»» BOOK #2 of the X-MARKS: Shadows Series «« Valen and her friends are on the run once again. After their camp is disassembled, they take shelter in a series of traveling homes and meet hosts that will shape their journey in unexpected ways.
When...
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"Are you sure that's what you saw?" Ocean said and held my hand from the bottom of the forest floor as I slumped against a tree.
We had walked hours from where I had seen the Ally boy soldier. The sun was finally rising ahead, and the air was thinned of the choking fog, but I still needed to sit. I needed to rest my head and let me heavy thoughts settle somewhere else other than my chest.
Oceans focused stare traced over my limbs that still shook like young branches in a windstorm.
I wasn't sure what it all meant, but the faded lines of an "X" flashed over every thought I had.
Evee placed her hand on my shoulder and said, "Do you think you were just - you know, scared?"
"I'm still scared!" I snapped and flinched from her touch, "I can't explain it anymore! I know what I saw!"
"Then, why bother," Mat said with his narrow eyes on me, "You're just upsetting yourself anyway."
"Because, what if it's true?" I whispered, and turned away from their critical stares, "I know what I saw."
I ended it there. It didn't matter if every person on earth didn't believe me. I knew the truth, and I understood exactly what I saw.
It was another unwanted piece of the puzzle I had found. It was why the rebel travelers broke us out of the center, no matter the cost. It wasn't just to save us. They didn't want another class to be recruited into the Ally force against them. They knew what I now knew too.
The very people I despised and feared, were once just like me. Frightened children taken from their homes and forced to fight for the very people who used them.
I stood from the bottom of the tree and walked alongside the other through a fork in the overgrown trail ahead.
With our quicker route no longer an option we were weeks from the next host home. There wasn't a scrap of food or a drop of water that could calm me or make me feel safe again.
I knew why my parents gave me up to the center and what would happen to me after. Now I just needed to find out why the Allies gave us marks at all.
This was the last piece of the puzzle, and I was about to go anywhere and do anything to find it.
