Samick tenses against it.
He looks down at the woman whimpering at his boots. “Where did she go?”
She doesn’t look up.
She stares at her fingers curling in the sand.
Her voice trembles in sync with her body, “To the bridge—she said it’s the way out.”
That sensation of wretchedness sinks down his throat and hits his chest. It spreads, like spilling tar, to his gut.
A curt breath escapes him.
Jyrki lifts a frown to him, but Samick’s attention is wholly on the woman. “How does she know the way?”
Surges of anguish pummel her.
Her shoulders quake with each strike.
The bubbling is festering too close to him.
Samick itches to step back from her.
But her confession keeps him rooted to the spot—
“She has a map. And a compass.”
Tesni has his supplies.
He did not find the bag in the ruins. And she had it before the wave struck.
He did not find her.
Not a trace of her.
Because she took the supplies, and fled.
The frost spreads over him. It touches his fingertips first, then sprouts along his cheek.
But inside, he is quiet.
A cold, calm rage.
All along, Tesni knew about bridges.
Knowledge she kept to herself each time he read the map in front of her. Those times she stayed close to him, leaning on him, resting her head on his arm—reading the map.
Hands fisting, his lashes close on the threads of cold rage lashing inside of him.
As he opens his eyes again to the darkness, Jyrki is dragging the whimpering woman back to the captives.
Samick turns to look up the shore—at the general and her second.
Both watch him.
Then he glances at the trees.
General Raske seems to grow in the darkness. Her shoulders set against his stare—the challenge in it as he starts up the shore…
