The Hunt - Megan Shepherd Page 0,104

the others away. Her mind turned to riding in a car, years ago. Her father behind the wheel, her head on the cool glass window, as they drove home from a political fund-raiser. The night he’d had too much to drink. The night that she had lied to protect him, which had kicked off a series of events that had led to this very moment.

Squeezing Lucky’s journal, she let her chest rise and fall.

They were going home—but at a heavy cost.

A sob started to crawl up her throat again. She felt herself on the verge of shattering, and knit her hands together to keep them from shaking.

A fantasy played out in her head:

Lucky, alive and well, appears at her side, looking worn out but stable as he drags a weary hand through his hair. “Did we actually . . . did we actually do it?” His eyes sparkle.

“Yeah,” she whispers, smiling. “Yeah, we did.”

His grin mirrors her own. He lets out a breath, shaking his head like he still can’t believe it. “I just . . .” He lets out a laugh. “I can’t . . .” He raises his hands in wonder.

Cora grasps his hands, squeezing tight. She meets his eyes. “I know. We’re going home.”

He pulls her out of the chair, wrapping his hands around her back. She leans into his chest, breathing deep. “How are we going to explain where we’ve been?”

“We pretend we don’t remember.” His breath is reassuring as it whispers against her ear. “And we’ll have each other. You and me. We’ll make sure we remember.”

Bonebreak let out a garbled sneeze beside her, and Cora flinched out of her fantasy. Coldness started to creep back in as she glanced at the tarp. Shakily, she opened the notebook. In addition to Dane’s instructions about the weapons, Lucky had written his own thoughts in it too, and she imagined those long sleepless nights backstage, all the fears and hopes that must have been running through his head.

Today I brought a gazelle back to life. . . .

Cora trained again today with the Caretaker. She won’t talk about it. . . .

I keep thinking tomorrow will be my birthday. No, tomorrow. No, tomorrow . . .

And then:

How can we just leave them all behind?

She slammed the journal closed. Panic was crawling up her throat again, as his words kept ringing into her ears. This is our place. This is our cause.

She picked at her lip, looking out the viewing screen at the stars hanging in the blackness. One of them might be their sun. One of them might even be Earth. It was out there, waiting. She could feel it. But why was there that little nag in the back of her head?

“How many humans are on the Kindred’s stations?” she asked Bonebreak.

He shrugged. “A few thousand.”

“And animals?”

He thought for a moment. “Double that.”

Cora knit her fingers together harder, thinking. The Kindred’s tattoos on her palms flashed. Even now, they had their mark on her.

She wiped at the marks on her fingers, wishing she could rub them away, especially the ornate one on her ring finger. Why had Cassian altered her markings, if not to make some twisted declaration of love with a ring? She kept rubbing. There was more than black on her hands. There was blood there, too.

She remembered Cassian’s final words. This is where you give up, Cora.

She squeezed her fingers together harder. She had never really noticed before that the way her fingers interlaced formed a sort of natural zigzag. Strangely, the black lines of the markings at the bases of her fingers matched up, too. They met at the same place her fingers met, forming a zigzag exactly opposite the one formed by her fingers.

She drew in a sharp breath.

It made a double helix—the symbol of the Fifth of Five.

And the circular symbols at the base of each finger, which she had dismissed as incomprehensible coding, formed a series of circles in the center of that double helix. And maybe the symbols were true coding—after all, all the other humans had something similar—except for the larger circle on her ring finger that no one else had. She’d accused Cassian of designing it like a diamond ring. But now she saw the truth.

The double helix.

Five circles in the middle.

The last one—the one on her ring finger—radiating not like a diamond, but like a star. The fifth star. Humanity.

She clenched her hands together to hide the markings and pressed her fists against her mouth.