told me we were coming to find you, I knew I had to grab it.”
“Thank you,” I said. Emotion filled my heart and my lip quivered. Dad died years ago, when I was just a kid. He’d never taught me how to use it, not really. I had to figure that out by myself. But he had taken me with him sometimes. He’d taught me how to stay quiet, how to track prey.
And he was clever; more than once I saw him waiting near the edge of the compound fence, he’d sprinkle carrot shavings through the wires and wait for a rabbit to approach, then shoot it through the fence with a barbed arrow tied to a string. Mom would trade the meat for potatoes and onions and make a stew with the rest of its carcass.
“What happened to her?” I asked, pulling the bow across my shoulders. “I mean with the body… did she get a proper burial at least?”
Amber frowned, chewing her lip.
“The king forbade a burial in the compound ceremony, said it was a privilege, not a right. Guards strung the rebels up outside the gates, left to the elements and predators.”
“Of course they did,” I said, clenching my fists.
“But we had a service for them, and for her. Inside the compound. Even the curates attended and said some words, though it was forbidden. We sang, held candles. It was nice.”
“I wish I could have been there. I never even got to say goodbye.”
“You can mourn her now,” Amber said.
“I can’t,” I said. “It wouldn’t be right, while the king is still in power, while the elite rule. Nothing has changed. It would just be words and empty promises. I’ll grieve when Nigel is dead, and everyone like him.”
“Why does that have to be your responsibility?” Amber asked.
“It’s not,” I said. “It’s my choice.”
“We’re never going back, are we?” Amber said quietly.
“Maybe one day,” I said, not sure if I believed it.
Damien had rescued Amber because he knew she was important to me. That meant he was afraid for the compounds. Even if we managed to take out his father; even if we led a successful revolution and called for social change and progress, he knew the compounds were vulnerable. If the other elite rebelled against him; if the royal guards refused to legitimize his rule. One way or another there would be anarchy and chaos. He’d saved Amber because he thought she would be safer out here, at the edges of civilization, with the wildlings.
I knew he was trying to do the right thing, but he’d only saved one human. Did he even think about all those who we’d left behind, or did he consider them expendable? I wasn’t eager to betray Damien, my once-fiancé turned… I didn’t even know what we were to each other now. I’d kept myself pure for a faceless ritual, promised my body to a covenant I’d been raised to believe in; the only means of survival for my race. I’d tried to be a good citizen. What had gone wrong? Where had I fallen off the path?
I’d thought the king was just eccentric when he’d shown me his cave of death; but now I realized what he saw in me. There was a reason Damien had never chosen a mate. It was his way of opting out of his father system. Not open rebellion or refusal, just... unconformity. Refusing to be happy, to take part. It was its own form of cowardice I supposed, though I understood why he did it.
After getting close to John Patten, my grandfather, that one human relationship betrayed him, stole his father’s unfinished formula, and cost him everything. A whole community of corpses on his conscience. Algrave had 2500 citizens. Would they be on my conscience, like Quandom’s weighed on Damien? Thousands of restless souls, the unbearable guilt?
They might be, if I did this. I’d never wanted to join the rebels. I’d tried living in the system, when I thought it was my only option. I’d trained and practiced their customs; I’d competed in the trials to prove my worth; even after my mother had been killed, my family taken, and I was locked up as a traitor and a criminal. Sure, I’d looked plenty guilty, half-naked with Damien and an illegal firearm.
How could it have ended differently, even if it was a misunderstanding. Even if I’d been ready to give Damien everything. The entire system was broken, without trust and mutual respect, we were