Defiance Series Complete Collection, page 40
He rolls onto his side, facing me. “When you kiss me, I want it to be because you’re thinking of me. Because you really want me. Not because you’re trying to distract me from something you don’t want to talk about.”
I look away. At the silver wash of moonlight seeping in through the entrance of our tent. At the tufts of springy grass our bedrolls don’t cover. At anything but him.
“I didn’t mean to use you. I didn’t really think it through.” I scrunch down into my blanket. “I just . . . I can’t . . . I wanted something real. Something to make the stuff inside of my head fade away. And what we have is the most solid thing in my life, so . . .”
“I understand,” he says softly.
“Do you?”
“I am kind of irresistible.” He wiggles his brows at me.
I laugh, and the lingering tension leaves my body. He grins at me, a funny, lopsided smile that wraps around me like comfort. He scoots closer to me and runs his fingers through my hair, gently tugging at the knots he finds.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I just want to be here for you.”
“I’m here for you, too,” I say. “I’m not the only one who lost family.”
Pain brackets his mouth and fans out from his eyes, and I slide my arm out of the blanket to press it against his chest. My fingers curve over the flesh and bone that shelter his heart. A heart strong enough to keep moving forward even when he’s lost so much. Strong enough to lead even when he doesn’t want to.
Strong enough to commit to me when I know I’m not an easy person to love.
“You could kiss me now,” he says, his voice low.
I smile. “Could I?”
“Yes.” He sounds breathless.
“Are you sure? Because I wouldn’t want to overstep or—”
“Rachel—”
“—make you uncomfortable, or—”
“Just kiss me.”
“—take advantage of poor helpless Logan.”
He leans down and covers my mouth with his. This time, I kiss him not to forget or to drown anything out, but because he’s Logan, and he’s mine. And then he holds me close as sleep overtakes him. I lie beside him, clinging to his warmth and desperately trying to stay awake as long as possible so that I can savor this before I’m once again plunged into a world of blood, loss, and unbearable guilt.
Chapter Fifteen
RACHEL
Sunlight pours through the gap at our shelter’s entrance as I stretch my back and shove my blanket to my knees. Logan is gone, and by the sounds of the camp outside my shelter, I can tell most people are up and moving around. My stomach grumbles as I yank my fingers through my hair and splash my face with water I saved from last night’s ration.
When I’ve finished, I shake the dust off my trousers and then consider which tunic to wear. We were lucky to recover enough clothing to give everyone two changes of clothes.
We were less lucky in the recovery of laundry soap.
Either that or the girls who are desperate to catch the eye of one of our few available boys are hiding the soap for themselves. I seem to recall that a few of our sparring participants smelled suspiciously like a spring meadow.
I sniff the tunics, choose the cleanest, and decide to take Willow up on her offer to teach me how to make soap. Shoving my feet into my boots, I strap on my knife, lace up my travel pack, and exit the shelter.
The camp is busy. The older men and women beat dust out of clothing and then place them into travel packs or on blankets that will be filled with light supplies, tied off with rope, and carried over the shoulder. The younger ones sharpen weapons, tear down shelters, and load the wagons.
Hoping I’m still early enough to get a breakfast ration, I head toward the canteen wagon. When I get there, Adam, Elias, and Willow are packing up the last of the morning rations. Willow is laughing while Adam waves his hands around, telling a story in a voice free of the hostility I’m used to hearing from him. I beg a piece of oat bread and a healthy dollop of goat cheese from Elias, who stares at me like I’m up on the Claiming stage until I tell him if he can’t find something better to do with his eyes, I’ll remove them from his face.
Turning from Elias, who suddenly finds the task of packing up the food far more interesting than looking at me, I jump when Quinn suddenly appears next to me. My bread goes flying out of my hand and nearly slaps him in the face.
He leaps back and catches it before it hits the ground. “Throwing food at me?”
“You startled me.” I grab my breakfast from him and take a bite.
