Noah stops, his breathing like a storm, a gasp, then looks back.
The men are nearly to Cricket, and I feel like I can’t breathe,like the trees are tilting above me, the sky splintering and breaking,shatteringapart. I’m dizzy and I want to close my eyes, but instead I brace a hand against Odie’s shoulder, who’s stopped just inside the tree line, air still gusting from her nose, stamping her front foot, uneasy in the narrow thicket of trees, ears darting forward and then back like she might bolt again.
“She won’t go down without a fight,” Noah says under his breath, his voice thin, hardly there at all.
And he’s right.
Noah pushes me up onto Odie’s back.
My hands fall to her mane, and I stare down at the blood on my palms, my fingertips—Cricket’s blood. But there’s more blood dried on my throat, smeared down my chest. Holt almost slit my throat, giving me a scar to match his own.
I gulp, I breathe, the air shaking around me, the trees swirling and fracturing above. I blink it away, everything numb and blotted out. I feel the weight of Noah climbing up behind me, folding his arms around my torso, keeping me in place—his hands gripping the reins—and we ride deeper into the trees.
As far from Mill City as we can get.
Butfarwill never be far enough.Cricket is dead.Still, I don’t let the sob break free from my throat. I hold it in tight. Because I don’t deserve to cry; I don’t deserve to hurt. This pain belongs to Noah, not me.
He doesn’t speak as we travel through the forest, silent as a boy who’s had everything taken from him. Everyone he loves.
Hours slip by, silence folding in around us, until we reach a ridge of rocks where a shallow stream knits itself through several large moss-covered boulders, before curving away into the forest to the west. We stop to drink, kneeling in the muddy bank to clean the blood from our skin.
We can’t stay long. The men will be coming after us once they corral their horses.
And now they won’t just want to capture me—the girl they’ve been chasing across miles of terrain—they’ll want revenge for Holt.
I stare down at my reflection in the water, the pain surfacing again like a cold, musty shadow. But when I look to Noah, bent low, drinking from the stream—water spilling between his hands—I say nothing. There are no words anymore, nothing I can give him to set any of it right.
“We should keep moving,” he says coldly, wiping his hands against his pant legs, but the thinness of his voice, the brokenhearted edge to each word, are sharpened nails against my own awful heart.
Wordlessly he helps me back atop Odie, and his loyalty feels like its own dagger—something I don’t deserve. He’s still here, with me, after everything that’s happened.
Night comes, dark and starless, and Odie plods through the sparse woodland where the trees grow thin and tall, white trunks and small, pale green leaves beginning to turn golden. If we’re lucky, the men will be a good hour or two behind us—the time it would take to track down their freed horses. To bury Holt, to come after us.
When light finally breaks across the landscape, we have trekked into unfamiliar terrain, the hills and distant mountains a strange, craggy silhouette—dense swaths of evergreens untouched by man,thick underbrush and grassy valleys where no path has been cut through the unaltered land. It feels as if we’ve ventured far past the known world.
Noah still doesn’t speak—arms framing my torso, holding me to him—and I wonder if he’s thinking this place isn’t survivable. I wonder if he’s thinking that my life wasn’t worth Cricket losing hers—if he’s regretting everything. I know I’ve caused him so much pain, immeasurable, deep and wretched. I want to tell him that I’d take it all back if I could, but there’s no point speaking of impossible things, childish things, so I stay quiet—the wind biting at our backs, growing colder with each mile, yet we push on.
As if there is no other choice.
Sharp mountain air and clouded sky and Noah’s compass taking us north.
We move by habit, his chest pressed to my back, his exhales always against my ear—making me shiver, making me want to sink closer, vanish in his arms, making me hate myself for what I’ve taken from him.
After another hour, my head lulled by the motion of Odie’s footsteps beneath us, we reach a shallow creek, hardly any water bubbling down through its narrow channel. But, desperate, we fall to our knees and drink, pushing our faces into the cold. The rocks are slick, soggy with moss, and I dip my hair into the water, soaking it through and then coiling it down my back, letting it drip-dry over my shoulders. My body shivers, teeth rattling, but I welcome it, the feel of the cold mountain water against my skin and filling my stomach. I feel cleansed in some small way—the pain of my wounds, my hollowed-out insides, momentarily numbed.
“Look,” I say, blinking, nodding to the other side of the creek where a low, mangy bush sags toward the water. “Blackberries.”
We crash through the creek, pulling the berries from the thorny bush, then shoving them into our mouths. After my stomach begins to feel not so empty, I pocket several of the harder, not-quite-ripe berries, the ones that won’t squish and flatten while we ride. I even carry a handful of berries back to Odie, and she nibbles them from my palm.
“We could camp here,” I suggest quietly. “Beside the water.”
Noah walks back across the creek, eyes scanning the wind-blown trees. “No. They’ll need water too, and they’ll stop here. We have to camp somewhere less hospitable.”
It’s well after dark—two hours since we left the cold creek—when at last Noah finds a place he believes will be safe enough to rest for the night. It’s unremarkable, no defining features, just a shallow place in the trees where we settle among the pine needles and dark soil.
He makes a small fire, just large enough to warm our hands, and we sit beside it like two thieves, desperate for its comfort. The silence expands around us, fills the quiet air, until it feels so big it hurts. We’ve barely spoken since fleeing Mill City. And I know time is running out, too many days wasted—we might not even reach the sea in time.
But for now, tonight, we need to sleep.
