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It rained on us as we rode toward wherever they planned to take me. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask much about the trip, which abruptly felt foolish.
“How far are we from your home?” I turned to ask Freddie, the Warrior closest to me. When they rode, he always seemed to bring up the rear, so perhaps they planned it that way. He allowed me to ride in front of him, although I was sure if we rode by speed alone, I would be far behind. Maybe so far behind that I would be unable to even see any of them.
“Our home.” He winked at me. “About a half a day’s ride. We’re much closer to the edge of the Safe Zone.”
I hadn’t ever been anywhere near the Safe Zone. “Is it…scary…at the Safe Zone?”
“It’s quiet, the kind of silence that makes you feel like you need to scream and run away. Even when you fight monsters for a living, it’s still like that.” I thought he’d found a funny way to put it. “Even Truett, who never otherwise falters, hates that place.”
He’d just told me a lot of information, so I tried to unpack it all. “Do you falter, Freddie?”
“Yes, I do. Not so much as I used to, but yes. I don’t know how to do Truett’s version of charging ahead. Maybe it’s because I know life can suddenly become a nightmare in an unparalleled way. It can happen at any time, so I never take anything for granted, and sometimes I reconsider an action.”
I nodded. “I understand.”
“I kind of thought you might. You’ll like your new home. It’s beautiful.”
Good to know. “I’ve never been concerned with where I would live. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not an idiot. I wanted to be comfortable, but I don’t want to be consumed with what my house looks like. I wouldn’t know how to be that person. My mother worked with the servants to clean. I’m not the lady of the house type.”
“Well…” He rode up right next to me, bumping his knee into mine. “You’re about to become the lady of the house.”
Ugh. I didn’t really give myself a chance to think about it, since life- or- death things took up most of my waking hours. “I think that might be just as scary to me as the red horned guy who acknowledged me during my ritual.”
“Why would he do that?” He made a face, scrunching his nose up. “What does that even mean?”
An offering… “I don’t know, Frederick, but I don’t think it can be anything good.”
“On that, we are agreed.”
We passed through the countryside companionably enough. The land rolled out as mostly green, desolate, without anyone else in sight. Sometimes, I would catch sight of an abandoned old building. Something from before. Few ruins remained near where I grew up. Of course, Hawkseye sprouted from ruins, but everything there felt wrong. On the verdant meadows we traveled, it was more interesting than strange to see the broken and strange shaped buildings.
“Have you ever been inside them?” I asked anyone who wanted to answer me.
“Those buildings?” Charlie asked, gesturing with his chin before he shook his head. “No, they’re not necessarily sound. It’s not a good idea to go inside of them, anyway. They’re ancient.”
That much I knew. “Can we go closer? I just want to see one. I’ve never been close.”
“Sure.” Oliver yelled behind him, “Follow me.”
We rode in a line toward the building I had spied from afar. Three stories high, it wasn’t like some of the buildings I’d read about, which supposedly could be so huge they could block out the very sun. But it still seemed tall to me. Taller, in fact, than the manor where we completed the ritual, which only stood two stories high, though it beat this one in length.
But it was the highest building I’d ever seen, so I craned my head to see everything.
“It’s not safe to go inside?” I asked, and hope likely tinged my voice.
Oliver shook his head. “We’re certainly not risking you to find out.” He paused then gave a half shrug. “We’ll risk Freddie. You, go in and find out what’s inside for her.”
“Suck it, dickhead.”
They all laughed, and my mouth fell open in surprise. Wow. That was coarse. I knew men spoke like that among themselves, but I never heard it myself before. Not even when they were terrible to me when I first woke up after the ritual.
“I think we’ve shocked her,” Charlie said then grinned at me.
I nodded. “You did, actually, but that’s okay. It’s good to be shocked. Sometimes.” Besides, it had been a real moment, and I loved to see them with their guard down.
“This way,” Oliver said, then led the way. Eventually, we stopped right in front of one of the buildings. I got off my horse and Freddie took her from me.
He brought her over toward his before collecting Oliver’s and Charlie’s, too. I smiled at him. “Not coming inside?”
