander and justice, but I don’t think he’d believe me. Not completely. It’s hard for him to fathom the Commander falling hard enough to lose the power to ruin lives, and Melkin has two other lives at stake beside his own.
We break for a lunch of cold rabbit leftovers, creek water, and silence thick enough to cut with a knife. Finally, I look him in the eye and say, “What’s the problem?”
He chews a bite of rabbit slowly, the bones of his jaw swiveling like a set of Logan’s gears. “I don’t like this whole situation.”
“That makes two of us.”
“What if we’re being led into a trap?”
I squint at him through a shaft of blinding afternoon sun. “Who do you think is leading us into a trap?”
“Someone who wants whatever is in that package.”
Which could be anyone. Trackers from Rowansmark. Others working for the Commander. Highwaymen who’ve heard of its existence. If I wasn’t absolutely sure the signal came from Dad, I’d be thinking the same thing.
I pull the ribbon from my pocket, smooth it over my knee for a moment, my fingers slowly tracing the silvery S. A. stitched into the corner, and then hand it to Melkin. His fingers are cold as they brush against mine.
Halfway through the next day’s journey, we approach the clearing where Dad and I always stopped for a meal, and the ache of missing him throbs in time with the ache of missing Oliver. If I can find him now, the fierce edge of my grief will lessen. He’ll know how to save Logan without giving the package to the Commander. He’ll take the burden of this awful responsibility off my shoulders.
I don’t realize how much I want him to be waiting for me as we move past a thin line of maples and into the small field of yellow-green grass until I see he isn’t there.
He isn’t here.
I know it isn’t logical to feel so hopeless when I had no real reason to think he’d be camped at the edge of the clearing waiting for me, but I can’t help the tears that stream down my face. Loneliness eats at me, and for the millionth time since I left Baalboden, I wish Logan was with me.
Quickly swiping my palms across my cheeks before Melkin catches me crying, I start to turn away when movement catches my eye. A slice of deep purple shimmers gently against a tree trunk on the far side of the field. Veering off course without saying a word, I move toward it, my heart suddenly knocking against my chest like it wants its freedom.
“What are you doing?” Melkin asks behind me.
I ignore him and hurry, the crisp stalks of grass parting before me and shushing closed in my wake. The purple is a ribbon, wind torn and water ravaged, tied around the base of the lowest branch. The initials S. A. are embroidered in the corner.
I know this ribbon. It’s one of a handful that belonged to my mother. Dad always carried them with him when he went into the Wasteland.
I want to laugh. To dance. To open my mouth and let the fierce joy singing through me echo from the treetops.
He was here.
And he wanted me to know it.
CHAPTER FORTY
RACHEL
As if connected to my thoughts, the cuff around my left arm vibrates gently, and I glance down to see the blue wires begin to glow—a hesitant, flickering light that fills me with wild, buoyant hope.
Dad.
I can find him.
He can fix this.
I just have to hold on a little longer.
“What does this mean?”
Melkin stands to my right, watching me closely, and I scramble to find something to say. I can’t tell him I think we’re closing in on Dad. I don’t know how he’d react, and it’s best not to introduce any new elements into our precarious partnership until it’s already accomplished.
“It means we’re on the right track.”
His skinny brows crawl toward the center of his forehead. “I thought we already knew that.”
I shrug and step forward, as much to tug the ribbon free as to hide my face from his prying eyes.
“You mean this is a sign?”
When I don’t answer, he shifts his weight forward, his shadow swallowing me from behind, and says in a voice I scarcely recognize as the mild, courteous Melkin I’ve been with for a week, “Who’s working with you? Better come clean now, girl, or you’ll not get a second chance.”
I fold the ribbon carefully and stow it in an inner cloak pocket before turning to face him. He looms above me, all sharp angles and seething suspicion, his hand resting on his knife hilt.
“Calm down. No one’s working with me, but you had to know we’re following my dad’s trail since he’s the one who hid the package. You should be relieved I recognize his signs.”
Not that he had ever once deliberately left a sign before. But he’d never left without planning to return either. I give him kudos for knowing I’d follow him, and for knowing what would show me I’m on the right track.
Melkin’s hand slides off his knife and he steps back, though his eyes still look troubled. I turn from him and plunge into the trees again. I can’t bear to waste time. He follows me, and in a few moments, shoulders his way past me to resume the lead, his expression once more a sea of calm.
I’m not fooled. He’s afraid. Of the consequences if he fails his mission, yes. But also of me and any tricks I might pull. I want to tell him he has nothing to fear from me or my dad as long as he doesn’t stand between the Commander and justice, but I don’t think he’d believe me. Not completely. It’s hard for him to fathom the Commander falling hard enough to lose the power to ruin lives, and Melkin has two other lives at stake beside his own.
We break for a lunch of cold rabbit leftovers, creek water, and silence thick enough to cut with a knife. Finally, I look him in the eye and say, “What’s the problem?”
He chews a bite of rabbit slowly, the bones of his jaw swiveling like a set of Logan’s gears. “I don’t like this whole situation.”
“That makes two of us.”
“What if we’re being led into a trap?”
I squint at him through a shaft of blinding afternoon sun. “Who do you think is leading us into a trap?”
“Someone who wants whatever is in that package.”
Which could be anyone. Trackers from Rowansmark. Others working for the Commander. Highwaymen who’ve heard of its existence. If I wasn’t absolutely sure the signal came from Dad, I’d be thinking the same thing.
I pull the ribbon from my pocket, smooth it over my knee for a moment, my fingers slowly tracing the silvery S. A. stitched into the corner, and then hand it to Melkin. His fingers are cold as they brush against mine.
