Another three days passed before Gunnar was well enough to venture out. I was relieved to see him improving, since he hadn't slept much the past couple nights. Not because he slept during the day, but because he refused to share the bed. He would stay up, always in the exact same place and in the exact same position, sitting upright in the chair by the window looking through the cracks in the curtains, as though keeping guard of something.
It unnerved me so much I could barely sleep, too afraid to trust. It felt like he was watching over me, while at the same time longing to be free of my presence and my tangled schemes—my web of lies that he'd become involved in. Sitting there in the dark, he appeared to be staring out into the night, yearning for the freedom the horizon could offer.
My sleep was plagued by feverish worrying. It was a huge relief to me every morning when I'd wake up and find him still here.
He hadn't run out on me. He'd had the opportunity to do it, and he'd chosen to stay.
I breathed a little easier as we walked through town square during market day, all the merchants set up with their tables and stands. It was hot out and the square was crowded with shoppers—voices arguing over the price of cheese, feet shuffling over cobblestones—but I was just relieved the captain was playing his part. His eyes never darted away when they met mine, although he still rarely spoke. It worried me, since even such a small detail could unravel my plans, but I didn't want to push him too far when he was so clearly near the edge already.
The crowd dispersed whenever we drew near. Walking out in the open together like this was probably the most dangerous thing we'd done so far, and yet it was they who were cowering away from us, their eyes chasing and probing.
It gave me a surge of confidence. This was my first time running a con without my mother, and it was working. It made me wonder, not for the first time, if I should even let the captain take me back to her. Hadn't I been longing to escape her clutches for years?
Although I knew he wouldn't let me go easily, and I watched him closely as he talked to one of the merchants, studying his mannerisms, the way he stood just a bit taller than everyone else, just a bit wider.
"Busy today," he remarked to the merchant.
"Ah, yes." The old man nodded. "There's a train coming later, that's why everyone's ventured out."
There was an edge to his voice, like a thinly veiled warning, and I stared at him. He was just an old man with leathery skin and silver hair who was selling some of the things we'd need for our journey ahead. He seemed harmless enough. But then he caught me staring and offered me a blank smile, still nodding his head, as though he were stuck like that.
I couldn't figure him out. Something just didn't feel right. I didn't want to seem paranoid, so I said nothing to the captain as we moved on, but somewhere deep in my chest, an alarm bell was ringing. It just kept ringing and it wouldn't stop.
~
There is a certain tone of voice people use when whispering about things they shouldn't be whispering about. It's not hard to identify, when you're well practiced in the subtle arts of deception and betrayal.
It was by accident that I heard them at all. The twins; sitting in the library with the window cracked to air out the room from the stifling summer heat. When I passed under it, Gunnar was already a few steps ahead, his hands full with our recent purchases.
He didn't hear them. But I did. I heard every word.
"I say we report them immediately," one of the twins spoke in hurried, hushed tones. "The woman shows no signs of fertility and the soldier seems more terrified of her than anything."
"They've only been here a couple of days," the other replied. "We can't say anything for sure. Besides, what reason would they have to lie?"
I pictured them with their heads bent close together, a tray of forgotten tea things on the table between them. I pictured the flimsy curtain billowing at the cracked window, concealing me from their view.
"I don't know," the first one sighed, sounding puzzled. "But I can tell something's not right. We should inform the General as soon as possible. There's no sense letting this charade go on any longer."
Panic raced through my heart, and when I looked up, Gunnar was already waiting for me on the stoop, a silent question etched on his face as he watched me. When he saw my expression, his frown deepened.
Slowly, I walked away from the window to rejoin him, careful not to get noticed.
When we entered the foyer, silence greeted us from the library, the twins' gossiping cut short, which could only mean one thing: they were watching.
Suddenly, I knew what I'd have to do.
I'd always sworn I wouldn't become like my mother, that I wouldn't use a false romance as a means for survival, but I'd have to make peace with my fate. There was no escaping it now.
As we climbed the stairs to our room, I had to stand one step above in order to reach him at his impressive height, but then I gripped his face and held him secure as I leaned in. I was prepared to dig my nails into his flesh to keep him still—prepared to hurt him if he didn't cooperate, anything to make this seem believable—but I wasn't prepared for what he did.
Gunnar kissed me so hard I nearly fell over, and I fisted my hands in the front of his shirt to keep myself upright. As we stood there kissing, I pictured the twins. I tried to imagine what they would be seeing through the door of the library. Would their eyes be wide with surprise? Would they be staring? Would they look away, embarrassed?
When Gunnar finally released me, his eyes were wild.
