Not yet. Not yet.
Three, two…
I freeze when a distinct coolness presses into my throat.
I hadn’t even felt Shaw shift to pull the blade. He presses it into the bruised and swollen skin of my throat, just above where my life’s blood thrums. “Don’t move,” he breathes into my ear, his words pebbling my skin.
If he keeps me here much longer, my chance will be lost. If there is a time for risks, it isn’t when I’m alone in the vast woods with him, miles away from anyone that will be able to help me. It’s now, only a few feet from the only people he shies away from.
I spin so quickly that Shaw barely has time to wipe the startled expression from his face, but his knife doesn’t waver as I face him. I pour all my anger, my hatred, into my stare; not only the anger I’ve felt toward him, but the mad darkness that’s inflamed me since my parents left.
I dip into my rage and will it to become bravery. To face him without quivering.
“If you were going to kill me, you would have done it already.” I raise my chin in challenge. My voice is steady and fierce, and I feel the truth of it in my bones. Whatever Shaw is, he is not my murderer.
His face twists into a humorless grin. He presses the knife further into my skin, until I gasp. A hot trickle of blood runs down my neck. “The minute you become useless to me is the same minute you become dead to me,” he snarls quietly.
Whatever truth I felt instantly turns to dust. Whatever hope for Shaw’s humanity that I’ve nurtured somewhere in the back of my mind, the true belief he is just as human as anyone else, vanishes. But I do not tremble. And I do not relent. “I don’t imagine being stabbed is a very quick way to die,” I tell him. My voice is no longer a whisper, but a powerful force. I watch as his eyes dart to the road, panicked that someone will hear me.
I’m suddenly aware of just how close we are. His squatted knees press around my body, and I can read every detail of his face. I haven’t allowed myself before, but now, I take it in. The cupid’s bow of his upper lip. The thin, white scar that dissects his right brow. The razor-sharp peaks of his cheekbones. The bruising of the shiner I gave him contrasting against the lightness of his eyes. “I will scream. It will only take one to bring the weight of that army down on you and all you’ve done.”
Shaw stares hard at me. Considers.
“I will scream,” I say again, louder. In this moment, I am Similian no longer. I am not meek or powerless. I am a someone to be reckoned with and will be quiet no longer. Something inside me shimmers, powerful and ancient as I stare down Shaw.
One of the soldiers glances toward the sound of my voice, and it is only by the mercy of those prickly wildflower bushes that Shaw remains hidden.
His face is flushed with fury as he watches me, a rage more intense even than when the Boundary hunters were actively trying to kill him. I force myself not to balk, not to consider the consequences his rage will rain down upon me if I should fail. Not to consider that he may not even allow me to survive long enough to feel it.
“I will scream!”
I shout it with all my might, one last, desperate attempt to force his hand.
The rage disappears from Shaw’s face, cooling to an icy calm. “No. You won’t,” he whispers, raising a hand toward me. I flinch, steeling myself to run, but the world goes black.
ChapterTen
Mirren
I wake with a dull ache in my skull and an unrelenting rage roiling in the pit of my stomach. It’s the second time I’ve awoken in the Dark World from the depths of unconsciousness but unlike my first experience, no time is needed to place where I am or what happened. I know exactly what happened.
Shaw.
I push up to sitting, perturbed to find myself wrapped in the depths of a down sleeping roll. Did he actually knock me unconscious and then find me a comfortable place to sleep? Absurd laughter bubbles within me.
I prod gingerly at my throat until the pads of my fingertips scrape across a small scab, no larger than the point of a pen. The size itself isn’t vexing; in the grand scheme of injuries I’ve acquired in the last 48 hours, it barely warrants a mention. It is that it’s there at all and who was so willing to inflict it.
I will not harm you. I will let you go.
I’ve never trusted Shaw, but somewhere deep down, I trusted the truth of his words. And why? He’s never shown himself to be anything but ruthless.
I untangle my legs and roughly shove the blankets away in disgust. Like everything else, it smells of peppermint and woodsmoke, and the thought of breathing Shaw in makes me feel sick. I was so close to escaping—close enough I could have reached out and wrapped my fingers around it, taken it for mine. But I didn’t. Instead, I bet on some shred of humanity in Shaw. A sliver he’s never even alluded to, but some stubborn part of me believes exists in everyone.
How surely I’ve been proven wrong. At the expense of my freedom. And my brother’s life.
“I made breakfast,” Shaw says in a chipper voice.
Gritting my teeth, I whirl to face him. My skin suddenly feels as though it’s been immersed in hot coals. “I’m not hungry.”
