Chapter 64 #3
The kitchen beyond the tavern had fared no better.
Cupboards had been ripped from the walls, their contents strewn across the floor among broken crockery and rotted stores.
One of Gareth's great stew pots lay on its side, its spoiled contents dried into a thick, cracked crust that spread across the floor.
Blackened bloodstains streaked the flagstones toward the back door, as though showing me the way.
I pushed through it without slowing.
Outside, the familiar courtyard stretched before me beneath a gray sky. The firepit still sat where it always had. My gaze caught on it as I passed, and the sickening smell of Ayron Brighthall's severed leg burning in its flames washed over me.
I kept walking.
Laurie's woodshed stood open now, both doors hanging wide. The careful stacks of perfectly seasoned logs he'd always kept under lock and key were gone, no doubt stolen long before the Infected attack.
The fence beyond had been torn apart, its posts splintered and listing at crooked angles. I stepped over the broken rails and entered the little square beyond.
There it was. The final well.
Modest and plain, it sat tucked quietly near a low wall.
Rìan brushed past me and leaned over the well. Silence stretched between us. Then he swore.
"No."
He pulled back so abruptly he nearly stumbled, dragging both hands through his hair hard enough that I thought he might tear it out.
"No, no..." His gaze darted wildly across the courtyard before returning to the well. "That's not it."
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
"This isn't the Gate."
I stared at him. "This is the only other well in Midland."
"It's not the fucking Gate!" His voice cracked through the empty courtyard, echoing off abandoned huts and cottages before the wind carried it away.
A fresh pulse of anger surged through me. "I told you it wasn't here!"
He stalked toward me, his teeth barred. One hand slashed through the air. "You can feel that, can't you? It's here! There's got to be another well!"
I shouted back, "I don't know of any other godsdamned wells!"
"Think, Eidra!" he barked, striking his temple with two fingers. "Think!"
“I am thinking!” I screamed, my throat burning.
For a long moment we simply glared at one another, both breathing hard.
Then something in him seemed to crumple. He staggered against the side of the well and braced both hands against its moss-slick stone rim, his head hanging low as his shoulders rose and fell with a slow, frustrated breath.
"This can't… Dannis…" he muttered, almost to himself. One hand curled into his hair again. "It has to be here."
His eyes swept desperately over the ruined courtyard, searching every broken wall, every patch of grass, every old stone as though another well might reveal itself if only he looked hard enough.
"It is here," he whispered. Then louder, with growing desperation: "It's here somewhere."
Another scream. Again, from the direction of the forest.
Five.
A long, warbling call answered from somewhere near the front gate.
Rìan's head whipped toward the sound.
"Fuck. We have to get out of here."
"We can't." I turned on him. "We haven't found it yet!"
"We're out of time."
"We won't get another chance! The Bone Women, they—" I couldn't say it. They'd died for us today. We couldn't walk away, not after everything they'd given. We’d come so far, we couldn’t fail now.
He didn't waste another second arguing. His fingers closed around my wrist, pulling me away from the well and toward the settlement wall.
"Rìan—"
"Move."
He dragged me toward a narrow staircase built into the palisade. We climbed it at a run, emerging onto the battlements where the last defenders of Midland still lay where they’d fallen.
Plague-Hunters.
Months of sun and rain had drawn their flesh tight against their bones, their leather armor faded and stiff. One remained propped against the parapet with an arrow nocked in his bow, as though he were still watching the forest. Another lay sprawled across the walkway, half his face missing.
We sprinted past them.
Ahead, Saskia's haunting call rose once more, followed almost immediately by a shriek from the forest. Ice swept through me at the sound. Rìan kept his eyes on the treeline, scanning for the first sign of movement.
Mine drifted over the village below. The last look I'd ever get of my home.
Another shriek. Closer.
My eyes swept over the rooftops, across the dilapidated buildings, over the secluded yards…
I stopped dead, wrenching suddenly out of Rìan's grasp. He spun around immediately.
"Eidra!" He reached for my arm. "We have to—"
"Look."
He followed my gaze.
Directly below us lay a courtyard veiled in green, a part of town people had mostly avoided because it bordered the Dead Shed, where we'd stored those who'd frozen to death or starved during the depths of winter.
It was clear the Infected didn't roam this way either.
Moss and weeds blanketed the square, so completely the ground beneath was all but lost.
Yet through the heart of all that growth stretched an emptiness so precise it punched the air from my lungs.
The moss grew to its edge... and stopped.
The grasses bowed around it... but never crossed.
Weeds crowded against invisible lines, as though held back by unseen hands.
Bare stone spread outward in long, impossibly straight lines, meeting at perfect angles, drawing an unmistakable shape through the sea of green, as though nothing dared grow there.
Rìan drew a sharp breath beside me.
Below us, nature had reclaimed every inch of the forgotten courtyard—
—except for an enormous eight-pointed star.