Book 2 - Page 38 (2/2)

Backbreaking labor followed. Tegan didn’t make conversation; she understood the importance of our efforts here. If we failed, the settlement starved. All the while, I kept an eye fixed on the horizon, dreading the moment when it darkened with the onslaught of the horde. Without pausing for food, though I did swill water in the fields, I cut and cut, letting someone else gather the fallen grain and pile it in the wagon. Elsewhere, they pulled corn, dug potatoes, and whatever else the growers had planted. I didn’t know all the names, but my sense of urgency spiked.

“Slow down,” Tegan begged me. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

I just shook my head. We had little time left. I could feel it ticking away, as clearly as the hands on Fade’s watch. He’d let me wear it down below, and as I lay watching him sleep, I’d felt that ticking in my skin. I sensed it now too.

“I’m gonna be so glad to see my wife,” one of the guards said nearby.

“Been a long time,” another agreed.

Chatting as they were, the men didn’t seem to feel it. I worked faster. Feverish. This couldn’t be done in a day. How I wished it could.

When the light went, the growers returned to Salvation with the laden wagons. I wasn’t chosen for escort duty, and I prowled the camp like an angry spirit. Longshot stopped me on my second circuit, drawing me toward his private fire. Sometimes he let men join him as a mark of favor, if they’d distinguished themselves that day. I didn’t think that was the case with me.

“You’re gonna burn out,” he said. “And you’re making the others nervous. Do you want to go back and join your friends in town?”

“Would you ask that of one of them?” I demanded, jerking my head toward the guards cl.u.s.tered around the other fire.

“Nope,” he admitted cheerfully. “But you ain’t a grown man, either, for all you’d like to be.”

I stared at him. “I don’t want to be a man.”

“You sure?”

“Positive. I know people think I’m strange in Salvation, but I’m not a bad example of a Huntress.”

“Never said you were.” Without asking if I wanted something, he fixed me a plate of beans and roasted meat. It was venison, I thought, left from the last hunt.

Though I felt too sick with anxiety to eat, I shoveled the food in anyway. My body would get weak if I didn’t maintain it, and then I’d let one of my comrades down. Under the circ.u.mstances, we needed all the strength we could muster.

“How much longer?” I asked.

“Two days should wrap it up. The rest will rot in the fields, but it’s not ready for us to bring it in.”

“Will Salvation have enough food this winter?”

Longshot shrugged. “Might have to tighten our belts a notch or two, but n.o.body will starve, I reckon. And some could do with some slimming anyway.”

“You’ve always been so nice to me,” I said. “For precious little reason from what I can see. Why is that?”

He was silent for long moments, gazing out over the dark landscape. Then, unexpectedly, he smiled at me. “I brought you to Salvation. You’re like my own.”

What did that mean, exactly? Down below, I had no kin to claim me, just the good of the community. Topside, I had foster parents and Longshot too … whereas Fade had n.o.body. That seemed so unfair; he needed people to love him because he’d had that once and lost it. But maybe I could make up the difference. Perhaps my heart was strong enough to heal the damage. I clung to that hope, just as I had to the certainty he must be alive.

“Is that why you sent me to Momma Oaks? Because you knew she’d do more than tolerate me.”

The elder inclined his head. “I hoped she’d love you, yep. Seemed like you could do with some.”

That was when I knew—in his way, he loved me too. That was why he’d put up with my questions and visits to the wall, the nights he stood watch. Warmth bubbled up through the pain and uncertainty. It was hard to stay tense around Longshot, which was probably why he’d called me over. My muscles relaxed, both from his easy company, and the quiet warmth of the fire. Exhaling slowly, I closed my eyes and tried not to think about Fade. Or about Stalker, who had kissed me good-bye, but Fade seemed indifferent to that too. He no longer cared about anything—and maybe I fretted for no good reason. It might be normal for him to withdraw, considering what he went through.

Be patient, I told myself.

Before long, I excused myself and went to my bedroll. Sleep didn’t come easy, and I roused at every night noise, expecting to find a Freak trying to drag me out of my tent. As they had Fade. If they’d intended to instill fear by their actions, then they’d succeeded. I didn’t feel secure here anymore—not that there was safety anywhere. The whole world was a ruin, a place of sharp angles and pitiless lines that could cut you to the bone.

In the morning, I gulped water, hard tack and then sought Tegan in the field. She glowed a deep bronze where my skin burned from laboring in the bright sun, but there was no help for it. Momma Oaks would have some remedy when I got home. I wanted to see my foster mother with a desperation that bordered on unreasonable, but I felt like she could make everything better somehow, or at least explain to me why nothing made sense anymore.

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