The lighthearted man I once thought was my friend has one goal burning in his eyes—murder—and a singular target—me.
“Watchyourself,” I clap back at Marcus.
I’m not proud of how childish I sound, especially considering the gravity of our situation.
Marcus intercepts Pax before he can get to me, using the shield to force him to the ground.
“Run while you can, Briar,” Pax yells. “I’m coming for you.”
I can’t watch them. The only thing I know for sure about Marcus anymore is that I can trust my back to him in a fight. I turn to see a woman nearby looking around with wild eyes.
She’s a prisoner, and she doesn’t know she was injected with an aromium device on the boat that brought her here. The guards do it to every prisoner. If she ends up at Rising Tide, like I did when I jumped from a prisoner boat, she’ll become a breeding and fighting machine with very little say in what happens to her.
“That way.” I point toward the Dust Walkers hidden behind dense brush, waiting for prisoners to take back to our camp.
She’s just started running in the direction I pointed when a thrown spear pierces the back of her shoulder. She cries out and falls forward into the ivory sand.
I find the Tider who threw it and race toward him, reaching him before he can get to the defenseless woman he just attacked from behind. I feint a high hit with my stun stick, then switch to a low one at the last second, shoving the electrified end into his stomach.
He drops to his knees, stunned silent for a couple of seconds. Then he screams like he’s dying, because a good hit with a stun stick makes you sure you are.
I’m on my way back into position behind Marcus when I get a glimpse of tightly coiled, pale-blond curls.
Marcelle. She looks feral, her eyes wild with fury and her face sunken and angular. The supplies that are still delivered to our camp by boat were intended for the scientists working there and for the prisoners they were experimenting on, but Marcus is hoarding everything. It’s the only leverage we have, but Virginia would never bargain; Marcus only wanted one thing from her—to turn off the Tiders’ aromium and stop them from breeding children whose aromium is part of them.
It can never be turned off, and that won’t lead anywhere good. It’s one thing to know we’re starving the Tiders out, but it’s another to see the evidence of it.
Marcelle’s belly is protruding from her small frame as she advances my way, fueling my rage. She’s mean as hell, but she’s just an unwitting pawn.
“No.” I practically yell the word at her, putting a palm out in front of myself. “I don’t want to fight a pregnant woman, Marcelle. Back off.”
“We’re not going to kill you.” Her lips turn up in a maniacal smile. “We’re going to keep you alive for as long as we can, while we take you apart one piece at a time.”
She’s losing hair. There’s a bald spot on one side of her head. And the hair she does have is dirty and limp. I feel physically sick over the poor, starved child growing inside her.
I’m backing away from her, only thinking of escaping, when strong arms encircle me from behind. Marcelle’s grin grows wider, her eyes lighting up.
“Let’s tie her up,” she says gleefully.
My heart thrashes in my chest. I can’t let that happen, even if it means fighting her. I tilt my chin down and throw my head back, knocking my skull into the nose of the man holding me.
He grunts and loosens his grip on me, my head throbbing from the impact. Turning my body, I dig an elbow into his stomach and point the electrified end of the stun stick at Marcelle.
“I’ll do it,” I threaten, stepping away from the man so I can reach either of them with the stick. “Be smart and go back to your camp, Marcelle.”
A deep bellow sounds from the other end of the beach at the same moment an arrow embeds in Marcelle’s calf. She snarls and bends to remove it.
It’s buried deep. I know that was a save from Amira, who can split a hair with an arrow if she wants to. The man is moving for me again, so I drive a kick into his knee and dart back toward Marcus’s back.
Not a minute too soon. A thick, impossibly long anaconda is vibrating from the stun stick Marcus is jamming into its open mouth. Pax is bonded to anacondas, and he must have called one to attack Marcus.
It’s all Marcus can do to hold on to the stick while Pax punches him in the face and then the stomach. Marcus’s strangled groan of struggle as he battles the snake while taking the blows ignites something inside me.
I run, my boots throwing up sand. They’re only about forty feet away, but every step feels like a mile as I see sweat rolling down Marcus’s pained face.
I’m going to electrocute Pax. I’ll put my stun stick over his chest above his heart, and it’ll kill him. That’s the price for what he’s doing to Marcus.
Pax takes a dagger from his waist, an evil gleam in his eyes. He’s not the man I knew before. That Pax was selfish, but also carefree and easygoing. Virginia was the cutthroat, and he was a counterbalance.
