A spine-hardening roar fanned through the valley. Without letting go of my hand, he tugged me forward, carving a path through the sagging lianas and compact undergrowth. My gaze pinged from the gray trunks of thepanemto the peeling trunks of the exotic palms, on the lookout for red beetles. I saw none.
“Did you meet the fourth prisoner?” I asked between pants of sticky air.
His fingers stiffened around mine.
Before he could answer, a whine followed by a growl echoed so close it raised the fine hairs on the back of my neck. Through the thick copse of trees, I spotted dabs of purple and gold.
Even though I supposed I would find out soon enough, talking distracted me from the monstrous thing we were running towards. “So? Did you?”
“Yes.” He snapped the word out, jaw as rigid as his fingers.
“And is it someone we know?”
He parted a yellow thicket with his spear, revealing a sight I truly wished I could forget. Sure, I detested Kingston, but seeing his body dangling from atigri’s mouth like a ragdoll that had lost its stuffing made bile shoot up my throat. I spun away from Remo and evicted what little lay in my stomach.
When I straightened, Kingston puffed into gray ash, his blood still dripping from the beast’s muzzle. Thetigriroared its frustration, hopping over the debris of the train, closing in on Kiera and Quinn, who held spears up. The snap of a liana swinging over their heads had my gaze vaulting to the figure hugging the thick vine—a man with a head full of black curls and muscles that would put the proudestlucionagato shame.
The man bent at the waist and leaped onto the fiend’s back with the grit and confidence of someone used to hunting monsters. Hugging one arm around the animal’s thick, striped neck, he plunged a knife into its cheek and drew his arm back, carving a line from jaw to shoulder. With a final, thin whine, thetigricollapsed, and the hunter climbed off his dead prey. He pulled out his knife, then wiped the blood and gore that lacquered the blade against the mountain of purple fur.
“Are they all slain?” His deep voice rang through the now-silent jungle.
Quinn nodded. “Yeah. The new kids finished up their cat right before we came here.” He slanted a look my way that said he was going to demand answers about what he’d seen earlier.
I turned my attention back to the corded arms and built shoulders of the fourth prisoner, the only parts of him I could see from my vantage point.
“Look who’s already back . . .” Kiera tossed me a smile full of teeth.
I’d heard stories of Neenee and Geemee’s imprisonment in the Daneelie camp run by the Locklear matriarch. Kiera had chained and mistreated my aunt while her friends and family had tortured Kajika. To this day, my uncle hadn’t forgiven them, even though Neenee, forever the kindhearted pacifist, had overcome her grudges. Which wasn’t to say she wasn’t still wary of Charlotte Locklear, but she could hold a conversation with her if need be.
“I’d been expecting you to die at least a few more times before making it back down to us, princess.”
I wasn’t sure if it was the hateful undercurrent in Kiera’s tone or my label, but the fourth prisoner seemed to freeze. And then, slowly, he started to turn. Remo stepped closer to me. Not closer per se. Directly in front of me. My nose bumped the hard knob of his shoulder. Frowning, I touched his arm to shift him a little to the side, but with his feet planted wide, he proved as supple as acalimbor.
He was protective and possessive, but this was taking both to a whole new level.
Who was this fourth prisoner?
I stretched up on my tiptoes. When my gaze met the dark-haired prisoner’s, my hand, which was still on Remo’s bicep, popped off and smacked my parted lips.
32
The Revenant
Ididn’t think my heart had beat once since I’d laid eyes on the man standing beside the slaughteredtigri. I didn’t think I’d blinked or breathed once either. All of my senses were suspended by the sight of a man who was supposed to be dead.
A ghost.
A hero whose memory Neverrians celebrated each year.
I inhaled so sharply my chest cramped. “How . . .?” My lids dragged up and down over my wide eyes as though to clear it of what was obviously an illusion. Every time my lashes whipped my brow bone, the man from the file back in Fake Rowan’s sheriff station was still there.
Still staring straight back at me.
“Is he real?” I murmured.
Remo was so still he looked like he’d become one with the landscape. Only the fluttering at his temple gave away that he was still very much alive. “Yes.”
“Buthow?” I thought of the mound of orange dandelion clovers that blanketed the gray rock atop one of the Five. “A plant grew from your ashes, Cruz Vega.”