“Next time I’ll announce my intention to walk up to you at least three minutes before I actually arrive.” His face is as stoic as ever, but a gleam of sly laughter lurks in his dark eyes.
Huh. Quinn has a sense of humor. Who knew?
“I think you’d look good in goat cheese. Might be an improvement.” I poke his chest and take another bite.
His left brow climbs toward his hairline. “Did you just insult me?”
“Only if you disagree with my opinion.”
He smiles slowly. “Do you have plans this morning?”
I shrug.
“I was hoping you could help me decide which weapons to assign to which trainees.”
I look him up and down—battered leather pants, half-laced tunic, scuffed boots—and see no evidence of a weapon of his own. “And which weapon to assign to you, too, right?”
The laughter disappears from his eyes, and he starts walking toward the wagons. “I don’t carry a weapon anymore. And I’m getting tired of making that clear to both you and Logan.”
I hurry to catch up to him, stuffing the last of my breakfast in my mouth and swallowing quickly. “You need one. We have a lot of enemies—”
He turns on his heel and stops directly in my path. I nearly plow into him, and manage to sidestep just in time.
“No.” His voice is cold, but something burns in his eyes.
“I know you’re good. I saw it for myself when you fought Carrington outside the gate.” I look away for a moment as I remember his promise to stay by my side and sacrifice himself with me so I could have my shot at the Commander. “But you’d be even better with a weapon.” And by better, I mean safer.
“Do you really think I need a sword to destroy any threat that comes at me?”
I cross my arms and stare him down. “How should I know what you’re capable of?”
“Because I told you.”
It takes a moment to realize he means the conversation we had in the Wasteland when he told me he’d once killed a man he wasn’t sure deserved it. “You told me you—” A woman walks by us, a large basket of dandelion greens cradled in her arms. I lower my voice. “You told me you killed a man, but that doesn’t mean you can constantly fight trained predators without a weapon in your hand and expect to live.” I gesture toward his leg. “You got cut the last time you fought. Next time, it could be much worse. You’re good, Quinn, but not good enough to keep taking on armed soldiers and expect to survive. Be reasonable.”
“I can do damage enough with my bare hands. I’m not changing my mind on this.”
Oh, how cute. He thinks he can out-stubborn me.
“I’m not changing my mind, either,” I say, my voice a harsh whisper between us. “We have enemies. Real enemies. And a bunch of untrained people who will probably panic and forget which end of the sword to grab if we’re ever attacked. We need you to be able to help.”
“You don’t think I helped yesterday? And the day before?”
“You did. But how long could you have held out if they’d cornered you? It was only a matter of time.” I blow a wayward strand of hair out of my face. “Look, Willow told me you don’t like to even spar anymore, and now you’ve had to fight soldiers twice in two days. I get that it goes against your principles. I know I’m asking a lot, but—”
“But you know best?”
I jerk back as if he slapped me, but he isn’t finished.
“You know what I need? You know better than me that I should change my decision to remain unarmed?”
I open my mouth. Close it. Feel heat stain my cheeks.
His expression softens a little. “If we’re under attack, I’ll help, Rachel. I won’t let anyone down. But I’m not going to pick up a blade again, and nothing you say will change that.”
The heat in my face gushes through my body, and I grip my Switch as I step closer to him. “So you’ll just die, then? Just cling to your precious convictions and go up against men with swords to prove something to yourself? Fine. Go ahead. Die and be justified that you did it on your own terms. What do I care?”
I turn before he can see the tremble in my lips. Before the image of yet another person I care about bleeding to death in front of me can bring my breakfast up the back of my throat. I’ve walked five steps in the opposite direction when his hand descends on my shoulder.
I whirl and swing my Switch at him before I realize what I’m doing. He disappears. One second, he was standing before me, about to be hit with the weighted end of my weapon. The next, he’s rolling across the grass and coming up to stand a yard to my left.
