thud, and all the air jolts from my lungs. Pain shoots through my throbbing head, and my stomach roils with nausea. I whimper and squeeze my eyes shut.
“I told you not to move,” Bowen says, his words laced with anger. He opens the tent flap and leaves.
After a moment of lying perfectly still and taking deep, even breaths, the nausea subsides and I can think despite the pounding of my head. Seventeen. That’s how old my body looks. But I don’t remember turning fourteen or fifteen. Or sixteen. And I definitely don’t remember seventeen. I remember …
Lavender and forget-me-nots blowing in the wind.
Being forbidden to go outside.
Jonah staring out the music-room window while I practiced piano.
Wearing clothes to school that covered me from my neck to my fingertips to my toes, with a hat that draped bee sting–resistant netting over my head like a veil.
I remember a yard with grass that hadn’t been mown in so long it died and was replaced by dandelions even though my dad was anal about paying someone to keep the lawn mowed and edged.
And Mom and Lis coming home from the grocery store wearing their netting veils, and all they’d purchased was bags and bags and bags full of canned fruit and dehydrated meat substitute.
I remember the sharp prick of a needle, hardly bigger than the tip of a pencil, and a deep voice that didn’t belong to my father: You have to relax your muscles, Fiona.
And every month when Jonah and I went to the health clinic to get another shot, I cried, so Jonah held my hand.
“Bowen,” someone outside my tent whispers, scattering my memories. “Can we talk?”
“Yeah. What?” Bowen says, his voice still tinged with anger.
“Mind sending the armed guard away first?”
“Take a break, men. I don’t think the kid’s going to try anything in the next ten minutes,” Bowen says.
“Yessir.” The hollow thump of boots echoes up through the ground.
“‘Sup, Len?” Bowen asks.
“I want to know your answer regarding what we talked about last night,” Len says, his voice hushed.
“Refresh my memory,” Bowen snaps.
“I want the Fec. I’ll buy him off you for eight ounces.” There’s something about Len’s voice that makes me squirm. It has the same emotion I saw in the beast’s eyes when it looked at me—hunger. But is hunger an emotion? I wonder, shivering.
A shoe scrapes in the dirt and there’s a long silence. Bowen finally says, “So, why d’you want him so bad? You’ve never shown interest in anyone with the mark before.”
“What’s your problem, Drey?” The other guy sounds offended. “I’m offering to take a Level Ten off your hands and pay you! You should be the one paying me!”
“Yeah. I don’t buy it. What’s your real motive? Why the sudden interest in someone with the mark?”
“I’ll give you sixteen ounces, man,” Len whispers. “That’s double what they’ll pay for him at the lab. Sixteen ounces!”
“Sixteen ounces?” Bowen’s voice is shocked. “Where’d you get sixteen ounces?”
“I’ve got my sources. So, what do you say?”
“Well, crap, Len. Sixteen ounces of honey? Let me think about it,” Bowen says. “Hmmm. Thinking hard. Thinking, thinking. And the answer is … no. Get out of here.”
“Twenty-four ounces of honey. That is my final offer. An offer you’d be a fool to refuse,” Len says, his gravelly voice mad. “Take it or leave it.”
“Twenty-four ounces? I could practically retire on that and live inside the wall. No more special forces,” Bowen says, and I can hear the yearning in his voice, as loud and clear as the hunger in Len’s.
“Please, no,” I whisper, straining to hear his answer.
Bowen sighs. And then groans, as if facing a painful internal struggle.
“Like I said. An offer you can’t refuse,” Len says eagerly. His tone makes me feel … dirty. I burrow deeper into my sleeping bag, shut my eyes, and pray Bowen says no.
After a drawn-out silence, my pounding heart the only noise, Bowen says, “You wanna know the funny thing about making me an offer I can’t refuse?”
“No. Tell me what’s funny about it.” Len is practically panting.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to refuse it.”
My eyes pop open, and a small smile pulls painfully on my split lip. Tears fill my eyes, the first good tears that I’ve cried since waking up in my abandoned house. Thank you, Dreyden!
“Now get out of here before my men come back and I have them escort you away,” Bowen says, voice taut.
Len growls, an animal sound of frustration. “Let me know when you