“The Stewards denied her request to sit it out. They said she had to hide. But thenshespent the day at home, andEllissomehow stepped out into the wilderness after sunset. Why?How?What did you do?”
“I?”
“Who else? You set it all up. You forced him into some sort of bargain. Louise could stay with Mary if he…if he—what?—didn’t come find me?”
His gaze fell, and Greer knew she’d guessed right. She studied him as though he were a stranger. He felt like one. She knew he disliked Ellis. She knew he wanted someone different for her. But she hadn’t thought him capable of…whateverthiswas.
She willed the tears pricking at her eyes to not fall. “Do you really hate him so much?”
Hessel considered the question. “I don’t…I don’t hate him. But I will admit…I was cheered it was Beaufort who went into the woods yesterday.”
She felt the heaviness of the beaded necklace against her chest.Hessel didn’t know that she knew of the jewelry, that she’d figured out what the baubles could do. “You were cheered?”
He blinked.
“You knew he’d go into the woods?” she tried, pressing for a response.
“Of course I did.”
She shook her head. “But that’s impossible. Crossing over the border is impossible.”
“Not as impossible as you think.” He glanced toward her. “You’re a clever girl; I always thought you’d put it together.”
She waited.
“Haven’t you noticed there’s always someone who doesn’t come back from the Hunts?”
Agnes,Greer remembered with ferocious clarity.Agnes never came home.
Memories of other girls surfaced. Girls who had to be forced into the Hunting Grounds. Girls who’d screamed and scratched. Girls who’d claimed they’d rather die than be caught. “The girls who run.”
Hessel frowned but nodded. “They usually are girls, I suppose. I…I wanted to wait till you and Lachlan were more settled into family life, once he was ready to take on more responsibilities, to join the Stewards, but…” He sighed, as if it couldn’t be helped. “What do you know about the truce?”
Greer felt herself shrug. “Only what the Stewards say.”
“Enlighten me.”
She shifted uncomfortably, and recited the story with rote efficiency. “When the settlers arrived…there were all sorts of dangers. The wind and the flies, the cold and the ice. There were predators—wolves, white bears, wolverines. Lynxes and cougars. The Bright-Eyeds. But then the Benevolence came, and the founders saw how powerful they were. They begged for their help, and the truce was struck. They promised to give us their protection.”
They trapped us here.
Greer didn’t say those words aloud but couldn’t stop them from darting across her mind, like a sneaky mouse racing along the baseboards.
“And in return we give them?”
She furrowed her brow, incredulous that he wanted her to answer such a question. “Our gratitudes. The harvests at Reaping.”
Hessel’s stare was as heavy as a thunderstorm. “Anything else?”
Greer studied his desk as if it might have the answer, then gasped. “Not anything.Something. Someone.” Her stomach lurched, feeling sick. “They want one of us. A sacrifice.”
Hessel made a sound of surprised pleasure. “I knew my estimation of you was not misplaced.”
“What do they do with them?” Greer asked. She could picture the story play out, following her father’s hints as clearly as a line on a map. “The Benevolence—what do they do with all the girls who run?”
Hessel had the decency to look uneasy. “It’s not as if anyone has ever come back to tell the tale.”
“Do they give them to the Bright-Eyeds?”
