Deception

Chapter Twenty-Five RACHEL

I find Logan inside the Wasteland inspecting one of the fuel lines. Quinn and Willow are with him.

“There you are,” he says, and there’s relief in his voice as he steps away from the others and moves toward me. “I sent the rest of your team back to the shelter, but couldn’t find you, Ian, or Thom. I thought . . .”

When he doesn’t finish his sentence, I say, “I know there’s a tracker out here somewhere. I was careful.”

He looks at me for a long moment, then says quietly, “I was more worried about the fact that the Commander is so close. I thought you’d be tempted to do something . . . unplanned. I’m sorry I misjudged you.”

For a moment, I consider lying to him, but I can’t stomach the thought. Quinn and Willow leave to inspect the next fuel line, and I’m grateful for the privacy.

“You didn’t misjudge me. I was about to sneak up to the bluff, look for the Commander, and shoot an arrow in his eye.”

He makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat and starts pacing. “You were . . . that’s just . . .” He draws in a deep, slow breath, as if he needs the time to find the words missing from his sentences.

“We could still get him. He’s so close. We could use the device with your booster pack attached. We already know it works—”

“Absolutely not.” He stops pacing and faces me.

“Logan, he’s right there.” I gesture toward the distant bluff, with its cheerful campfires and snatches of laughter drifting on the wind. “Every soldier with him would kill us without hesitation if they had the chance. Why can’t we do the same? We have the advantage. We could use the Cursed One and finish this.”

His voice is fierce. “Last time we called the beast it wouldn’t touch the Commander because of the necklace he wears. Instead, it destroyed our city. I refuse to take a chance with our lives again. We have a plan. I have an invention that will find him and kill him, Rachel. I just need a few more supplies to finish building it.”

“I thought you were building a tracking device. How would that kill him?”

“It’s basic science. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. The tracking device sends out a sound wave, which is essentially an oscillation of pressure traveling through an acceptable medium at various frequencies—”

“You’re losing me.”

“The tracker sends out a sound wave, searching for a specific signal. The Commander’s, in this case. For the tracker to find the signal, there has to be a receiver at the other end. Something to accept and translate the sound wave. The tracking device’s signal is strong enough to ping off of the receiver and bounce back to the original tech.” His words tumble over each other in his eureka!-I-just-invented-something-epic! voice. “But what if the signal was stronger? What if I could increase the sound wave to something the receiver couldn’t accept?”

“You mean you think you can overpower the Commander’s wristmark receiver? I don’t want to dump cold water on your enthusiasm, but what good would that do? Wouldn’t it just break the receiver and leave us with no way to track him at all?”

“I’m not just going to break the receiver. I’m going to obliterate it. Use sound as a weapon.”

“Explode his receiver?”

“Yes.”

“In his wrist.”

“Yes.”

“Next to his artery.” My breath quickens as something brilliant and sharp surges through me.

“Exactly.”

I throw my arms around him. “You’re a genius. I don’t tell you that often enough, but you really are.”

His voice is quiet. “We agreed to a plan. I told you I could build something we could use after we delivered these people safely to Lankenshire. Why didn’t you trust me? Why go off on your own?”

“I didn’t go.” My voice sounds small. “Ian stopped me at first, but then I thought about what you asked of me back in Baalboden. How you didn’t want me to risk myself without an exit strategy because if I die, you’ll have no one. I decided not to go, but a big part of me still wishes I had.”

He wraps his arms around me and pulls me to his chest. “You don’t have to face him alone.”

“I don’t care if I face him alone. I just want this to be over. I want him to suffer and die. I want to stop running for our lives. I want to stop seeing . . .” Melkin’s dark eyes, burning with fury as I drive my knife into his chest. Oliver’s neck bleeding and bleeding. The white cross on my father’s grave.

“Stop seeing what?” His voice is gentle, but he holds me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he lets go.

I tell myself I want to shatter the deafening silence inside of me and feel, but I know I’m lying. I can’t wait to shove the guilt and grief away from me. Can’t wait to take a breath without suffocating on the blood of everyone I’ve lost. I flinch away from truth and into the silence.

The comfort it offers is cold and empty. A barren tomb cutting me off from the rest of the world. I should be clawing at the sides, screaming my lungs out, and fighting to escape.

Fighting to live.

I dig my fingers into Logan’s cloak and breathe. The air smells of musky tree bark, rich, dark earth, and the faint sweetness of the flowering sweetshrubs that dot the landscape.

“Please talk to me,” Logan says quietly, and something heavy lies in his voice. “Tell me what’s hurting you.”

I step back and my heart thuds against my chest.

“It has something to do with your nightmares, doesn’t it?” He reaches out and traces my cheek with his finger. “What do you dream about, Rachel?”

Blood. Pouring endlessly. Those I’ve lost. Those I’ve taken.

Guilt writhing through me like a poisonous snake, killing me slowly from the inside out.

He’s silent for a moment, and then he says quietly, “Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I do.” I do. I just don’t trust myself. I can hold myself together during the day. I can take charge of what needs to be done; I can say the words everyone seems to want to hear; and I can pretend real feelings live inside of me instead of the vast wall of silence. But I can’t pretend at night. I can’t hold myself together when everything the silence keeps from me floods into my mind and brings me to my knees.

