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I’VE LOST TRACK of time since our spat with Grigore the beast. I have no idea how long or far we’ve travelled when the carriage slows. The wheels rumble louder and the wall pressed to my back once more rocks wildly against the howling wind. I listen deeper and realize the rumble isn’t coming only from the wheels. It’s rain drumming overhead.
I haven’t moved since I sank to my butt. I haven’t said word. Neither has Gabe or Kane, who chose to remain on his feet. We don’t trust our words and the reaction they might invoke from Grigore.
Georga and Chase are lined up against the wall beside me while everyone else is clustered around Olly as far from us as they can get. I guess we’ve been labelled the troublemakers, most likely to get ourselves dead first.
After a few moments, we pick up speed again and the rocking becomes a sway.
Gabe and I share a look, then I tear my gaze away. It’s not just that we don’t trust our words. There are no words.
After another indeterminate stretch, the carriage slows again, and stops.
Mistress Ell rises to her feet.
“Now is the time for all your questions to be answered.” She pauses with a serene smile, looking over us like a benevolent benefactor. “You are the Offered. Your lives and rights have been forfeited, gifted to us for our pleasure. You are the hunted. We are the hunters. This is The Hunt.”
The horror of what she’s saying sounds even more cruel on her soft, lyrical voice.
Gabe takes my hand, pulls me up with him. He doesn’t let go. The tension in his grip squeezes the fragile bones in my palm but I don’t slip my hand free. The painful comfort grounds me.
“What happens when we’re caught?” asks Georga. She’s also on her feet now, everyone is.
Mistress Ell’s green eyes light on her. “This is usually where I’d invite Grigore to give a small demonstration, but I’m sure we all agree that’s been taken care of. We are not without mercy. The Hunt will commence at sunset tomorrow, which gives you the advantage of a night and a day. If you’re fortunate enough to find your way back home, Ironcross may welcome your return freely and without penalty.”
A muttering starts up around Olly.
“No one has ever returned from the Tithe,” one of them points out sourly.
“There’s a first time for everything, my dear boy.” Mistress Ell smiles as she flutters her fingers at us. “Now go, my little birds, scatter far and wide, and may the hunt be on your side.”
Grigore opens the carriage door, letting in the tempest weather. Rain splatters over the threshold. A swirl of wind lifts the corner of a heavy velvet drape. Far away, a rolling boom thunders through the night.
No one else moves for a long moment.
The woman is certifiably insane. Her eyes sparkle with green warmth. Her smile is serene. She sounds like she’s sending us out on a fun adventure.
Nervous energy fizzles through me. It feels like there’s a hummingbird pecking up and down my spine. How do they plan on hunting us? With bows and arrows? Spears and swords?
My gaze darts to Grigore. With unnatural speed and hearing and their bare hands?
My legs are itching to run, to flee into the storm as far from this carriage as fast as I can. My brain stubbornly refuses to give the command. Once I step down from this carriage, I will be prey, hunted for Mistress Ell’s pleasure and quite possibly torn from limb to limb.
“Let’s go,” Kane says, nudging his chin to get me and Gabe moving.
Kane’s expression is neutral, guarded, but there’s a glaze in his eyes that worries me. His hair is plastered to his forehead and sweat beads above his upper lip.
Gabe still has my hand and he pulls me along, jerking my eyes forward and off Kane.
He’s hurt, maybe worse than I originally suspected.
Will he be able to run?
Chase and Georga are ahead of us. The other Tithed are closer to the door and now that we’re all moving, we’re a tide surging on the narrow doorway. Grigore stands to one side with his head bowed, the flowing material of his hood and cloak whipping about like rough waves on a black ocean.
My skin prickles as I shuffle closer, closer to the door. If I look now, with his hood being rippled to and fro, I might get a better glimpse at the monster hiding there.
I don’t look.
I don’t want to know what’s coming after me that badly.
Then we’re through, tripping down the slippery wooden steps. The rain is large pelting drops driven by the gusting wind. My t-shirt is soaked by the time I reach the bottom.
Georga and Chase are standing slightly apart from the others. I steer Gabe that way, checking over my shoulder to ensure Kane follows. A figure darts away from the group in the corner of my eye, gone before I get a proper view. Someone’s decided to make a break for it on their own.
Grigore exits last, closing the door behind him. He doesn’t use the steps. He hops straight down from the slip of a platform.
“Come on,” Kane shouts, shepherding us around a clump of tall, spindly trees that push up against the dirt road.
There’s not enough cover to shelter us from the rain and we’re not really out of sight. The light blazing from the carriage’s outside lamps bleeds through the cluster of thin trunks. Grigore is less than five feet away, standing at the bottom of the platform. If he turns his head slightly to the left, he’ll see us.
If we speak, he’ll definitely hear us. What is his range? It can’t be endless!
I squint into the blackness of the deeper woods. “We need to get farther from here.”
“We need to run from here,” Georga states, looking at Kane. “What’s the plan? Which direction are we going?”
“We follow the road until we get our bearings,” Gabe says.
I resist the urge to shush him, remind him Grigore hears all. It doesn’t matter. We’re not following the road back to Ironcross. I’m no strategist, but even I know that would make us an easy target. We need to get lost first, then make a roundabout way back home.
“I’m in no state to run anywhere,” Kane announces. He rests a hand on my shoulder, a heavy hand, coughing out a series of shallow coughs that roll together into a chesty wheeze.
He sounds terrible.
“I’m not leaving you here,” I say before he can order us to go on without him.
He doesn’t. “Good, I’d appreciate your help.”
I blink away the rain from my lashes, blink away my surprise. I’m glad he’s not putting up an argument. And desperately worried he’s not putting up an argument. How seriously hurt is he?
