The Girl Who Fell From The Sky - Rebecca Royce Page 0,76

to be pissed when he found out what we’d done.

I shivered. An angry Torrin was not a thing I was looking forward to experiencing. Again.

“We’ll be hiking most of the night, so it’s a good thing you got some rest on the way over,” Mattis said, coming around to my side of the transport. He was loaded down with equipment, including several weapons holsters. Full ones. Which probably answered my unspoken question about possible attacks. Terrific.

Astor was holding my pack out for me and frowning. I took it and slipped my arms through the straps, securing the belt around my waist. Heavy, but not impossible. I could do this. Shut up, I silently told my overprotective—and pleasantly not here—brother. I absolutely can. It’s my decision, my body.

But even with my bravado and certainty that, regardless of the risks, this was the right thing to do, when I pulled my mask off inside the tunnel, breathing didn’t get any easier.

Not a good sign. This heart was weakening, and I wasn’t ready for it.

Still, I trudged on after them and kept my concerns to myself. There was nothing to do, and I didn’t want them worrying. We could go back, but then that poor girl was still going to be in the condition she was already in. How would I live with myself when this feeling passed as nothing and I was able to continue on as I’d done? How would I bear the guilt? What if the unthinkable happened to her while I was making things harder?

“You okay?” Mattis asked me over his shoulder, and I nodded before I realized he really couldn’t see me in the tunnel.

“Yep,” I called back.

How long was this walk? Truthfully, I didn’t want to know.

I could keep pretending it was almost over if I didn’t know for sure that wasn’t true. Yes, I’d always been wonderful at deluding myself. It came from long periods of time in the hospital with people questioning why I hadn’t been killed at birth. Psychological games could keep me alive. Or mostly that way. I was quickly learning that there was being alive and there was actually living. Existing wasn’t going to cut it for me anymore.

And truly amazing was that these guys seemed to get that. The partying after battles, the way they all seemed to laugh despite their hardships, that was all the way they affirmed that they loved life. Particularly after it sucked.

“This way.” Astor’s voice was low. He must really not want to be heard right now. I took that as a good sign to keep my mouth shut and trailed after them. When we exited the tunnels, what would we see? Reamerville? Would it be as disgusting and unhygienic as their war camps apparently were? Or did Reamers live more or less like we did as they ate human flesh? I shuddered at the thought. People did what they had to in order to survive, but surely there was a line about just how gross things could get.

Astor popped off a lid above his head, and Mattis shook his head. “Let me go first.”

“In case they spot us, so you can get killed instead of me?” Astor put his hands on his hips. “Not okay.”

“It is, actually.” Mattis didn’t wait for permission. “You’re royalty. Second-in-line after Torrin. You have to stay alive. I’m awesome and amazing, but I can be killed. You can’t. So I go first. End of story.”

Funny how in preserving Astor’s royalty, Mattis was actually ordering him around. Did they even realize how ridiculous these class divisions were?

I was doing it again. Getting lost in my head, noticing life’s ironies instead of participating in the things that were happening around me. Why was I doing that all of a sudden? I was about to have the most dangerous thing I’d ever done happen to me. Well, except for the whole spaceship-crashing portion of my life.

Astor followed Mattis up and then turned to wave me to follow. It must be safe to go. Or safe enough. None of this was without risk. That was life for us. We never had a time when it was totally okay to go about things, so we did the best we could.

Of course, this didn’t qualify as doing the best we could. We were definitely taking a big risk.

These days, I was Bianca the risk-taker.

Apparently.

Chapter Twenty

The air had gotten progressively more stifling as we proceeded through the tunnels. At first, I thought it was just stagnant air