WALES 2022
IN THE STABLES WHERE Arden and I had made our deal, there was a muffled groan a few feet away, and my attention snapped to the body slumped in the corner.
The body starting to shift sluggishly.
The innocent body I had knocked unconscious and hauled here like an animal.
‘Shit,’ I muttered, dropping my head into my hands. ‘It wasn’t Ceri. What have I done?’
Arden climbed to his feet, dusting off his trousers. ‘Not your finest hour.’
‘What am I going to do?’ I raked my fingers through my hair.
‘What had you planned to do?’
I bit my lip. ‘Leave him tied here until I could save Gracie.’
Arden nodded sagely, leaning casually against the doorframe, as though we had not just been discussing the finer details of mutually assured destruction. ‘A very sane course of action. It’s a real shame that lobotomy in Vermont didn’t take.’
Ceri groaned again, blonde eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks.
‘So leave him tied here regardless,’ Arden said. ‘We can free him before we … you know.’
‘Perish. Yes.’ I stood up and began pacing the hay-strewn floor. ‘Not exactly ethical, though, is it?’
‘I think perhaps that line has already been crossed. Danced over, even. A veritable foxtrot over the boundaries of morality.’
This was an utter disaster. ‘I suppose I can’t let him go. He’ll tell the police and we’ll get arrested.’
‘We?’ Arden looked affronted. ‘I haven’t touched the chap.’
Chap. In an instant, I was back in horse-drawn London, begging the baker to employ me – for the heat, and for the bread, and so that my family would not starve. I loved it when slivers of bygone eras slipped into Arden’s speech. He collected words and slang expressions like shells on a beach, cockles and conches and cantharus, and brought them out to admire when I least expected it. Back in the trenches, he’d told me he’d have given anything to snerdle – to curl up beneath a cosy blanket and while away the day.
Arden frowned, chewing at a hardened straggle of skin beside his thumbnail. His hands had stopped shaking now that he knew he had a little more time before death. ‘Could you blackmail Ceri into not going to the police?’
I ran this idea over in my mind, but it was like trying to feed yarn on to a wheel spinning far too quickly. ‘I don’t know enough about him to do that. Only that his parents don’t know where he is … But threatening to tell them might not be enough to keep him silent. Or they might find him anyway, and our leverage is gone.’
‘Trust me, my parents don’t care enough to find me.’
The voice came from the floor.
Ceri was awake.
Cautiously I turned to face him. ‘Ceri. Ceri, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry about this.’
His head bobbed heavily on his neck. ‘Not sorry enough to not blackmail me. Did that sentence make sense? God, I’m dizzy.’
‘Are you hurt?’
‘You cracked me around the head with a shovel. Of course I’m hurt.’ A weak, lopsided smile. ‘But I promise not to tell anyone if you let me go. Please. I don’t want any part of this.’
A kind of erratic laughter bolted up my throat. I felt like a hitman who’d taken hostages, like a pantomime criminal. ‘There’s no way you’re not going to tell the police about this.’ I bowed my head in apology. ‘Case of mistaken identity, by the way.’
Ceri nodded, but it was more of a loll. ‘I heard enough of your conversation to deduce as much, but I can’t say it made any sense.’ Adjusting himself on the floor with a badly disguised grimace, he added, ‘Honestly, I wouldn’t go to the police. You have my word. But I am in quite a lot of pain, and I can’t see all too well. I think I need medical attention.’
My will faltered.
Arden spotted the subtle guilty twist of my face and shook his head. ‘Evelyn –’
‘Evelyn?’ Ceri asked in confusion.
‘Branwen,’ Arden corrected. ‘It’s not worth the risk. You have to keep him here.’
Ceri looked from me to Arden then back to me. I couldn’t parse his expression at all; it was oddly vacant and dreamy. ‘Someone will find me. I can shout pretty loudly.’
‘You’re just asking to be gagged at this point,’ said Arden.
Ceri winced as his shoulders strained against his bonds. He looked up at me intently. ‘Please. I just want to forget this ever happened.’ Another groan. ‘God, my head .’
I tried to weigh my options, but my mind was a helter-skelter, a beehive, a pit of snakes. The confrontation with Arden had left me wrung out and freshly devastated, not to mention anxious about how exactly I was going to save Gracie. There was no brain space left to deal with accidental captives.
Leaving Ceri here did seem like the easiest solution, but shame pulsed through me at the thought.
And yet Arden was right. If Ceri went to the police, I wouldn’t be able to save Gracie. I couldn’t organize an earlier bone marrow transplant from a cell.
But maybe I wouldn’t need to. If we were taken into custody, Arden and I would be separated. Then he wouldn’t be able to kill me in the next seven days. I would live past my birthday, and surely I could have the bone marrow transplant performed in jail. Surely there were allowances that could be made.
Had what I’d done been bad enough to justify imprisonment? Possibly not. Even if I was charged, I’d almost certainly be granted bail. My safety from Arden was not guaranteed in the least.
In any case, letting Ceri go felt like the best course of action. After so many lives on the wrong side of the law, the police didn’t scare me. Cell or no cell, bail or no bail, there would still be a chance of saving my sister’s life – without leaving an innocent boy bound and gagged in a crypt-cold stable.
