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Lost and disoriented as she wound us deeper and deeper through the underbrush.
“I don’t understand what’s happening, Penny, but we can talk about it. Figure out how to fix whatever has you upset.”
Big droplets of rain began to pelt from the sky, and the roar of the river grew louder with each step. As she forced me into the tangled disorder of the woods. Every looming branch overhead felt as if it would gobble us up.
She choked over a cry, as shocked as if I’d struck her in the face. “Has me upset?”
Grief poured from her words, and she kept urging me forward.
A bolt of lightning cracked overhead, and the sky broke open with a torrent of rain. Our feet slid and slipped over the damp earth and stones covered by slick moss.
We finally broke through the jumbled bosk and out onto the bank of the river.
Hedged by boulders and littered with fallen trees.
The waters gushed, boiling white caps that churned and spun.
The storm began to rage around us, an assault that soaked me to the bone.
My shoulders hitched up to my ears, and I could feel her turmoil battering into me from behind.
Uncertainty and sorrow.
It speared through me. Her torment and mine.
“What are we doing out here, Penny?” It was a whispered, haggard petition that I rasped through the rain that pummeled my face. “I don’t understand, but I want to.”
A garbled sob wrenched out of her. “You want to understand, Elena? You want to understand having the one thing that means the most being torn from you? A limb that has been cut from your body with a dull, jagged knife? A wound that never heals?”
Hurt lancinated from her spirit.
“I have felt that kind of pain…”
The words faltered when she released a guttural moan.
“No. No. You could never understand.”
A gust of wind blew through the trees, whipping the storm that blazed from her.
“It festers, Elena. That kind of pain festers and decays until there’s nothing left inside you but the rot. And the only thing that remains is the hate.”
Her distress wound with the thrash of the limbs. “I came here full of it. Hatred for you. For what you’d done.”
My mind spun. Trying to process what she was saying.
Was this related to the Crimson Crows? To someone who had been a part of the corrupt they’d taken out?
“I wanted to infiltrate. Fill you with the fear of what was to come.” She choked a disbelieving, disgusted laugh. “And then I…I started to like you. Witnessed your kindness. Believed it.”
She paused over a whimper.
“How pathetic of me, isn’t it? That I would gain affection for the person who destroyed my life? I was going to leave…but I liked it here. In it, I knew I couldn’t keep scaring you. Couldn’t stomach your fear or you continually watching over your shoulder.”
Oh God.
The threats.
It was Penny the whole time.
