Page 83 of Citadel

“No.” This much I’m absolutely sure of. “He gave up everything to keep us safe. We can’t throw that away by doing something stupid. We have to go home.”

“I think that’s right.” She strokes my hair very gently. “I was wrong about him. He’s not who I thought he was. I think he’ll be here before long.”

* * *

We eventually fall into a restless sleep for a couple of hours, waking up again when the sun gets higher and brighter in the sky.

Cole still isn’t here, which means we need to head out without him. The farther away we can get from those men and their stronghold, the safer we’ll be.

Every muscle in my body is sore. My feet hurt every time I put weight on them. And my heart feels like it sank into my stomach and is churning sickeningly there.

After we wash up in the river, Breanna stands up, searching the woods in the direction of the highway. I know what she’s looking for.

“We can’t wait much longer,” I say.

“I know.” She rubs her face. Her freckles are standing out starkly on her paler-than-normal skin. “Well, even if he’s delayed, he knows where we’ll be. He’ll go back to Monument looking for us.”

“Y-yeah.”

She gives me a sharp look.

I shrug. “I don’t know. This morning I’m not as worried about him surviving. I think he probably will. But he’s going after his brother. I think it’s going to be like last time.”

“It’s not like last time. We both saw he’s changed. He chose you over his doomed quest for his brother. I think he’s going to keep choosing you.”

My face works as I fight a little surge of emotion. Then I nod and shrug again.

I have no idea what to say.

“Well, we’re running low on drinking water, so let’s boil some before we go. If he’s not here by then, we’ll go back to Monument, and he can find us there.”

It sounds like a perfectly reasonable plan, and I’m relieved at even a short reprieve from leaving quite yet.

We don’t have Cole’s small pot, which is what we’ve been using up until now, but we find a rock that’s shaped like a shallow bowl and use that to heat water up over a small fire.

The river water might be fine to drink, but we’ve seen too many people get horribly sick and even die from drinking untreated water, and it’s simply not worth the risk.

It takes a while because the bowl of the rock is so slight we need to fill it four times to get enough water for our bottles. We’re finally done and stamping out the fire when there’s a rustling in the trees behind us.

I gasp and whirl around.

So I’m facing him as Cole steps out of the trees into the clearing.

His shirt is supposed to be white, but it’s a muddy brown now from the dirt and sweat and blood that’s saturated it. There are streaks of mud running down the sides of his head, and he’s limping slightly.

His silver eyes cut from me to Breanna and back to me. “Y’all weren’t giving up on me, were you?”

Breanna lets out a little giggle. It sounds like both surprise and relief.

I give a soft sob and stumble toward him, nearly collapsing on him as he wraps me in his arms.

He hugs me tight. So tight for a moment I can’t even breathe. But I don’t want to. I cling to him, needing to feel him just like this. Big and warm and strong and dirty and smelly and wounded.

So incredibly human.

It’s a few minutes before I’m able to let him go even enough to simply look up at his face.

His expression is tight with reined-in emotion, but he’s smiling. Not broadly but definitely smiling.

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