I see Noah’s posture change, shoulders dropping, the scar on his temple drawing tight. “What happened?”
“Same as everywhere else.” The man shakes his head. “Consumption swept through there. They quarantined the place, wouldn’t let outsiders in. That was three months ago.” He lifts the mug to his mouth but doesn’t take a drink. “Now the place is deserted. Nothing for you that way.”
Noah shifts uneasily, glances over at me. This isn’t what he wanted to hear.
“You know someone in Mill City?” the man asks.
“No,” Noah answers, looking to the door, then back to the man. “Was hoping to trade for a few horses, though.”
A cough echoes through the house, and I snap my gaze to Cricket. But her eyes are just as wide, scanning the room for who might have made the sound. Noah backsteps toward me. “Is someone else in the house?” Noah asks, directing his stare at the man, his dark eyebrows cut close.
The man’s expression dips, tensed at the corners of his mouth. “Just my wife, Della.”
Cricket rises from the chair, her breathing suddenly heavy.
“Is she sick?” I ask.
The man blinks, clears his throat. “Yes.”
Noah touches my arm, protective, eyes cutting over to the door, and starts pulling me back. “Time to go,” he says, his breath warm against my ear.
“Wait,” the man says, shifting his clouded gaze to me, stepping around the kitchen counter. “You don’t have to leave just yet.” But there is a slickness to his words, oily and hoarse all at once. A glint in his eyes I don’t like, a serpent coiling around a thought, a motivation. There’s something else he wants to say, and he taps his front teeth together,tap tap, before finally uttering, “I saw the mark.” His teeth fall still, and he nods to me, his gray, thick eyebrows pulled together. “On your neck while you were asleep.”
My lungs stop pulling in air.
Noah’s arm flexes, still holding on to me, and his expressionhardens—like he’s preparing for a fight. “Move toward the door, Vega,” he hisses.
“Please,” the man insists, stepping closer, a hand held toward me. “Are you her?”
I feel my mouth dip open, my heart a hammer, clapping,clappingagainst my ribs.
“The old stories say the Astronomer knows how to stop the illness, how to save us.”
My fingers start to tremble. “I’m sorry, I—” But my voice stops short.
“Cricket,” Noah says now, not even needing to look at her. But I catch sight of her moving to the door, touching the handle. She’s quick, reactive, even when pain mars every feature of her face.
“You could help us—” the man pleads, and I don’t like the way his voice sounds, strained, clawing up from some grave place inside his chest. The place where desperation grows.Rots.Until it’s all that’s left. Becoming the most inhuman part of you.
“She can’t help you,” Noah answers, his hand squeezing me tighter—not about to let me go, not for anything.
“But she knows something,” the man counters, eyelids peeled back too wide. Lower jaw pushed out.He’s thinking of grabbing me, reaching out and yanking me from Noah’s hands.
Another cough echoes from the hallway—his wife gasping for breath.
“The Theorists were right,” he says now, teeth clamped down. “The Astronomer is still alive—” His breathing turns quick, abrasive. “And you’re her, aren’t you?” He says it with certainty, a thing he needs to believe, and he starts moving toward us.
Noah folds his arm around me and pushes me behind him—putting himself between the man and me while we backstep toward the door.
“Go,” he says urgently to Cricket.
She pulls the door wide and slips outside, the wind howling through the doorway.
But there is a heaviness in my chest, meeting the old man’s unblinking, uncaged eyes. The desperation is rimmed by something else: loss and pain. Just like the people who strode up to Pa’s wagon, grief tucked in their eyes. This man is searching for the same thing: any last remnant of hope. Anything I can give.
I touch Noah’s hand against my arm, looking into his eyes. “It’s okay,” I whisper, then slide free of his grasp.
“Vega,” he says, reaching for me again and shaking his head.
