Shaw’s breathing is heavy, and it takes his eyes a moment to focus, as if he is momentarily somewhere far from this clearing. “What?”
“Who is in danger that you’ve done this for?”
Shaw presses his lips together and shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve done it all the same. Knowing why won’t make my choices less abhorrent or more forgivable,” he meets my gaze, his face defiant. “Will it?”
It occurs to me that perhaps Shaw doesn’t wish to be forgiven. That beneath the burning anger and hard exterior, lies a wounded boy who thinks he doesn’t deserve it.
“It might,” I tell him honestly. A weakness, to admit that after everything, I am soft enough to forgive.
Shaw scoffs angrily, abruptly dropping my wrists.
“Who did you do this for?”
His face is as cold as stone. “Rest assured, I’m as selfish as you imagine me to be. My reasons are only ever for my own gain.”
Horrible, awful, repugnantbastard.“You’re appalling. You hold yourself as morally superior to those Boundary hunters, and whoever runs that army, but you should know one thing: you are just as much of a soulless monster as the rest of them,” I fling the words at him like a weapon.
Shaw pales, stumbling back as if I’ve physically struck him.
In truth, I’ve probably only paid him a highly received compliment.
He only turns toward the fire and says in a dangerously low voice, “I’m glad you finally realize that.”
* * *
Shaw
We walk for half a day, and I spend the majority of it alternating between cursing the girl’s glacial pace and cursing myself for making such a monumental mistake and almost getting both of us killed. I knew she was manipulating me, wielding my desperation like a well-honed dagger in the hopes of seeing someone on the road. Knew and allowed it anyway.
Emotion has no place on a battlefield.
My father’s words, hardened and cold, from a decade earlier. And though this battlefield has boundaries that are yet to be determined, the opposing side shrouded in mystery, it is a battlefield nonetheless. One that requires every bit of my focus if I’m going to win.
And now, because of my incompetence, time has slipped further from my grasp. By night fall, Denver will have been gone for three weeks and the fact that the Praeceptor’s army was marching so openly across the old road doesn’t bode well for Nadjaa. Carrying the Lemming across Ferusa is becoming a more definitive possibility with every passing minute.
She hasn’t spoken a word to me since morning, when her eyes went wide and her lower lip quivered with rage.Monster.
She’s not wrong.
A part of me sighed in relief when she spat the word. I’ve kidnapped her, hurt her and still, she looked on the verge of forgiving me.
Which was unacceptable. I don’t deserve her forgiveness. Hers or anyone’s.
So, when she called me a monster, I wanted to saygood, you understand. Protect yourself.
If rendering her unconscious and keeping her from the Praeceptor is what it took for her to harden herself against danger, then so be it. Even if the irony of it makes me want to laugh. Or punch something.
The girl huffs an agitated breath beside me and abruptly stops walking. She perches her hands on her hips. “I’m exhausted,” she announces.
I push down my annoyance once more, reminding myself it isn’t her fault she isn’t conditioned for such hard travel. Her cheeks are branch-stung, and her hair has escaped her braid in wild tendrils, all now plastered to her forehead with sweat.
Many things are wrong with my world, but I can’t imagine one where I wasn’t comforted by the forest. Since I was a boy, I’ve always run into the quiet womb of the Nemoran wood, jumping over felled trees and old stumps until I was far enough away from every other human that I could only hear my own breath. Even riddled with terrifying creatures like the Ditya wolf, animals twisted by remnants of old magic and the lingering effects of the queen’s curse, the wood has always had a muted beauty. And the creatures that dwell here have never judged me for the monster I am, for they too are ruled by their primal instincts that allow them to survive the Dark World at any cost.
They’re probably the only company I’m fit for.
The girl gulps the last few drops of her canteen.
I gesture to the small stream bubbling between the trees. “We can rest there and refill your canteen.”
