Chapter 21
Despite making it—or, more accurately, falling—a good distance yesterday, the hike to the trading post would still take all day. My leg muscles were sore and my back ached, but I pushed through it.
“Tell me more about your mom,” I asked after an hour or so, fiddling with the ends of my hair. It’d been so long since I wanted to be close to someone and know everything about them that I’d half forgotten how to do it.
His expression softened into something quietly pleased.
“Her name was Ana Mason, and she was the best person I’ve ever known.
She worked as a seamstress, and we never had much, but she made everything seem magical.
She loved everybody, saw the best in everybody.
She made me and Mac and Clarity those quilts using leftover bits of fabric she saved for a whole year. ”
I smiled.
“She died when I was twelve. She’d gotten pregnant again with Clarity’s dad, Reed.
They were kinda on and off, but she wanted to make it work.
I think she thought it’d give us all some more stability.
She was getting older, though, and somethin’ went wrong.
The baby got stuck, I think.” He collected himself.
“There was so much blood. I knew it was bad.”
“I’m sorry you lost her. She sounds like an amazing person.” I paused. “She sounds a lot like you.”
He smiled, his eyes wet. “What about your mom?”
“I never knew her,” I said. “She died in childbirth with me, but I survived. Everybody always said I looked a lot like her. I know she was strong-willed and she loved collecting books, but that’s about it.”
“Sorry to hear that. What about your dad?”
I took a breath, resisting the urge to change the subject. Please let me in. He’d asked last night, and I was gonna try. Trey deserved that much.
“He was gone a lot, and when he was around, he avoided me. Wolf”—my chest twisted—“used to say it was ’cause I looked so much like Mom, but I think he never forgave me for being the only one to survive.”
Sam’s grey face flashed through my mind. Maybe I had killed her, like I’d almost killed Sam. A chill walked down my spine.
“So who took care of you?”
“Wolf. He practically raised me and D-Dune.”
“What happened after Dune died?” he asked.
I balled up my trembling hands. “They exiled me.”
Trey came to a sudden stop. “What? How old were you?” he asked, his eyes a storm again.
“Ten,” I whispered.
“They exiled a fuckin’ ten-year-old child?”
He looked furious. It felt obvious now, but it struck me that I’d never really thought about it like I was a child.
In my head, they exiled a murderer, which made perfect sense.
But now I tried to picture one of the older kids being locked outside the Vault and told to leave, and my stomach clenched. I would never let that happen.
And now that I thought about it, why did everyone in my old hometown let it happen? People were strict there, but I could think of quite a few people who I would’ve expected to protest. Or maybe they stopped seeing me as a child as soon as I was covered in my brother’s blood.
“What about Wolf?” Trey asked. “He didn’t try to stop it?”
My breath caught, the memory flashing across my vision as clearly as if I relived it.
I woke up to someone shaking me hard. Pa leaned over where I lay in the dirty straw.
I briefly hoped he would take me out of the cell and tell me everything would be okay, but then I saw the cold look on his face.
Without untying my hands, he dragged me out with a bruising grip.
The sun hadn’t even risen yet; the hold was quiet and dark.
When he brought me to one of the side gates of the hold, I couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
“Pa—” I started, my voice hoarse from crying.
“Shut up,” he snarled at me, and I flinched.
We’d never had a close relationship, me and Pa. As a busy member of the council, I didn’t see him much, but Pa had never been cruel or hateful toward me, not till now.
He unbolted the side gate and pulled me outside the hold. Goosebumps rose on my arms in the chilly morning air, and I shivered. He finally looked down at me, his blue eyes, Dune’s eyes, glittering with fury.
“You’ve been exiled,” he said harshly.
I immediately started to cry. “Pa! I didn’t—”
I stumbled backward when he slapped me hard across the face, my cheek stinging.
“You’ve been exiled,” he repeated, spittle flying from his mouth. “You will start walking and you will never come back here. If you do, I will kill you myself.”
“Where’s Wolf?” I asked, desperate. Wolf would never let this happen. He wouldn’t. Right? The memory of his face twisted in fury and hate flashed through my mind and I had to choke back a panicked sob. No, he was still my brother. He wouldn’t—
“Wolf isn’t gonna save you. He wants you dead.” Pa drew a knife, and my heart leapt into my throat, but he spun me around to cut through the ropes on my wrists. “So you better start runnin’, girl, ’cause he’s gonna come after you, and not even the gods will be able to save you if he catches you.”