My fingers tremble as I grip my weapon, and sick horror crawls up the back of my throat. I could’ve hurt him. But stronger than the horror is the rage that begs me to take another swing at him. To change his mind, through force if necessary. To make him see that he can’t make me care about him and then take risks like it’s nothing.
“Want to take a swing at me?” he asks. “Will that cure the nightmares and let you feel alive again?”
I throw my Switch to the ground and charge, my fists flying toward his chest. He blocks the blow with effortless grace, faster than I expected. Faster than I’ve ever seen.
I swing again and again, but he parries every blow. His movements are controlled and powerful, and I realize he could hurt me. He could hurt me badly, and I’d never be able to stop it.
He catches my fist as I take one more halfhearted swing, his grip gentle. My lips are salty, and it takes a moment to realize I’m crying.
“Do you feel better?” he asks, and the compassion in his voice makes me want to hit him again.
I don’t need his understanding and his sympathy. I just need to be left alone to pick up the pieces of my life, deliver the survivors to safety, and then kill the man who ruined me.
My tears dry slowly, and the rage disappears with them. The silence within me absorbs them both. Stepping back from Quinn, I wipe my hands on my pants and refuse to look at him.
“You don’t have to worry about me.” His voice is still gentle. “I can handle myself.”
I want to hurt him for making me worry. For making me cry when I have to be strong. I want to, but he doesn’t deserve it, and I’ve had enough of hurting those who haven’t earned it to last me for the rest of my life.
I bend to pick up my Switch, and then say, “You’ve clearly been well trained.”
He remains silent.
I meet his eyes, feeling raw inside at the way he watches me. “You’re more than qualified to choose which trainee should carry which weapon. I have something else I have to do.”
Without waiting for a response, I walk away. Across the clearing. Through the eastern edge of camp and deep into the shadowy depths of the Wasteland with its scrubby ferns and spongy moss, its reverent stillness and its well-kept secrets. I keep my head held high and my shoulders straight, though there’s no one left to see it. I won’t look weak and broken again. Not for Quinn. Not for anyone.
Chapter Sixteen
LOGAN
It’s been four days since we left Baalboden behind, and there’s still no sign of the Commander and his army. My steps feel lighter with every day that passes, even though whoever sabotaged the machine is still playing stupid pranks around camp. A bag of grain sliced open and spilled. A wagon canvas slashed. Petty things. I even found another note lying on my bedroll when I entered my tent one night. It said, “Justice requires sacrifice.” I refuse to allow some disgruntled prankster with a penchant for drama to get to me. Not when we’re still enjoying the triumph of outwitting the Commander and breaking his control over us.
We’ve traveled northeast, following the broken outline of a road from the previous civilization. Thick weeds and clumps of grass shove their way through the faded gray stone, and monstrous tree roots reduce entire portions of the road to crumbled pieces. In some sections, the path disappears completely, overtaken by the ever-encroaching vegetation of the Wasteland.
Rachel walks beside me, twenty yards ahead of the group, her cloak billowing in the stiff wind that plunges through the trees. Skinny maples and scattered evergreens creak beneath the onslaught.
While every step we take away from Baalboden and the Commander buoys me with a sense of freedom, the opposite seems to be true for Rachel. She grows more and more withdrawn—turned inward toward whatever thoughts haunt her until she realizes I’m watching her. Then she’ll smile and talk and focus on the task at hand, but it’s a thin mask that barely covers the truth.
I don’t know what to do about it when she refuses to tell me what’s bothering her.
Ian walks a few yards behind us, a girl on each arm. He talks to them as they walk, and the girls blush and giggle like he just offered to Claim them. I don’t know how he does it. I have a hard enough time figuring out what to say to Rachel, and I’ve known her most of my life. The thought of carrying on a flirtatious conversation with two girls at once makes my stomach feel like I ingested an unstable element.
The rest of the group lags behind Ian and his girls by a good ten yards. I’ve asked Quinn and Willow to hunt for tonight’s meal, and they’ve promised to catch up to us again by sundown. If I had my way, we’d travel without stopping until twilight, but most of the survivors won’t make it another two hundred yards without a rest.