“Can you at least walk?” says Gabe. “We can’t stay here.”
Lightning forks down from the heavens. Seconds later, thunder reverberates in the distance.
Snippets of conversation from the other group reach us, their voices raised against the wind and rain.
“...stick together...”
“...make it easier for the hunters...”
When I look, I see another two figures sprinting away from the group, one straight down the road, the other slipping off into the trees. Only Kadin and Hannah remain, shoulders hunched in the pelting rain—it’s coming down harder now, driven by the wind.
I’m thoroughly drenched from my t-shirt, down my jeans, to my mud-sloshed running shoes. My ponytail slaps like a wet rag against my neck whenever I turn my head and water sluices down my face. Even though the night is clammy, my skin is covered in goosebumps. I wish that was the only reason I’m shivering. There’s a tremble vibrating through the core of me.
“We’ll see about walking,” Kane is saying to Gabe. “Once I’ve rested.”
“Sorry, man, but anyone who doesn’t get a decent start will end up as bait,” Chase says. “I’m out of here. Good luck.”
My mouth opens to protest, but there’s nothing to say.
Georga stares after as he dashes across the road toward Hannah. “If that’s what you’re made of, we’re better off without you.”
“He wants to survive and doing what he thinks best.” Kane’s talking to Georga, but his head is angled to get a view of Grigore over a low-lying branch. “That’s all any of us can do. There are no answers here. There’s no right and wrong. You should consider your own best option.”
“There’s nothing to consider,” Georga says. “I’m the reason you’re hurt. I’m not going—”
“You’re not,” he cuts her off. The hand on my shoulder eases as he takes a step closer to the tree, peering around the trunk. “You don’t owe me your loyalty. Grigore would have released you either way. I knew that. I wanted to test myself against him, that’s all.”
The road is empty now. Hannah and Chase and Kadin have dispersed...or run off together? I didn’t see. Grigore’s gone around to the front of the carriage, swinging himself up to the driver’s box.
Kane’s hand curls around my neck. His other hand commands Gabe and Georga to him with urgency. As soon as Gabe’s within arm’s reach, Kane’s hand curls around his neck, too, jerking him in. Georga catches on and presses into our huddle, our foreheads almost touching.
“I’m getting onto the back of that carriage,” Kane speaks in a hard, rushed whisper. “I don’t care if you come or stay. But if you come, you shut up and tread light and we hope to hell the weather masks us from Grigore and that other one.”
The hand around my neck slides down my arm to lock my wrist. His mouth brushes against my ear. “You don’t get a choice.”
And then I’m slip-sliding in the mud as Kane pulls me with him onto the road, his vigor and strength apparently miraculously restored. I don’t have time to think about the obvious lie. I don’t think about this suicide plan of his. I’m frantic, my body twisting so I can look at Gabe, my hand flapping at him to come on, come on, come on...finally, he’s moving, bending around the tree...
We’re at the platform and Kane’s hands fit around my waist, lifting me onto the edge. Gabe hauls himself up beside me. Georga’s one stride behind him and Kane waits for her—
The carriage lurches forward.
My palms slam into a grip over the end of the platform to anchor me as I swallow the cry of his name on my tongue. He scoops Georga onto the platform and grabs for the edge...misses by the rotation of a wheel and loses his footing, stumbling a couple of steps.
Heart hammering in my chest, I watch Kane regains his balance, helpless to do anything as the team of six horses start pulling into their stride, rapidly widening the gap between us.
A scream builds in my throat, but I daren’t let it out.
Kane bursts into a flat-out sprint, he’s gaining on us, but not fast enough—a galloped pull opens the divide, and another, and another, pushing Kane farther and farther away. I want to do something, I need to do something. I don’t know what.
Adrenaline is all I’ve got right now and it’s whipping about inside me like a frayed live wire.
The heavens light up above and thunder crashes down.
The storm is right on top of us.
I’m tossed left into Gabe as the carriage swerves dangerously. A chorus of whinnies bleed into the wind and rain and then the platform shudders beneath my bones and a jolt flings me forward. Fingers latch onto my upper arms from behind, a bruising grip that yanks me back with Gabe as he scrabbles deeper onto the platform. Georga is already pushed up against the carriage wall, on the other side of the door. My wide-eyed stare collides with hers, then flashes back to Kane. The horses must have reared up, because we’re almost at a stop and he’s gaining on us in quick, long strides.
Shouts come from the front. “Easy! Easy!”
The carriage rocks viciously, then tugs forward again but Kane is here, hands slapped to the platform to spring-board him on with a thud that is—hopefully—lost in the chaos around us.
I hold my breath, don’t breathe again until the pull of the horses evens out into a steady pace.
Kane crawls lightly to the back of the platform on Georga’s side where he draws his knees up and drops his head forward, as if it’s taken all he has to get here.
It probably has, even if he’s not quite as weak as he led us to believe.
Gabe slips an around my shoulder, and I can’t help myself, I tuck myself against his chest as the night flies by. We seem to be travelling through endless forest. The road winds around gentle bends, giving us intermittent periods of relative shelter from the weather depending on the curve and the direction of the onslaught. The rain eases into a relentless drizzle tossed about in the gusting wind.
At every strike of lightning, every crash of thunder, I hold my breath, petrified the horses take fright again and bring the carriage to a halt. So long as we’re moving, Grigore and Dannesh are a carriage length away from discovering us. When we stop, as we will eventually have to do, I hope to God Kane has a plan.
Although I can’t imagine what.
Every instinct inside me screams to be putting distance between us and these hunters, not sticking to them like glue.
But I trust Kane’s instincts over my own.
And there’s that intimate promise he stole from me on a shared breath...stay close...follow my lead...for me...