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It’s a trap.
I stop following Lea. I don’t tell her. I don’t know if they’ll come from behind me, so I dive to my belly and shuffle
to a gully so that I am lost in the mist. I put ferns over myself. I hear them now. The sound of swords. Of feet and stunpikes. Curses. How many are there? Lea calls my name frantically. She is not alone now. She’s led me to them. I hear crooked Vixus. I smell Cassandra’s flowers. She’s always rubbing them on her skin to cover her body odor.
Their voices call to each other in the mist. They know I discovered their trap. How can I get back to my army? I dare not move. How many are there? They look for me. If I run, would I make it? Or would I end up on the end of a sword? I have two knives in my boots. That is it. I pull them out.
“Oh, Reaper!” Antonia calls from the mist. She’s somewhere above me. “Fearless leader? Oh, Reaper. There’s no need to hide, darling. We’re not mad at you ordering us about like you’re our king. We’re not indignant enough to bury knives in your eyes. Not at all. Darling?”
They call taunts, playing on my vanity. I’ve never had much, but they can’t understand that. A boot steps near my head. Green eyes peer through the darkness. I think they see me. They don’t. NightOptics. Someone gave them nightOptics. I hear Vixus and Cassandra. Antonia grows frustrated.
“Reaper, if you do not come out to play, there shall be consequences.” She sighs. “What consequences, you ask? Why, I will cut little Lea’s throat to the bone.” I hear a yelp as Lea’s hair is seized. “Roque’s lover.…”
I don’t come out. Goddammit. I don’t come out. My life is more than my own. It is Eo’s, my family’s. I cannot throw it away, not for my pride, not for Lea, not to avoid the pain of losing another friend. Do they have Roque too?
My jaw aches. I clench my teeth. My molar screams. Antonia won’t do it.
She can’t.
“Last chance, my darling. No?” There’s a meaty sound followed by a gurgle and a thump as a body crumples to the ground. “Pity.”
I loose a silent scream as I see the medBot whine through the night’s mist. For all the power in my hands, in my body, I’m powerless to stop this, them.
I do not move until the early morning, when I am sure they are gone. The medBots did not take Lea’s body away. The Proctors left it so I would know she died, so I could not hold on to hope that somehow she lived. The bastards. Her body is fragile in death. Like a little bird that has fallen from the nest. I build a cairn over her. The stones are high but they will not keep the wolves away.
I do not find Roque’s body, so I do not know what has become of him. Is my friend dead?
I feel a ghost as I pick my way along the highlands, circling around the castle to avoid Antonia’s henchmen. I put myself in the path Cassius will take in returning from the Greatwoods, hiding beneath shrubs to stay from sight. It is midday when he returns at the head of a small column of horse and slaves. He kicks his horse forward to greet me as I come from the shrubs.
“Brother!” he calls. “I brought you a gift!” He hops off and gives me a hug before pulling out one of Diana’s tapestries and wrapping it about my shoulders. He pulls back from me. “You’re as pale as a ghost. What’s the matter?” He picks a leaf out of my hair. Maybe that’s when he sees the sadness in my eyes.
Sevro rides up behind him as I tell them what has happened.
“The bitch,” Cassius murmurs. Sevro is silent. “Poor Lea. Poor Lea. She was a sweetheart. Do you think Roque is dead?”
“I don’t know.” I say. “I just don’t know.”
“Gorydamn.” Cassius shakes his head.
“A Proctor must have given Antonia nightOptics,” Sevro speculates. “Or the Jackal bribed her. It fits.”
“Who cares about that?” Cassius cries, flinging out his arm. “Roque may be wounded or dead out there, man. Don’t you register?” He grips the back of my neck and brings my forehead to his. “We’ll find him, Darrow. We’ll find our brother.”
I nod, feeling a numbness spreading in my chest.
Antonia never returned to our castle. Neither did her henchmen, Vixus and Cassandra. They failed to kill me and must have fled. But to where?
Quinn flings her hands up in the air and shouts at us as we come through the gate.
“I didn’t know where the goryblazes anyone was! The slaves outnumbered us four to one till you got back. But it’s fine. It’s fine.” She grips Cassius’s hand when we tell her what’s happened. The tears well in her eyes for Lea, but she refuses to believe Roque is dead. She keeps shaking her head. “We can use the slaves to search for Roque. Probably wounded and hiding out there. That’s it. That has to be it.”
We do not find him. The entire army searches. Not a sign. We convene in our warroom around the long table.
“He’s probably dead at the bottom of a ditch,” Sevro says that night. I almost hit him. But he’s right.
“The Jackal did this,” I mutter.
“Tough shit,” he says.