In a daze, I climbed the rest of the way to our room. He slammed the door shut behind us and dropped the bag of food we'd just bought onto the floor. An orange rolled out and went under the bed, and I watched it disappear.
He glared at the floor, refusing to look at me.
He wasn't angry.
He was furious.
I'd pushed him too far, and for the first time since we'd met, I felt truly afraid of him. I was suddenly reminded of that moment in the forest, when I'd wanted to see him break so badly that—for an instant—it had surpassed everything else in my mind. Even my own safety. But I was a fool. I couldn't comprehend the torture of a man bound to his beliefs so thoroughly that he depended on it to give meaning to his very existence. Without it, he would be nothing, and I was wearing him down.
Soon, he would have no soul, and there would be only the animal left in him.
And I already knew how lethal he could be.
My mind raced through my options, trying to come up with a way to fix this. "Gunnar, I'm sorr—"
My words broke off when he whipped towards me, pressing me backwards into the wall, his palm landing next to my head.
The wall shook and I shook with it.
He wouldn't look at me. He stared into the sliver of space that still separated us, breathing hard. I saw the muscles twitch in his thick neck, while I made sure not to move or make a sound, not wanting to provoke him any further.
I hissed in a sharp breath when his eyes finally lifted to mine, in the instance just before he closed the remaining distance between us, trapping me between his body and the wall. I could sense a tension coiling tightly in him. I'd sensed this about him before, but this time I recognized what it was.
It was urgency.
He leaned down.
"What are you doing?" I gasped before he could come any closer, my heart beating fast with an emotion I didn't want to name. Deep down, I knew it was fear. "No one is watching us here."
He stilled at my words, just before ripping himself away as though I'd burned him.
"Is that why?" he hissed, keeping his voice low to make sure they couldn't hear. They'd certainly be listening. "Because you knew they were watching?"
"Of course," I whispered back.
He jerked his head to the side and his face twisted into a humorless smile. "I'm condemning my soul for the sake of your survival alone," he stated, his voice alarmingly vacant. "But I am nothing to you."
"It's for your safety, too," I argued.
He pinned me with a dark glare. "No. No, it's not. I'm not the one who's in any real danger here. I could leave and rejoin my troops tonight, if I wanted to."
He got closer to me as the words spilled out of him, hushed and angry.
"And disobey your orders?" I challenged.
"I'd write to my General that you were dead when I found you," he growled.
The answer had come so quick on his tongue, that there wasn't a doubt in my mind that he'd already thought about it—had already considered leaving me behind, probably more than once.
I hated to admit it to myself, but I felt the sting. He read the hurt in my eyes, which only made me even more infuriated with myself, but something about it encouraged him. In the fog of misunderstanding, he moved closer again, his hand reaching out to clasp my elbow.
The most bewildering thing to me was his tenderness.
"Is there no part of you that wanted it?" he whispered.
For a second, I thought I must have heard him wrong. It was like he was asking for my permission, as though I were his god now, and there was a timber of desperation in his voice that terrified me. The voice of a broken man.
I shivered, filled with incomprehensible emotion, and I'm not sure what would have happened next if we hadn't heard it.
The bomb.
The floors and walls shook so hard, I felt it all the way into my chest. Gunnar and I broke apart, grabbing onto the nearest furniture to steady ourselves. A lamp fell off one of the tables and shattered loudly upon contact with the floor.
Outside, people screamed.
We both scrambled for the window, tearing it open and leaning out to see. A chemical scent hit me in the face and burned my nostrils, just as a cloud of black smoke rose into the air in the near distance. In the street below us, people were already scattering.
One blow, and the thread of peace had snapped.
Gunnar was the first to take action.
"We can try to get on another train," he said, running to collect our few belongings.
I didn't move from the window. Had I been a different person, I might have felt guilt at his use of the word we. It was a shame, really. He obviously wasn't used to running like I was. He didn't understand how it worked—didn't understand that if you truly wanted to get away, you had to be ready to go at any given moment.
I was grateful that I still had my shoes on.
Gunnar wasn't paying close attention as I pushed the window open all the way and threw myself out.
He screamed, but it was already too late.
I climbed out onto the roof of the overhang that was directly below our window and scrambled down its side as fast as I could, managing a relatively soft landing. As soon as my feet touched ground, I took off. I heard Gunnar calling but looking back wasn't an option. If I moved fast, I could make it far enough before he'd have the chance to make it down the stairs.
I knew that he wouldn't attempt jumping from a window. He might have been the strong one, but I was the crazy one, and I couldn't afford to wait for him. Our alliance was too shaky—too unpredictable to depend on—and I was better off without him.