The ropes fell off my wrists, and he shoved me forward so hard I sprawled face-first in the sand. I scrambled to my feet, shaking in terror, but he only stared at me with hatred.
“Wolf wouldn’t—”
“You ever seen a wolf get ahold of a rabbit?”
Tears poured down my face. Wolf couldn’t hate me. He couldn’t. Could he? He was my brother. I needed him. I couldn’t do—
“Run, li’l rabbit.” Pa smiled cruelly. “Before Wolf tears you apart.”
I walked backward away from him, terrified. Once a safe distance away, I turned and ran. The last time I glanced back before I disappeared into the scrub, he still stood there, a shadow in the dark, watching me flee.
“Bones?”
I snapped back to myself. Trey stood in front of me, his hands on my shoulders, concern shining in his eyes. I was breathing in short pants, my chest constricting.
“You back with me?” he asked.
I stepped into him and he immediately hugged me. For a long time, we stood there—me breathing in his familiar, comforting scent, and Trey holding me tight.
“Sorry,” I mumbled once I could breathe more normally.
“It’s alright. What happened to you was fucked up, Bones, and you’re allowed to have feelings about it. I sure as hell do. They never should’ve done that. You were a kid. How the fuck did you survive?”
I took a shaky breath. “I walked in the desert for about a week, trying to get as far away as possible. Then Juck found me.”
His hold tightened. “Gods, Bones.” He sounded anguished.
“It wasn’t so bad.”
“Don’t lie,” he admonished, but gently. “Griz said you learned how to heal like a regular doctor from books?”
“Yeah. Vulture scavenged some for me, and I read them over and over until I had ’em memorized. On long rides, I’d recite all the stuff in my head.”
He pulled away, hands on my shoulders. “So you were a ten-year-old kid and you taught yourself how to be a fucking healer by reading books.” His eyes shone with admiration. “First of all, you’re incredible. Second, all of that is fucked up and you did not deserve any of it.”
I had to force myself not to admit that I thought maybe I did deserve it. I’d killed my brother, my best friend. Maybe everything that happened afterward was exactly what I deserved. Suffering in retribution was the whole point of exile. I wasn’t sure how much punishment atonement required, but—
“No. You did not deserve it,” Trey said sternly.
I felt my face react before I could school it blank. “What are you, a mind reader?” I grumbled.
He fell into step beside me, easy and familiar, as we continued on. We traveled in silence. The grade grew less steep and the snowshoes felt more natural on my feet. The quiet, peaceful woods were so still but also so damn cold. My face burned when the wind blew.
“How’s your back today?” he asked.
“Still hurts, but I’m getting used to it.”
He quieted for a bit, something haunted flitting across his face.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” He sighed, his hand tightening on mine. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get the image of you dangling from the whipping post covered in blood out of my head.”
A low buzz of tension threaded through me. “I’m sorry.”
“Not something you need to apologize for, darlin’.
You know, Madame didn’t use to be quite so bad.
After her partner, Viper, died, it was like it broke something in her.
She got cruel. She seemed to enjoy punishing people, hurtin’ ’em.
To my knowledge, she never tortured people until about three months before we brought you back. ”
I felt a sudden internal drop. I didn’t want to think about Madame or rebellions or torture.
“What Madame made you do, it wasn’t your fault, Bones,” Trey said, reading my thoughts again.
I looked away. “I could’ve refused to do it.”
“She probably would’ve hurt you until you gave in,” he retorted.
I couldn’t contain the shudder that went through me, goosebumps rising on my arms.
“I keep thinkin’ I know how low she’ll go, and then she surprises me by goin’ even lower,” he said.
I knew why. Trey couldn’t help but look for the good in people. It was his nature. That sort of optimism had been beaten out of me.
“Tell me more about your brothers,” Trey said.
My stomach constricted, and apparently I couldn’t keep anything secret from him anymore, because his thumb stroked the top of my gloved hand, comforting me.
“I was closer with Dune,” I finally managed to get out.
“He was my best friend. Wolf—” Gods, I would not cry.
“Wolf and I fought a lot. He had to be more my dad than my brother, and I hated that. But he taught me how to defend myself, how to survive. He’d make me get up at dawn and practice, and I hated that too.
He’s the reason I’ve survived this long.
” My lips twisted into a bitter smile. “Which is funny since now he wants to kill me for what I did.”
“How do you know that?” Trey asked.
“My dad told me when I was exiled.”
He hesitated. “You don’t think Wolf’s changed his mind in the past decade?”