The frown digs deeper into my furrowed brow.
WherecanI go?
There’s no way I can find Bee now.
I don’t know how much distance is stretching between us, how much interference with the radios will keep us disconnected, and that’s if she even still has hers.
From the point where we were separated, in the town, it has been some stops but a lot of walking—I guess at least twenty hours total.
Maybe more.
I don’t have anything to go off, no way to count the minutes, but it’s how Ifeelthat helps me calculate.
The blackout has the sense of day and night. It comes in weather shifts, slight drops from cold to freezing, louder whistlings of winds then quieter darkness.
Could all be total nonsense.
Not that it matters anyway.
It only means it will take me a trek to get back to the town. Then I assume Bee is the same distance in the other direction… and I’m guessing there is about two, maybe three days between us.
I don’t like my chances.
Through the exhaustion, the threat of being abandoned out here touches my mind, kicks it into a tumbleweed of thoughts—but not fast, apparently.
For a heartbeat, two, three, the warrior just watches me, his head slightly tilted to the side, a faint frown etched onto his marble face.
Blood spatters along the tension of his jawline, beneath the slash of shadows that cut across his cheeks.
But those green, gleaming eyes are on me.
If I decided he had much thought in his brain beyond eat, sleep and kill, then I might think there’s a curiosity in the way he considers me, like I’m some discovered foreign creature to be studied… then dissected.
No doubt in my mind, he’s waiting to see what my next move is.
Oh.
I get it.
The warrior wants to see if I realise that running is a terrible idea for so many reasons.
It’s an assessment.
I won’t run…
Not yet.
I’ll wait for Bee.
Patience and some luck mean survival—and I can hang onto that until she finds a way back to me.
The warrior seems somewhat satisfied by my stagnant response, and he diverts, “Relieve yourself.” His hand lifts in a lazy gesture to the thick tree trunk whose roots roll over and under the earth. “Leave your bag.”
The instinct to follow the command rolls my shoulder just once—before I realise I’m not getting these bag straps off while my wrists are tied together.
I hold out my hands.
The warrior drops his gaze to the silky black rope coiled around my reddened flesh, then flings the sudden cold burn of his stare back to me.