I stepped forward, eyes fixed on Ceri’s bonds, but Arden stepped forward too.
‘You can’t let him go.’ His voice was soft but firm. ‘I’m sorry. If we end up arrested and separated, I won’t be able to get to you before we turn eighteen. And we can’t turn eighteen. We can ’ t .’
Ceri’s gaze flicked once again between me and the farmhand he’d never met before. ‘Very weird energy in here.’
I crouched to the ground, about to untie him. ‘It’s just cruel to leave him here when he’s innocent.’
Arden laid an insistent palm on my shoulder, tugging me ever so slightly back. I knew he could do it harder if he needed to. If he needed to physically stop me, he could.
It was times like this I hated having been spawned as a girl. I missed the casual bulk of myself in France, the way I could protect myself and my sisters, even if it had led me to the trenches. There was a certain ease to a male body, an innate safety I never took for granted.
‘You were willing to leave Ceri here in order to save Gracie before,’ Arden said. ‘The stakes haven’t changed.’
I rolled back on to my heels. ‘So you’re saying you’ll kill me now if I let him go.’
Self-loathing snapped across Arden’s weary face. ‘I’m sorry. It’s the way it has to be.’
Coldness spread through my chest like a wave. ‘Do you even have a weapon?’
He patted a knife-shaped bulge in his jeans’ front pocket.
Ceri’s eyes widened. ‘So you’re threatening to murder her now?’
Arden’s gaze snapped to Ceri. ‘Oh, it’s not a threat. I am going to murder her.’
I knew the forceful thrust of his voice was intended to scare Ceri, not me, but it still had that effect anyway.
It wasn’t the killing itself that frightened me. Pain in and of itself was not the root of the deep, lurching fear in my stomach. It was the astonishing weight of never , so devastatingly absolute, so impenetrably permanent. I would never laugh with Gracie again, never have a cup of tea with my sweet mum. Sure, I could come back for them in a future life, but that had worked out so horribly in Vard?. I would not be who I once was to them.
That never was hurtling towards me like a train.
Ceri looked at me in astonishment, but his dim gaze was unfocused. ‘And you’re fine with this. It’s like … just a fun little … deal you’ve made.’ His words were effortful, breathless.
‘I’ve murdered him plenty in return,’ I said, pulse hammering against my temples. ‘It evens out.’
Letting his chin drop to his chest, Ceri grunted. ‘I … definitely have a concussion. I … do not feel good.’
Speech slurring drowsily, his head swung like a pendulum. The blood in his blonde hair had dried into a brown crust, but I wondered how much damage I’d done internally.
Was his brain swelling against his skull as we spoke?
Despite his estrangement from his family, Ceri had people who cared about him. He was a son, a grandson, a brother, a friend. Sure, he was also a person in his own right, but a thousand years in this world had taught me that we only truly exist in relation to the ones we love.
If I kept him from medical attention and the worst happened, there were people who would mourn him long after Arden and I were gone.
‘I’m letting him go.’ The decision struck me sharp and sudden as a stab wound.
Arden took two steps towards me. ‘Don’t, Evelyn. Don’t let it end like this. I’ll kill you before you can save your sister. It’s more important to save Gracie than this guy.’
‘I’d quite like to save both, actually.’ My voice was a hot snap, my stomach clenched into a fist.
I untied Ceri’s ropes.
Would calling Arden’s bluff work? Or was I about to feel a knife in my back?
I ’ m sorry , I murmured inwardly to Gracie. I ’ m so sorry if this doesn ’ t work.
The skin on Ceri’s wrists was pale and soft beneath my fingers, his green veins leaping against my touch.
I could practically hear Arden’s mental indecision behind me. A shifting of his weight, a heaviness to his breathing.
But no knife.
No death.
The ropes fell to the ground, but Ceri didn’t move immediately. Fear spiked through my heart – was he already beyond help? After several agonizing beats, he finally brought his hands to his lap, the movements slow and clumsy.
‘Thank you,’ he murmured, eyes fluttering open then closed, as though the tide of sleep was pulling him under.
‘Listen, Ceri.’ I cupped his face and pulled it up to look at me. ‘Can you listen to me?’ He nodded, stubbled jaw grazing my palm, but his eyes did not reopen. ‘We can take you to the hospital, but you can’t go to the police. Because Dylan will kill me if you do. The second we hear sirens, there will be a knife in my chest. Do you understand? I will get my comeuppance soon enough. I really will.’ I swallowed hard, the brief image of my mum and Gracie at my wake so devastating it stole the breath from my lungs. ‘Do you promise me?’
He nodded again, a lolling swoop like a kestrel diving towards prey.
I looked up at Arden. His face was etched with anger; a kind of anguished self-loathing that he hadn’t been able to do what he’d threatened to. ‘Let’s get him to the hospital.’
As we piled Ceri into the back of the pickup truck, my blood thrummed with the small victory. I had called Arden’s bluff, and I had won. He hadn’t killed me the second I’d loosened Ceri’s ropes. Which meant there had to be hope that he would let me live past eighteen.
He’d changed his mind once before, in the silver-cold of darkest Siberia.
I could get him to change it again.
My hand went to the folded square paper in my pocket.
I still believe.