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Ryker was right—the group’s pace had slowed to a crawl.
As for my wound, he wasn’t wrong about that, either, although I feared what he might find. Sanitary conditions in the Well were abhorrent, and I could only imagine what type of infection had crawled up into the open, untreated wound.
“Alright,” I said with a nod, hoisting the shivering toddler higher on my hip. “We’ll stop here for the night.”
“I’ll go to the front and tell the others,” Ryker said as he helped the elderly man sit down on a fallen tree, dollops of white caught in every nook and cranny and nub.
“Okay,” I replied, puffs of my breath painting the air. I rubbed the little girl’s back in an attempt to chase away the cold, her arms twined tightly around my neck.
My brow furrowed as I looked over the crowd walking around me. I had thought that by getting them out of the Well, I would be giving them a chance at freedom, but now . . .
In the throes of winter’s chokehold, I wondered if I had doomed them all.
As it turned out—I hadn’t doomed them all.
Dozens of woodless fires, created by the Fire Cursed, dolloped the winter lands, bringing warmth to everyone. Rumbling tummies became quiet thanks to the Earth Cursed who used their abilities to track any game in the area. Although they hadn’t found enough to feed everyone, they’d found enough to feed some, and that would be huge for aiding us in the journey ahead. If people were going to make it, they needed energy, and that required both sleep and food.
Boy and I sat beside each other in front of one of the many fires, along with eight other people, two of which were sleeping. Judging by the way their limbs were tangled up with one another, I presumed they were a couple.
I’d be a liar if I said it didn’t make me feel a flicker of envy. There was a time I would have given anything for that to be Von—to feel his strong, sturdy arms wrapped around me. But then I’d learned the truth about our twisted past and it had driven me into Aurelius’s arms instead. Now, after seeing the faces of those soldiers, I didn’t know what to think.
“Would you like one?” asked a woman who walked in front of me. Her wilted torso and the bags under her eyes made her look much older than I suspected her to be. She carried a couple sticks in each hand, skewered with a few mouthfuls of steaming rabbit meat.
My mouth watered, but I ignored it. I shook my head and gestured to the others. “They need it more than I do.”
The foodie in me might have died right there and then, but because of my immortality, I knew that I could not. And there were those—I glanced at Boy—who needed it more than I did.
The woman gave me a pleasant smile before she handed one to Boy, then moved on to the others. When she had no skewers left to hand out, she started back towards the fire where the game was being cooked, a few fires down from ours.
Boy licked his lips in anticipation, but just before he was about to dig in, he paused. Slowly, he lowered his hands until they rested on his lap.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He took a moment to reply, but when he did, he spoke in a voice so small, I nearly missed what he said. “Graiyson.”
The space between my brows crinkled. “Sorry?”
“That’s my name,” he said, looking up at me, tears brewing in his eyes like heavy-bottomed clouds on a summer night. “My name is Graiyson.”
I couldn’t help but become a bit misty-eyed myself as I slung my arm over his shoulders and pulled him in, giving him a tight squeeze. “It’s a great name,” I told him.
And truly it was.
“Thank you. It was . . . my dad’s name,” he said slowly, dabbing at his eyes with the back of his sleeves.
“He would be very proud of you. Of all that you have survived,” I said.
Boy nodded, and we sat like that for a moment. After a short while, he raised his kabob to me in offering.
I shook my head. “Eat up. You are going to need it.”
“But you didn’t get any,” he said, threading his lip through his broken tooth.
“I’m alright. Besides—” I patted my stomach, “—I’m still full of thatbread.”
Bread. If it could even be classified as such.
Boy had brought it to me yesterday while I was chiseling one of the wood slat ends into a point. He’d looked as pleased as a house cat that had caught its very first mouse as he dropped the stale bread into my hands, exclaiming proudly that he’d gotten it for me. The bread had been rock-hard, but I had been desperate enough to eat it.
