I swallow, and feel a bead of blood swell to the surface of my skin. I force myself to stay perfectly still, even as the droplet slides off my neck and splatters onto the face of the boy beneath me. He blinks once, those coffee colored eyes focused on the figure behind me.
"Get off him," the person says. It's a stark contrast—her soft, feminine tone is dripping with malice.
I comply, rising slowly. The boy sits up, coughing again, then rests his arms on his knees, breathing the damp scent of the forest in deep. It's getting even darker, more difficult to see as the sun sinks further past the horizon line. The Druthers will be wrapping up soon, and I'll need to be getting back.
I rotate in a circle until I'm facing the girl. Her dagger is no longer at my throat, but she still clutches it tight in her slender fingers, aiming it threateningly at me. I have never seen a person before who reminds me so much of fire—and not a controlled one. This girl is the personified version of a raging forest fire, an inferno with untamed ginger locks that frame her face and fall to her armpits, wild brown eyes blown wide. Even this girl's freckles are ablaze, clustering at the bridge of her nose and climbing up to her forehead, like flames that lick her hairline. She wears laced black boots and a brown quilted vest overtop of a white button-up shirt, a more feminine version of her companion's outfit. It's strange—I'm not used to seeing women clothed in anything other than dresses and skirts.
From the forest floor, the boy speaks. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sneak up on you. We mean you no harm." His voice is smooth and honeyed, yet somehow still seems genuine. I'm not sure what to think—I need to coax more information out of them.
I lock eyes with the girl. "That's why there's a knife in my face?"
"Elowyn, put the dagger away."
The girl narrows her brows, but reluctantly sheathes her weapon in a case made of the same unknown material as the boy's vest—almost like the leather we make from cow skin, but not quite. I am quick to notice that the metal the knife is made of is foreign to me as well.
"Where'd you learn to fight like that?" she asks.
I shrug. The truth is, I've been attending trainings for the guardians of the Wall in secret ever since I was little. Some of my most distinct memories were mine and Desh's footsteps echoing throughout the palace's great halls till we reached doors to the balcony that overlooked the training room, where we'd lay down, just out of sight, our stomachs pressed to the cool tiles and our little fists gripped tight around the white-painted wooden bars that held up the platform's handrail. Eyes wide, we watched attentively, and we practiced everything we learned with one another in secret for years. But I wasn't quite ready to trust these new people and their unfamiliar clothing yet. The fact that they were so quick to point a weapon at me, the princess, without a single spark of recognition in their eyes only intensified my wariness.
"Which village are you from?" I asked, redirecting the conversation and stealing a glance at the boy, who's risen from his place on the grass to his full height. He's maybe six feet tall? Enough to be an entire head taller than myself.
"We're not," the girl—Elowyn—responds bluntly.
I blink. "What?"
"We're not from a village. We're from outside the Wall. I'm Rowan, by the way," the boy clarifies. "Look, I'm really sorry to be rude, but we don't quite have time to talk. Do you know where we could find Princess Liana? It's immensely important that we speak with her."
Alarm bells go off in my head. How could they be from outside the Wall and know who I am? And if they really were, didn't that mean they were dangerous? All my life, my father had warned me about the bloodthirsty monsters that roamed the rest of the world. Born from the rage that infected human kind during the last battle, fructified by the blood that soaked the lands and polluted the oceans, these creatures desired nothing more than to satiate their hunger with human flesh. He told me that we were the only living people that remained after the Great Fall, that nobody else had made it. We were the last of the human race.
And then Rowan and Elowyn show up with their unfamiliar clothing and weaponry, claiming to be from outside the Wall?
I mull this over as swiftly as possible, their stares burning holes into me. Finally, I turn my gaze back onto Rowan, eyes raking over him. A strand of his chestnut hair is coiled around a twig with a leaf protruding from it, but he hasn't seemed to notice.
"I'll take you to the princess on two conditions," I decide. "First, you explain how you survived outside of the Wall. Second, you tell me the exact news you have for her. That's the deal—take it or leave it."
"Deal," Rowan agrees as Elowyn's eyes slide to him.
"Rowan, we don't have time for this," she insists. I tense as her hand drifts seemingly unconsciously to the hilt of her dagger. She glances over her shoulder at me, her fervent whispers blending in with the hissing of the wind through the leaves.
He shakes his head, mouth pressed into a thin line as he looks down at her, then lifts his
chin back up to make eye contact with me. "Princess Liana is in grave danger. We've been sent to rescue her."
A knot of anxiety is forming in my stomach, climbing ladder rungs up to my throat. I'm worried that it's going to come tumbling out of my mouth if I open it to respond. Nevertheless, I manage to keep my face a mask of neutrality, just cock my head to the right as an indication he should continue.
