“And that means I could lose you again.” She opened her eyes, looked at Jentt, and then looked at Zera. “I could lose all of you. Nearly did. I can’t bear that.”
“And what if we lost you?”
“I—”
Amazingly, it wasn’t something she’d ever thought about.
Zera patted her hand, the one that still had all five fingers. “I love you too, idiot.” Leaning over, she kissed Kreya’s forehead. “Get some more rest.”
She left the room, and Jentt stepped back to allow her to pass. He lingered in the doorway for a while, looking as if he had more to say but pressing his lips together so he wouldn’t say it.
Exhaustion pulled on all of her muscles like a heavy weight. “Do you forgive me?”
He was silent for a moment. “No.”
Fine. She deserved that. “Will you forgive me?”
This time, he didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
Good enough.
It took another three days before Kreya felt up to her usual strength. By then, Zera was able to shuffle around without aid, and Stran seemed determined to prove he was as good as new, spending their recovery days chopping as much wood as possible.
The surprise was Marso.
In the wake of Kreya and Zera’s recoveries, he skipped through the farmhouse as if each day were suffused with sunlight, and he rained smiles on everyone. He played with Stran’s children, helped with nighttime feedings for the littlest one, took over cooking for the majority of the meals, and made the farmhouse sparkling clean.
Finally, when she felt sufficiently like herself again, Kreya planted herself in front of the kitchen sink and asked, “What is going on with you?”
He stopped. His smile was like Stran’s daughter Vivi’s when the rag dolls danced for her. “I was never broken. I wasright. Andas soon as all of us are well, we’re going to destroy him, finally, permanently, and I’ll be able to sleep the whole night without screaming.”
“That sounds good,” Zera said, coming into the kitchen. “Except I never want to sleep again. I did enough of that. Hey, Stran!” She called out the window, and the sound of chopping wood ceased. “Come in—we’re ready to discuss our plan of attack!”
“About time,” Stran said, coming into the kitchen and plopping himself into one of the chairs. It creaked beneath him. “First thing we need to do is plug up those bone-blasted exit holes. Keep the monstrosities bottled up in their tunnels.”
Jentt joined them, coming in from the back rooms. “No, the first thing we need to do is ask those nice boys and girls on the wall to quit using us as pincushions and aim at the actual enemy instead.”
“Coordinating with them might be key,” Zera said. “After all, they must have seensomethingon the plain that shouldn’t be there. We find out what they reported to their higher-ups, and what size army they can raise and how quickly they can be deployed.”
Sinking into a chair, Kreya listened to them discuss how to approach the wall, how to contact the border guards without alerting Eklor’s forces, and how thorough they intended to be in making sure he was dead and stayed dead this time. She said nothing, watching the faces of her friends as the arguments became more heated: approach openly or covertly, with assistance or without, target only Eklor or eliminate his forces first. She noticed Amurra hovering in the doorway, with Vivi and Jen clutching her legs. Little Nugget was in her arms, chewing on the ends of her golden hair. Kreya met Amurra’s eyes.
When Stran took a breath to launch into another idea, Kreya said, “No.”
They all stared at her.
“Excuse me?” Zera said.
“No to which part?” Jentt asked. “There are pros and cons to all the approaches—”
Kreya got to her feet. “No to all of it. Look at us. He kicked our asses when he was barely trying.” With her bandaged hand, she gestured at Stran’s shoulder and Jentt’s limp.
“He caught us by surprise,” Stran objected.
“He didn’t,” Kreya said. “I believed he was there. We all acted as if he was. Cautious. Thorough. We did everything right, and we nearly died. We have to face the truth: we aren’t the heroes we used to be.”
“Sure, we’re out of practice, but the old instincts are there,” Jentt said. He demonstrated by plucking a kitchen knife out of its block and throwing it across the room. It thunked into a knot in a beam of wood.
Vivi and Jen cheered.