“We’ll stop for lunch soon,” I say to Rachel as another gust of wind slaps me in the face. “Jeremiah’s map shows a large clearing of some sort about fifty yards after an old sign.”
Rachel glances around us. “What old sign? There’s nothing out here but broken-down road and Wasteland.”
As if to prove her wrong, several yards ahead something gleams copper and brown beneath the thick carpet of moss that covers the forest floor. I stride forward and crouch to pull moss and vines away from what looks like a narrow road made of two parallel metal bars nailed into rotting planks of wood. The corroded metal is rough beneath my fingers as I run my hand along it. The road bisects the path and disappears into the Wasteland, where vines and tree roots hide it from sight.
“It’s a railroad track,” Rachel says, shoving the toe of her boot against the metal bar I’m touching. “Dad showed me one on a trip once. He said the earlier civilization had giant wagons called trains that hitched together and ran on fuel instead of horses and donkeys. This was the road the trains used.”
I stand slowly, my eyes still on the track. “Can you imagine being able to travel from city-state to city-state without walking? Of course, we’d have to build better roads. And we’d have to figure out a way to build trains that are quiet enough to escape the Cursed One’s notice—or maybe equip the trains with the same sonic pulse that repels the beast. I bet I could—”
“Hey!” Rachel snaps her fingers in front of my face, and I realize the rest of the group has nearly caught up to us. “Before you decide to invent super-quiet trains with sonic weapons mounted on the front, maybe we should find that old sign and stop for lunch.”
I grin. She smiles back, and the shadows momentarily lift from her eyes.
“You’re right. Besides, I have enough inventions to worry about at the moment without adding another one to the mix.”
“How’s that going? Are we still going to be able to drop these people off at Lankenshire and then go hunt down the Commander?” She steps across the tracks, and I follow as the broken road beneath us curves through a sparse clump of trees.
“If Lankenshire makes an alliance with us—”
“Of course they will.” She kicks a chunk of crumbled stone off the trail before it can snag a wagon wheel or trip an unwary traveler. “You’ll have a replica of Rowansmark’s device to offer them. They’d have to be pretty stupid to turn that down.”
The Rowansmark tech is easy to use, but hard to duplicate. The internal wiring is a braided copper wire, sixteen gauge. The mechanisms that make up the levers are obviously handcrafted out of paper-thin silver. I don’t have anything in our salvage wagon, or in the bag of tech supplies I recovered from the abandoned armory in Lower Market where I’d stashed a few backup plans, that’s comparable to either the braided wire or the silver. And everything else I’ve tried has failed. Without the ability to duplicate the device, and with the worry that it will somehow malfunction when I need it most, I’ve settled for increasing the power in the booster I built for it, even though it now uses all but two of my remaining batteries. I may not be able to replicate Rowansmark’s tech yet, but I can improve it.
All of which does nothing to help me broker an alliance with Lankenshire, because I have no intention of handing over the only working model.
“I still have some issues with the Rowansmark design,” I say as we pass an evergreen whose top half has snapped off and balances haphazardly on the thin arms of the tree beside it. Placing my hand on the small of Rachel’s back, I guide us both away from the tree and shout a warning back to the others as well. In wind like this, we don’t want to take any chances.
“What about the device you’re building to find the Commander?” she asks, and it’s clear from the impatience in her voice that this is the only invention she truly cares about.
“It’s coming along.” Something else gleams beneath the thick greenery of the Wasteland. Something just off the path, about fifteen yards ahead of us.
“How can you be sure it works? Don’t you need his individual wristmark signature? Not that we couldn’t just search for the bright red Carrington uniforms, I guess.”
“I have his signature.” I quicken my pace as I see rusted metal poles, laced with vines, stabbing the ground like twin legs braced several yards apart. “I traded six fully functioning cloaking devices once to get it because I thought I might need it someday.”