If I put words to it, if I let it cut me like I deserve, how will I ever keep the two parts of me separate again?

“If you trust me, then let me in. Please. I want to help you, but how can I when I don’t know what you’re facing?” Hurt crouches inside his words.

I swallow the automatic protest that rises to my lips. Once upon a time, I told Oliver everything. Told Dad almost everything. And I’d like to think if my mother had lived, I’d have shared almost everything with her, too. Maybe that’s what love is. Giving others the power to hurt you and trusting that they’ll use it to heal you instead.

Stepping forward, he cups my face in his calloused palms and says, “I know you aren’t okay. How could you be? I’m not okay, either. But hiding from it isn’t going to solve it.”

Something hot and painful throbs inside my chest. “Nothing’s going to solve it, Logan. I can’t . . .”

“You can’t what?”

“I can’t be strong enough to face this”—I gesture toward the bluff behind us and hope he knows that I mean everything. Oliver. Dad. The Commander. Everything—“if I start talking about my nightmares. And you need me to be strong. Everyone needs me to be strong. Falling apart isn’t an option.”

“Who says you’re going to fall apart?” He leans closer. “You’re the strongest person I know. Most would’ve quit trying by now, but not you. Trusting me with whatever is hurting you won’t break you, Rachel.”

He’s wrong. If I trust him with it, I have to also trust myself. I’d have to drag what lives in the shadows out into the light and hope I survive what I see.

And if I look my darkness in the face and it overwhelms me, how will I find the strength to get back on my feet again?

He rubs his thumb across my cheekbone. “It’s hard to face talking about things that hurt. But I think if we’re going to survive this together, we have to.”

“How come I’m the only one who has to talk about the hard stuff? You said you aren’t okay, either.”

“Fair enough. I’ll go first.” He lets go of me and pushes his hand through his hair. The silence between us lengthens until he laughs, a sharp, bitter sound. “You’re right. It’s a lot harder to talk about stuff like this than I gave you credit for.”

“Stuff like what?”

A shout goes up from the bluff, followed by more laughter. Behind us, the city is silent.

Logan tilts his head back and stares at the sky. “I think I might be to blame for the Rowansmark tracker killing our boys.” His voice sounds weary. Like this is a familiar thought he can hardly stand to face again.

“How could you possibly be to blame?”

“What if the message the killer left for us was meant for me? The first message was in my tech bag. What if the debt that needs to be paid is mine? What if I’m . . .” He swallows hard. “What if my choices are responsible for the deaths of those boys?”

I fist my hands on my hips. “Who put that stupid idea into your head?”

He shakes his head and doesn’t speak.

An owl hoots somewhere above us, and something scurries through the underbrush at our feet.

I step closer to Logan and put every ounce of conviction I possess into my voice. “You aren’t responsible.”

“I am if this really is a tracker delivering Rowansmark’s sentence of pain atonement. I kept the device—”

“I gave you the device in the first place. If you’re responsible, then so am I. So is Quinn, for keeping it safe for me instead of bringing it back to Rowansmark. In fact, while we’re busy writing fairy tales, my dad is responsible too, for bringing it out of Rowansmark in the first place.” I tap my foot against the ground while I wait for him to see reason. “Anyone who could slit the throats of innocent boys is a twisted, depraved lunatic. I don’t care what his sick justification was. If you take a life, you and you alone are responsible for that choice. If you can’t see that then you aren’t half as smart as I’ve always thought you were.”

He reaches out, takes my hand, and pulls me against him. His hands tangle in my hair, and he leans toward my mouth. “Do you know one of the things I love most about you?”

“No.” My voice is a faint breath of air.

His fingers slide down my back. “You are incapable of being tactful to spare someone’s feelings.”

My heart sinks a little. “That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”

“I’ve spent my life as an outcast.” His voice is quiet. Steady. “I walked into stores and people started whispering. I’d enter a crowd and see parents shoo their children away from me like I’d contracted some terrible disease no one else wanted to catch. Yet all the while, those same people would smile to my face. I never knew if the friendliness I saw in someone’s eyes was real until I met you.”

“Well, those other people were obviously idiots.”

He tilts my head back and leans closer. “I always know where I stand with you. Even when you were angry with me, you never bothered trying to hide it. You are exactly who you seem to be, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

His kiss is gentle, and much too short. When he leans back, he says, “I shared what was bothering me, and it helped. Ready to do the same?”

My throat tightens, and I swallow hard. “I dream of Dad and Oliver.” And Melkin. And blood, but I can’t find the words to paint that picture. “I see them die. Over and over. Or they come to me already dead.” My voice sinks into a whisper. “Nothing feels right inside of me since I lost them. Since we lost them.”

He wraps his arms around me and pulls me against him. “I’m sorry.” Warmth from his mouth whispers across mine as his lips brush against me. “I love you, Rachel.”

I wrap my arms around him and stretch up on my tiptoes. “I love you, too.” I kiss him until the forest seems to spin around me, and I can’t tell which of us is holding the other up.

A faint crunch, like a boot stepping on the rocky forest soil, echoes behind us. The whispery hiss of someone drawing in a ragged breath crawls across the air and raises the hair on my arms.