Page 11 of The Infinite Glade
It sounded like a good idea. The best idea in a long time.
They could all go back to Roxy’s house, eating warm stew every night and reading her grandfather’s books, living a simple life where the only things they killed were wild animals and feral Cranks. But all this stuff about Evolution had been knocking at his brain. His consciousness. Alexandra wasn’t the only one who seemed to believe in this thing. He never cared about disappointing people as a soldier . . . but now Sadina, Dominic, Orange, and Roxy were the voices in the back of his mind. Having people he cared about meant caring about how they felt, too.
Life was easier as an orphan.
Easier when he had no name and no friends.
But those things that made his life more complicated also made life better.
He lowered his gun and stepped out of the brush. “Are you okay, Goddess?” He shouted to purposefully startle Alexandra. He held his gun, ready to fire, just in case.
“Oh . . . yes.” She looked over her shoulder to the Berg as she walked closer to Minho.
He looked past her shoulder, too . . . at the Berg in the distance, making sure this fraud of a Goddess in front of him knew thathe knewwhat she had just done.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “I told you I’d be fine; you don’t know how many crazed ones might be out here.” She shook her head with every word she spoke. “You’re just as mad as them. Mad.” She wiped her hands against the cloak.
“That’s exactly why I came to check on you . . . Goddess.” He’d call her whatever she wanted. He could play along even though in his mind, his heart, and in all his bones he knew one thing for sure—she was no Godhead.
Quite possibly the opposite.
Some form of a devil.
“I appreciate you checking on me.” She winced a smile.
“A good thing I did. It looks like you ran into some trouble back there . . .” He motioned with his gun. She’d killed that man too easily; the poor guy was injured from a crash and would have died in the Berg anyway. A mercy killing. Minho had surely committed enough of those killings himself. He still wondered some days—the darkest days—if he should have killed young Kit out of pure mercy when he found him in that shaft, all but beaten nearly to death. But a tiny, quiet hope let Minho believe that maybe Kit had survived that beating in the lower levels of the castle. In the place they’d called Hell, deservedly so. Maybe Kit had gone on to begin a strong soldier’s life.
“Trouble? No trouble at all.” She smiled and lifted the hood of her cloak to rest on her head, draped across half her face. But the wool couldn’t cover the lie.Minho once again fought the urge to kill her right there, be done with it. Snap her neck before she even felt his hands touch the hood of her mustard yellow cloak.
But he wouldn’t.
He needed to find out what she was trying so hard to cover up. And why. His new friends needed to know that truth before he could do anything too drastic.
The Remnant Nation never gave its soldiers any reason for the war other thanthe Godhead was evilandthe Evolution was bad, but Minho made it his mission to find out why. What was Alexandra hiding that the Great Master and the Grief Bearers knew, but no one else? One thing, above all, made him feel a tremble of uncertainty.
Who were the good guys?
Isaac crept toward the fire.
The bushes stabbed him with tiny prickly, pokey things. Even the berries on the bush looked like they had thorns growing right out of them. He motioned for Old Man Frypan and Ximena to stay back while he and Jackie got closer. “Hey, be careful . . .” he whispered to Jackie as she leaned against the same bush. “It has spikes on it.”
“Why does everything on this island double as a weapon?” she whispered with full annoyance. Isaac didn’t bother correcting her that the four of them weren’t on any island. They might never be on an island again. But as long as he could find his friends, Isaac would be okay.
He leaned into the bush and his ears stretched as far as they could to hear Dominic’s laugh or his singing. Dominic’s awful, dreadful singing. He reached with his senses, hoping to hear Trish scolding Minho, or Roxy telling one of her tall tales from all those books of hers. But as much as Isaac wanted something—anything—he could only hear the swooshing of his own blood inside his head, followed by the heaviness of his breath as he exhaled. He looked over at Jackie hunched down in the brush next to him. “Can you see anything?”
She shook her head. “No. But it smells like fish.”
Isaac smelled the cooked fish, too, but almost thought he was imagining it. He couldn’t even remember the last time they ate a proper meal. He leaned in closer to the thorny bush and moved a thick branch from his field of vision so he could see the size of the fire just on the other side of the clearing. Flames sparked high. It was certainly a big enough fire for all of their friends to sleep beside . . . but Isaac only counted two shadows. Two adult-sized shadows.Ugh. All his hopes fell to the back of his throat. He swallowed hard and backed himself out of the thorn-trap, but not before getting one of those damn spiky things stuck in his finger.
“Wait . . .” Jackie said. “No way . . .” She pulled at Isaac’s elbow.
“What?” he whispered as he pricked the thorn from his finger.
“Doesn’t that look like those people . . . the ones who kidnapped you?” She pulled on him harder.
Isaac shook his head without leaning back into the bush. He didn’t need to look. There was no way Lettie and Timon had survived and were the two shadows sitting in front of the fire. No way. Butwhat if?He couldn’t leave any question unanswered. He held his breath and leaned into the gaping hole in the brush to take another look. He prepared himself to see the fire-lit faces of his kidnappers—but the two shadows were gone.
What the heck?
