He doesn’t bother to answer. He takes a hard left at the mouth of the tent and tugs me past the crumpled forms of all eight guards. I stare at the still-bleeding bodies, horror and awe mingling together.
By the Covinus, he did all thishimself?
If he notices my hesitation, he doesn’t acknowledge it. He glances over his shoulder and then picks up the pace as we race down a narrow row between tents. Hours must have passed since I was first thrown into Shivhai’s tent, because the camp is quiet. A few spare soldiers are left stumbling here and there, but they are deep in the spirits and take no notice of us.
Shaw is moving so fast that I have to sprint to keep from being dragged behind him. My wrists burn, the skin beneath the shackles rubbed completely raw. “Shaw!” I yell at him, breathless.
It’s all happened too fast. Horror and relief and regret mingle so furiously that I stagger to a halt, nausea overcoming me. I struggle to breathe, to keep the contents of my stomach down, but the air stings in my lungs.
Shaw shoves me unceremoniously into the darkness between a storage tent and a large tree, his hand over my mouth. His eyes flash with warning and I remember the way he talked about this militia and the warlord who commands it. I’m not the only one in danger here.
He’s risked death or worse by putting himself in reach of the Praeceptor. Why? Was it still desperation to save his father that drove him? Or was it something else?
“I don’t know whether Shivhai notified the Praeceptor that you were here, but if he did, we need to get out of here before he finds out you’re gone.”
I have only seconds to wonder how, exactly, Shaw knows Shivhai’s name. “I thought you said you didn’t care who he worked for.”
Shaw doesn’t look at me when he answers. “I didn’t then. I do now.”
The glow from cooling campfires glints in his eyes, rendering them almost colorless. He looks like a wraith, terrifying and desperate. A far cry from the collected assassin he was just moments before. “We can argue later about my kidnapping you and then following you and what a bastard I am for it, but right now we need to move.”
The need to laugh strikes me, staggering in its absurdity. “Youshotat me.”
He sets me with an amused stare. “If we’re airing grievances, may I point out the fact that you set a yamardu on me and then left me for dead?”
I glare at him, though he makes a fair point. “That doesn’t make us even.Thisdoesn’t make us even.” Whateverthisis.
He nods so enthusiastically that I’m positive he’s just placating me until we reach safety. “I wouldn’t dream of calling it even, Lemming.” A soldier guffaws from a few tents over and Shaw stiffens. “We’ll forge terms later. When we’re safe.”
I don’t miss the use ofwe.Whatever happened before this is water under the bridge. For now, we’re on the same side. I have no choice but to trust him.
I turn to move when a thought strikes me. “Shaw!” I cry out. A moment of my own pain and the memory of the others’ is swiftly forgotten. “Shaw, they’re keeping people here in a cage. We have to free them! They’re keeping them like livestock.”
Shaw pales. Something akin to agony washes over his face. “We can’t. Those cages are kept in the middle of the camp, Lemming, and there are only two of us.”
“We can’t leave them locked in there. Covinus-knows what’s going to happen to them!”
I watch the emotions swell over his face and then recede as quickly as a winter tide. Sadness, defeat, fear, and then…then there is nothing. Shaw’s face hardens and whoever he was just moments ago, disappears behind the mask I’ve grown to despise. “It’s not our problem.” His voice is hard. Commanding.
Unfortunately for him, I’m not his to command. “I won’t leave them.”
My muscles tense, bracing for the moment Shaw decides I’m no longer worth the hassle. The moment it becomes apparent to him that it would be easier to overpower me, pull on my shackles or press on that convenient little spot behind my ear, but he doesn’t move. He just watches me in preternatural stillness, his jaw clenched. His gaze travels to my neck, where blood from Shivhai’s needle is crusted against old bruises creating a grotesque necklace.
“If you’d like to keep that pretty throat of yours intact, we need to move. Now.”
My face heats, but I plant my feet and raise my chin. “I will scream and thrash and bring every soldier in this Covinus-forsaken camp down upon us unless you help me free them.”
Shaw tilts his head, his face lighting with something like respect. “I really wish you’d stop threatening to scream all the time,” he sighs. “We could be killed doing this, you know. Either now, or later, when Shivhai wakes up and they hunt us down.”
He didn’t kill Shivhai? Cool relief trickles down my spine, but I can’t place why. Why should I care that Shaw spared that monster’s life? “Which means whoever you traveled into the Dark World for will be lost as well.”
How he guessed, I’ll never know. Easton’s hazel eyes flash before me, but there isn’t a decision to make. Easton, with his easy grace and kind temperament would never choose his own life over those children. And though I have chafed and fought against the Keys my entire life, in this moment, I understand they are not all wrong. I can see the worth of Community before Self. “My life isn’t worth more than theirs. Neither is his.”
Shaw rolls his eyes and mutters, “Similian nonsense.”
“Shaw, there are children in there.” It’s a fool’s errand, to beg for mercy from the man who abducted me, who I’ve seen dance in violence and blood. He’s proven he has no heart, and yet, here I stand, chained and desperate, trying to appeal to it.
A muscle feathers in his jaw and then his body relaxes, as if he’s released the tension in every muscle with one decision. “Turn around. Let me see if I can pick the lock on those chains.”
