27. Leandra
Two Years Later
The forest is a blur of shadows and jagged light as I sprint. Branches claw at my face and my chest heaves with every ragged breath, but I can’t stop. I know I can’t.
My mother’s hand is tight in mine, her grip almost painful, but I don’t dare let go.
We have run like this before. Too many times, but something has shifted in the last few months; the hunt has quickened, grown more relentless, and we have been flushed from every bolt-hole we thought safe, barely getting away.
Behind us, the sound of boots crunching on leaves grows louder, closer.
They’re coming.
Oh god, they’re going to catch us.
“Faster, Leandra!” my mother gasps, her voice strained with a fear that has become our constant companion.
I push harder, my legs burning, my lungs screaming for air.
We have hidden for almost six years, burrowed into shadows, whispered our prayers, and slipped through the woods always just ahead of the men who hunt us.
But now they are everywhere and we have been running for days, fleeing one near-miss after another, while the net tightens around us.
I don’t understand what has changed, I don’t know why we are trapped in this nightmare.
I know my cousin, Ines is dead. I know someone murdered her. We heard whispers of it. It has to be about her, but why are they hunting us? Hunting her family? We did nothing, we saw nothing, we only share her blood. The question chases me as hard as the footsteps.
A shout echoes through the trees, sharp and commanding. “Spread out! They can’t have gone far!”
Panic surges through me, hot and electric. My foot catches on a root and I stumble, nearly dragging my mother down with me. She yanks me upright, her eyes wild.
“Keep going!” she hisses. “Don’t stop!”
But my body is still a ruin from all those months of conditioning, the training stole my strength and even years later, I still don’t have it back.
I stumble more than race from one bit of cover to the next, my bones screaming that they will fracture at any moment, that I will collapse and everything will have been for nothing.
“I can’t,” I cry out.
“You can, please, Leandra, just a little farther…” My mother’s words die in her throat as the forest grows suddenly so fucking still.
The footsteps are everywhere now; we can hear it, feel it, it’s a tightening circle around us both.
She pulls me down, and we cram ourselves into a hollow between fallen trunks, our bodies pressed into the damp musty earth, our breath held so tight it becomes a prayer.
Above us, boots pound past. Closer. Closer still.
Then, impossibly, they fade. The crunch of leaves softens, moves away.
For one long, trembling minute, there is nothing but the drum of my own heart.
My mother’s hand finds my cheek in the gloom.
Her lips shape a silent word; quiet. I see the fragile hope in her eyes, the desperate belief that we have slipped them again, that we are ghosts they cannot hold.
And I almost believe it.
Then a voice, calm and terrible, speaks from just behind us. “Did you think we wouldn’t find you?”
We spin around, and they are everywhere; men in dark uniforms, their faces obscured by masks, weapons gleaming like malice in the dappled light. They move like shadows from the trees themselves, swift and silent, cutting off every path of escape.
There is nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
The belief that we were free shatters so completely it steals my breath, leaving something bitterly cold and hollow in its place.
“Leandra!” my mother screams, pulling me close as the men close in.
I clutch her arm, my fingers digging into her sleeve, my body trembling. But my fear has manifested into something furious now, and I will not be taken quietly. I will not go back so easily.
I thrash, kick, and bite while my mother fights beside me with the strength of a woman who has hidden her child from monsters for all these years.
Her nails rake across a masked face. I tear my arm free and swing wild, trying to reach her but hands grab me, yanking me away. I scream her name until my throat rips but they are too strong. Too many.
My mother’s cries echo in my ears as they drag us apart, her voice desperate, pleading. “Leandra! Leandra!”
I keep fighting, kicking at the ground, twisting in their grip, a wounded animal all fury and terror. A sharp blow to the back of my head sends me sprawling. Pain explodes behind my eyes, and the world spins.
I am vaguely aware of being lifted, of being carried, of my mother’s sobs fading into the dark between the trees.
My last thought before darkness claims me is of her face, etched with all the fear of every near-escape we ever survived and the hollow knowledge that this time, we did not.