And that future right now held an enormous venomous stone fish. “Hold on!” she called, and veered sharply away from the river toward the tangled mass of trees. “Jentt, to me! Zera, watch Marso.”
Zera scrambled into the back of the wagon, replacing Jentt beside Marso. She cooed at him and put her arm around him. Jentt climbed up with Zera.
“Clear a path,” Kreya said.
“Happily.”
Standing, he drew two knives. Coming behind him, Stran braced him, holding his thighs steady while Jentt leaned forward. With blurring speed, Jentt slashed at the vines, branches, and greenery, clearing a path in front of them.
“When I met Amurra,” Stran said conversationally, “I thought she’d never go for a man like me. You’ve seen her—capable, beautiful. She was running her parents’ farm on her own since age fifteen and, when I met her, had already put in motion plans to purchase what is now our farm. Had no need of a partner.”
“How did you win her over?” Zera asked.
They burst out onto a deer trail, and Jentt stilled his arms. He sat on the bench as Stran returned to lookout on the back of the wagon.
“I didn’t,” Stran answered Zera. “She wooed me.”
“Attracted to the Hero of Vos mystique?” Zera guessed.
“She needed a tree removed but didn’t have the equipment for it,” he said. “I had a spare strength talisman, so...” He paused. Holding on to the back of the wagon, he swung himself out and kicked a croco-raptor in the face. It squealed as it hit a tree trunk.
“Got it,” Zera said. “You impressed her with your muscles.”
“Actually, no. It turned out there was a raccoon family living in that tree. I relocated them to a new home, and they scratched the crap out of my face as thanks. She said anyone who tried to cuddle a nest of baby raccoons deserved some cuddling without teeth and claws.”
“Okay, that’s the cutest story I’ve ever heard,” Zera said. “I may throw up.”
“River lizard ahead,” Jentt said conversationally. “Should we kill it?”
Kreya heard the roar and caught a glimpse of its massive jaws through the canopy of trees. It was ahead of them, on the deer trail. “Still got any croco-raptors on our tail?” she called back to Strand.
“One left.”
“Feed it to the lizard.”
She glanced back in time to see Stran’s enormous smile. Working together, Stran and Jentt caught the tail of the final croco-raptor. Activating her own strength talisman, Zera shouted out, “Now!” and joined them as they hurled the croco-raptor into the gaping maw of the river lizard as Kreya drove the wagon between its feet.
Stran whooped and punched the air.
Kreya smiled.We’re still a team, just like we used to be,she thought. No other group she’d ever heard of could have navigated the deadly valley like this. But here they were, surviving, thriving. Together, they could conquer the impossible.Eklor won’t know what hit him.Feeling more optimistic than she had since fleeing the plains, she kept driving through the valley, toward the forbidden zone and toward the future.
Chapter Fourteen
After a night switching off who slept and who was on guard—not counting Marso—and another day of traveling, Kreya and the others reached the wall. They stashed the wagon beneath a screen of matted vines and branches, and they used stealth talismans to sneak along the wall until they reached one of the grates.
It wasn’t the same culvert that Kreya and Zera had used before, but the grate was just as rusty and barely guarded. That seemed to be a theme with the forbidden zone. No one cared about it anymore, which was why in twenty-five years no one had noticed Eklor’s return.
Poor kids,Kreya thought, looking back at the guards who patrolled the top of the wall.They have no idea how terrible they are at their job. Or how terrible their job is about to become.
Using speed talismans, they left the poorly guarded wall behind. Kreya and Zera led the way across the plain, while Jentt and Stran marveled at how it had regrown. All the lush grass, the autumn wildflowers, and the just-beginning-to-turn trees made it look as if nothing terrible had ever happened here. But all of them remembered what had been, and Kreya felt a tightness in her chest as she thought of what was to come if she was right.
Stumbling along with them, Marso was muttering in a singsong voice, “Going to the dead, going to the dead, going to the dead.”
Zera whispered, “Can we gag him?”
“Absolutely not,” Kreya said.
“You know I love him, but he’s getting on my nerves.”