Remembering the road that brought us here in the first place, I took off in that direction. At least I knew where it would lead. Wilderness and savages seemed a safer alternative at this point. My only other option was getting dragged back to my mother by a soldier who hated me one second, and then didn't the next.
I am nothing to you, his words replayed in my head. He'd meant it as an accusation, but I clung to the words for comfort instead, willing them to be true.
Someone smashed a window and sent glass flying just a few feet away, but I threw my arm up just in time to avoid getting hit in the face. Shards of glass stabbed into my skin, but I barely stopped long enough to notice.
It was déjà vu like none other I'd experience before. A whole town of desperate people fighting against the enemy army with everything they had. I wasn't about to stick around to go through this kind of thing twice. I ran hard, blindly, fighting against the current of locals that had spilled into the streets and were trying to fight back or flee.
I barely made it to the outskirts of town before I was intercepted by a soldier. I skid to a stop when he raised his gun at me.
"No one leaves," he barked. "General's orders."
I scoffed and charged him, calling his bluff.
He cocked the gun. "No one leaves."
I planted my feet in frustration and flung strands of white hair out of my eyes to glare at him. "You wouldn't shoot a Daughter."
"No," he said. "I wouldn't shoot a Daughter."
The words could only mean one thing: that he didn't believe I was what I claimed I was.
I grit my teeth and said nothing. I didn't even move as he began circling me, taunting me with his gun. There was something light about his steps—something wicked about that smile pasted on his boyish face—as though he were enjoying this.
He never looked away. I wondered how many sins he was committing by talking to me like this—looking at me like this.
I smiled, which seemed to piss him off. He sneered and shuffled the gun a bit, trying to threaten me more than he already had.
I was already getting bored. "So, what now?"
The question seemed to perk him up and he smirked. He'd now made a full circle around me and was back to blocking my path to the forest.
He opened his mouth to answer, but I took off at a dead sprint before he could say another word. I heard him sputter in shock, earning me a few seconds before he started shooting. He shot blindly as I ran in zigzags towards town. A bullet landed somewhere near my foot, but then I made it out of sight before he could try again.
I cut through someone's back yard, jumped a fence, and aimed myself towards the train station. A whistle screamed into the clear sky, confirming its departure. They were going to do the same thing again. Get the trains out before anyone could get on. But I still charged forward. I wasn't sure I could catch it, but I was going to try.
I never made it close. There was a second bomb. This time it was in the town square, in the big house they used as an army base—the same house where the doctor had tended to Gunnar.
When it went off, I was only a few feet away.
I was airborne in a millisecond, knocked off my feet by a gush of scalding hot air, before I crashed back down to Earth. My head cracked as it connected with the ground, the soft matter of my brain colliding with my skull. My ears started ringing violently, like a siren blasting in my ears, and everything felt like it was moving in slow motion after that.
I'd landed hard on my side, and my arm ignited with pain, but all I could think about was getting back on my feet and getting to that train. I saw myself doing it—saw myself as though I were outside of my body—I was getting up and running for the train. But when I cracked my eyes open, I was on the ground again and the whole world was pounding to the beat of my pulse, reduced to a blur around me. I coughed aggressively, causing stitches to tear into my sides.
I gave up the idea of running and rolled onto my back, waiting for the pain to subside. I watched the black smoke sluggishly rising into the blue expanse above, adding black clouds to an otherwise clear day.
I don't know how much time passed before I realized someone was crouched beside me. I tilted my head, a relatively simple movement which hurt badly, and saw a woman clutching my hand, her face working furiously, her mouth moving open and closed. It took me another moment to recognize that they were yelling, because I couldn't hear it at first. But as the ringing in my ears slowly started to dim, I could make out some of the words.
"She almost got killed," she was screaming hysterically. "She's probably one of the last fertile women left in the world, and you won't help! We have to help her! She could die—"
I realized she was talking to someone, and when I tilted my head further, I saw the two soldiers that were standing back and watching, guns pressed firmly at their sides.
They wouldn't dare come any closer.
The woman was still shouting with all the strength of her lungs, my hand clutched tightly to her breast so that I could feel her whole body vibrating. She was physically shaking from her anger.
I'd never seen anyone care so much about me in my life. Even if it was under false pretenses. I blinked at her in awe, wishing I could move so that I could say something. Maybe tell her that I was okay, even if I wasn't entirely sure it was true.
But I couldn't make my voice work, and she wouldn't look at me. She was completely transfixed on the two gray uniforms standing before her. In that instance, they symbolized everything that was wrong with the world in her eyes. I could see the emotions flickering across her face. The hatred and the blame and the determination.
