If it meant I got to hold my knife, I didn’t mind his mockery.
I followed at a distance, the folded knife my thread to home, to normalcy, to sanity.
My body didn’t cry out. It didn’t ache. My eyes darted, but even so, I could hardly stop my free hand from wandering to my nose and temple. Both were in perfect condition, as if I had never sustained a wound.
That was impossible. I must have died that night in the southern district. This had to be purgatory: a cruelly lush world where I was bound to trail at my killer’s heels for eternity.
The path continued, winding through the dense forest. Rustling sounded around us, but every time my gaze shifted in that direction I only caught the barest after-effect of movement. Whatever moved was as fast and ephemeral as a shadow.
Even without my wounds, I felt too slow, too dull for this place, as though it moved at double-time and I at half. The longer we walked the more frustrating it became. And the forest pressed in without relent, as though we walked around the inside of a well.
Finally, when we had walked an hour, I said to him, “Tell me one thing.”
He didn’t answer.
So I said it anyway. “Am I dead?”
His step faltered, but he kept walking. When he spoke, his voice held disdain and patronizing mirth. “If you’ve died, I’ve died.”
“That’s the idea.”
“And this is your concept of an afterlife?”
“I don’t believe in an afterlife.”
“Then why ask the question?”
My jaw hardened. I felt small, even without his gaze on me.
We walked on in silence until finally he said, “No.” His voice had lost its mirth and its disdain. “Neither of us are dead. Though you may wish it soon enough.”
I already do wish it, I thought, but not in the way he meant it. I clenched the knife’s grip tighter, imagining how fast I would have to run to plunge it into his back. Now that I had my strength back, my speed, I could?—
“You couldn’t,” he said, his pace unaltered. “I’m twice as fast as you and more than three times as strong. And if you trust nothing else I say, trust this: You’re better off without me dead.”
I nearly dropped the dagger. As it was, I stumbled on a root I’d never have otherwise missed and nearly lost my balance altogether.
Again and again, he seemed to predict me. To read my mind. It was like magic, but magic didn’t exist in my world.
As I thought it, I saw a flash of those green spears piercing the night sky. Terrible. Incredible. And I finally began to understand that twenty years inside the walls had taught me absolutely nothing, nothing about what lay beyond them.
Ahead of us, the trees relented. The path widened. And the two of us came upon a copse with a tree taller than any I’d seen, its base as wide as an entire block in the southern district. Purple-blooming vines grew up and around its sides, and around it was arranged a wide, silver-sparkling moat with a curving stone bridge across it.
“We’re here,” he said, and I thought I sensed regret in those words. “Sylvanwild.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Before me,the tree wasn’t quite a tree. Into its enormous trunk were tucked glowing, flickering lights—rooms and balconies. The branches were hung with large lanterns that gave off luminescence like low-hung stars. And twisting toward its highest point, the boughs entwined into a single, enormous spire reaching into the night sky.
My face lifted, following the braid of branches, but I couldn’t see the top.
A chill spread over me. This place wasn’t benevolent; its light was discomforting. There was order to this tree, yes, but barely tamed, as though long ago someone had bent nature into shape and it still remembered the violence of it.
“Sylvanwild,” I said.
“Yes.” Beside me, my captor seemed unwilling to move. “Look long on the sky, for you may not see it again for some time.”
My eyes shifted to him. I tried to catch his gaze, to understand, but he fell into a stride that suggested a march. Imperious, thorough, necessary.
