I couldn’t help but laugh. “Maybe it’ll come back and finish the job,” I said, my mouth tasting of copper. “Put us both out of our misery.”
He just shrugged, lips twisting in a way that made me want to claw the expression off his face. “Wouldn’t be the worst way to go.”
We left the carcass behind. The smell followed me for miles, sinking into my sinuses like a disease.
That night, I dreamt of Lillian. She was in the kitchen, dappled in sunlight, her hair curling into a halo, her eyes wide and brown and not yet empty. She was slicing apples and humming some song I’d never learned the name of. I circled her, slow as a vulture, waiting for the moment she’d look up and see me.
But she never did. I watched her for what felt like hours, paralyzed by longing and dread, wanting to warn her that she was already dead, that the kitchen, the house, the whole world was just a grave she hadn’t yet lain down in.
I woke up screaming. Caiden didn’t say anything, just stared at the flames until I shut up and curled into myself.
I hated him for his silence, but I hated my own noise more.
The next morning, I sat up and sucked in the freezing air, my teeth picking up where the night left off, chattering like a machine gun.
I watched Caiden kick dirt over the embers, his hands and forearms streaked with soot.
His back looked bent, tired, as if something had finally managed to gnaw a piece out of him.
I wondered what he saw in the dying glow, what hallucination or memory was haunting him.
Maybe he was reliving some bullet-ridden wasteland, or maybe he was just contemplating the infinite new ways I’d inconvenienced him.
When we started walking again, I could barely keep up.
I let Caiden lead, watchedthe set of his shoulders, the hard swing of his arms. Sometimes he looked back, just to make sure I hadn’t dissolved into the green-black murk.
The path, if you could call it that, was little more than a vein of mud slicing through the trees.
My shoes slipped, my socks congealed with cold water. Every step was a fresh, exquisite misery. I rolled each ache around in my mouth like a stone, savoring it. It was the only taste left to me.
I thought, for the hundredth time, about how easy it would be to just stop. Sit down, lean against a moss-eaten stump, and wait for the earth to reclaim me.
But the memory of Lillian’s corpse—rigid, alone, face gone slack and pale—kept me lurching forward. I would not die her death, not if I could help it.
We crested a ridge around midday. My vision wavered at the edges, a feverish haze brightening every leaf, every shadow. I saw the world in halos, like I was already half-ghost.
My knees locked, and I swayed, woozy with hunger and dehydration. I could hear the throb of blood behind my eyes, the world pulsing in and out of focus like a failing satellite feed.
The trees pinwheeled above me, stars blurring into daylight, and for an instant I was nowhere. Just floating, bodiless, in that gap between misery and oblivion.
Then Caiden’s voice cut through, too loud: “Careful, princess. Wouldn’t want you passing out and making my life any harder.” He was a few steps ahead, standing on a flat outcrop of stone, arms folded, lips pulled into a knife-edged smirk. “Unless you want me to drag your corpse the rest of the way.”
I closed my eyes and clenched my fists, nails digging into palm. “I’m not dead yet,” I rasped, the words no more than a strip of sandpaper in my throat.
He didn’t move. Just watched, pupil narrowing as if to see how much further I could be pushed before the breaking point. “If you want to die here, just say so. Might save us both some trouble.”
I staggered after him, every step an act of violence against my own body. Each muscle screamed rebellion, but I kept moving, unwilling to show him that he was right, that I was weaker than he was, that I was still the victim.
The sun glared down from directly above, a white-hotinterrogation lamp. Sweat pooled in the hollows of my neck and spine, but my skin felt cold, as though I was already being digested by the world beneath me, inch by inch.
We kept going. Each hour was a fresh torment. The only food we’d seen was a squirrel, flattened and leaking, in the middle of a game trail. It looked like a prophecy. I watched it for too long, its ruined face, its dark, poppy-seed eyes.
I’d never felt more kinship with a dead thing.
The ground leveled out, and the trees thinned, opening onto what passed for a trail. A weedy tire rut, pocked with puddles, barely navigable.
I followed Caiden in silence, though the throb in my head was a chorus of curses. I wanted to hate him, but my hatred was brittle, all flaking edges and hollow bravado. Mostly, I just wanted to collapse.