So that's where I was, lying on the ground and entirely helpless, when she suddenly ripped herself away and charged at them. They raised their guns as a warning, but she didn't even flinch. I watched, horrified, as one of them shot her in the side. Her feet staggered, and her body seized and shuddered horribly at the impact.
I never felt shock and adrenaline like that before.
I don't remember getting up. All I know is that one second I was down, and the next I wasn't.
I threw myself in the path of the next shot, and the shooter hissed and pulled back just in time, sending the bullet slicing through the air directly above my head.
"Stop," I said, my voice calm.
I planted my feet and stood my ground, prepared for anything. But what I wasn't prepared for was seeing them run. They bolted like I was the physical embodiment of the very Gods they feared, and I could do nothing but gape at their retreating figures disappear into the chaos.
When I turned back around, the woman was crumpled on the ground. I crouched down and quickly checked her pulse, but there was none. I dropped her wrist as though it burned and stared at her in bewilderment.
She'd died for me because she'd believed I was a Daughter. People were always dying for their beliefs, there was nothing new to be said about that, but what I didn't understand was why I'd still tried to save her. It was against my nature to put myself at risk for anyone. Least of all a woman who'd already been shot.
Perhaps it was the shock from almost getting blown up. As I was crouching beside the dead woman, I almost wanted to laugh at the sheer insanity of this moment. The whole world seemed to be crumbling in slow motion, and I could almost feel the blood trembling in my veins with the surge of determination.
I gave in to the emotion without question.
Another bomb went off somewhere not far, causing the ground to quake. A hot breeze ripped through the square, singeing my cheeks and blowing the white hair from my face. It was almost impressive, how quickly a perfectly peaceful day had turned to total anarchy. I actually laughed aloud, and someone saw me and gawked like they thought I'd lost my mind.
I wanted to tell them it was okay, that I'd lost my mind a long time ago—today, it was everyone else who was losing theirs—but they had run before I ever got the chance. I followed them into the feverish crowd, abandoning the dead woman in the process.
I hoped she'd understand. I had something important I needed to do.
As I got closer to the train station, I came face-to-face with a line up of soldiers who were standing with their guns aimed straight forward, blocking the entrances.
"Nobody leaves," they barked, a chorus of jumbled instructions in different voices. "Direct orders. Get back, nobody leaves!"
They were like a string of merciless robots, enforcing their orders onto a crowd of terrified people. Occasionally, they would even shoot, and there'd be an awful thud followed by a rise of terrified screams.
"Nobody gets on!" they fought to be heard above the roar of panic.
I didn't know what else to do. I cut a straight line right down the middle of the crowd, pushing at first, until the people caught on and started to make way. I marched into the lineup of guns without pause. At first sight of me, their orders died off one by one, and a startled hush fell over the crowd.
They wouldn't shoot a Daughter. Maybe they weren't all convinced that's what I was, but I didn't need them all to believe. I just needed enough of them to. Enough of them to be scared, enough of them to be unwilling to take the risk.
I continued to march until I'd burned a hole right into the formation of uniforms.
As soon as the opening formed, the crowd pushed, right on my heels. It was like breaking through a flood gate. One second there was calm, and the next it was a stampede. I was jostled and then knocked to the ground within seconds.
In the midst of frenzy, I was kicked and stepped on, and I was forced to ball myself up and brace myself, like a stone caught in a moving current. By the time I managed to look up again, the soldiers had opened fire again.
Trying not to get shot, I crouched low to the ground, watching the warfare I had unwittingly inspired unfold before me.
I yelped when, without warning, two strong hands latched around my middle and hoisted me up onto my feet, until I found myself held flush against a wall of muscle.
Instinctively, I knew who it was. I turned wide eyes onto the familiar face of another soldier—my soldier. He looked back at me with a pair of sad eyes. For a brief moment, time stood still. We looked at each other as he held me in his arms, and without exchanging a single word, we both knew what we had to do.
He pressed a pistol into my hand, keeping the rifle for himself, and then we both tore away from each other and faced the crowd.
I shot anyone who tried to stop us. Soldier, civilian. It didn't matter. I wasn't taking sides. The only side I was on was mine. My mind emptied itself of thoughts, until I was only energy, hell-bent on survival. When I ran out of bullets, Gunnar shot the soldier charging me, and the enemy's blood splattered all over my skin, marking me like scars.
He'd shot one of his own, but I said nothing. There wasn't time. I stole the dead soldier's gun and kept moving, while Gunnar stood at my back as we worked around each other in a lethal dance. You'd think we'd done this sort of thing together before.
Once we made it out of that town, neither of us relished in our moment of victory. Our violence had been an act of pure necessity, and it felt incredibly sad and wasteful.
We said nothing to each other as we left it all behind. We just walked.