He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. "We've been watching for a few years now, memorizing the rotation of the guards on the Wall. Today and exactly two weeks from right now are the only days of the whole year that no one is stationed atop the East side. So when the guards retreated from their posts, we climbed up and over to get in. Conveniently for us, supposedly it's Princess Liana's sixteenth birthday today, so we can rescue her now before it's too late."
"Too late for what?" I ask. I can't stop at one—there was too much to ask, too many loose ends. A torrent of questions fall from my lips—"What am I in danger from? How did you survive outside the Wall? Why now? Are there more where you came from?"
Elowyn's eyes narrow, and she agitatedly sweeps a few fiery curls off her neck. "Look, this isn't an interrogation-"
Rowan holds up a hand to silence her. "Wait a moment. 'What am I in danger from?'"
Shit.
His hand drifts cautiously to my wrist, slowly, like he's moving underwater. I stand, frozen, as he lifts it into the pale streams of moonlight that drip through the canopy of branches above us, splaying my fingers, examining, and finally, tilts it in Elowyn's direction so that she can see. "No dirt under your nails, and no cracks in them either. No calluses on your palms. Delicate wrists and fingers—you don't lift heavy things often. Not at all like a commoner." His gaze finds mine, and something about it locks me in place. So softly that I almost miss it, he says, "You are Princess Liana," and it's a statement, not a question.
Before I can object, he continues. "You must come with us."
The phantom sensation of his grip lingers even as I tear my hand away from him. "I must do nothing until you explain what's going on." He opens his mouth, but I cut him off. "In depth. You've been frustratingly vague this entire time. I don't intend to come off as haughty, but I do think I deserve to know what's going on and why I should even trust you two."
Elowyn steps up to me, her eyes briefly dropping to the nugget of jade that lies against my breastbone. "Are you aware there is a monster that hunts you?"
I laugh nervously. "I know the history; there's not much of it anyway. I know that after the Great Fall, monsters were birthed from the hatred and bloodlust that poisoned mankind. I know they eat human flesh. I also know that they're all out there," I gesture vaguely in the direction of the Wall, "which is why I want to know so badly how you all survived, and I know that as long as I am here, in Basoffann, I'm secure. My father wouldn't let anything happen to me, and he's gone to great protective measures to ensure the safety of our entire kingdom."
"You're not. Safe, I mean. Not in here. You've never been safe in here, Your Majesty," Rowan bursts out. The words rip out of him, and there's a sort of urgency to them that makes the hairs on my arms raise.
Elowyn nods, her brown eyes flicking back to me. "The monsters eat humans, that's right, but not in the way you've been taught. They feed off our esse—what makes us us, what makes us human. Our personalities—"
"Our souls," Rowan interjects.
"—which is why it's so important for us to get you out of here," she finishes. "Because the Echoes have all been killed, everywhere in the whole world, except for in this kingdom. And they're coming for you next. We're here to cut it off at the head and save you."
"They're more strategic than you know, Liana. They aren't just the bloodthirsty monsters you think they are...they're worse than that. Your father plans to sic your Echo on you two weeks after your sixteenth birthday."
My brow furrows in disbelief. It can't be true. I'm safe here, always have been. I trust my father. I do.
But what motive do they have to lie to me?
Instead of voicing any of these thoughts, my lips move of their own accord, and utter, "My...Echo?"
"They're called that because they replicate you. That's what they do. They attach to a bloodline and reproduce in a way we call 'asexually' every time someone new is born to the bloodline. Your bloodline is the final one, fused to the remaining Echoes. Your father himself is an Echo."
"How do you know?" I accuse, stepping back from the force of their words. "Why should I trust you?"
"We have an inside man," Elowyn replies, and I can tell from the way her eyes dart that she's growing anxious. Which reminds me—if I don't get back to the palace soon, my father is going to come looking.
"I need—I need some time to process," I stammer, floundering. I feel like a fish that has been yanked through the surface of Lake Tapoune, into air I'm not accustomed to breathing. "My father will worry if I don't come back to the palace soon."
I can tell Elowyn is biting back a response, and for some reason, I don't feel threatened by her anymore. Having talked a little longer, I notice that she seems to mostly act on gut feeling, not the malicious intent I originally pinned her for. Where Rowan's the grounded one of the pair, she's pure instinct.
Rowan sighs, breaking the silence. "Okay. But you don't have long to decide. Two weeks from today. Remember that, that's when we leave. My sister and I will meet you back here in exactly one week to discuss your decision."
I turn to Elowyn, but she's gone.
When I whirl back around, I'm greeted with a dim, empty forest path framed by trees whose roots seem to claw at the ground and whose branches stretch out menacingly towards me. The only source of light is from the stars that pinprick the dark—the moon is concealed behind an ashen smudge, the only cloud in the entire sky.
For the first time, I understand what the village people see in the trees.