CHAPTER TEN
I pushed the door open and stepped inside. Home. But it didn’t feel like home anymore. My heart was lodged in my throat, my fingers trembling at my sides.
“Kera?” my mother said. “You’re late, my dove. Where’s your broth—”
She broke off when her eyes landed on me. Red eyes. Flushed cheeks. Shaking hands. I must have looked like a wreck.
My mouth opened, then closed again, and I swallowed, the words stuck in my throat. And then—before I could stop them—they spilled out.
“He’s…dead.”
“Don’t say such things.” Her laugh was quick, brittle, her hands brushing against her skirt like she could sweep the words away. “That isn’t funny, Kera.”
I didn’t move.
Her eyes dropped to my hands, and froze. Then she pushed past me, stumbling into the yard as her eyes darted wildly, searching the road, the corners of the house, even the garden rows as if he might be hiding among the crops.
“EINAR!” she screamed, her voice splitting the air.
But no one answered.
She staggered into the middle of the field, past the low potato plants and neat rows of beans, her skirt catching on the earth. Then her knees gave out, and she collapsed between the furrows, grasping at the soil.
I ran after her, and fell to my knees beside her. She didn’t even look at me, only sobbed his name again and again. By then my father had come running too, his heavy steps pounding across the ground.
“What’s happened?” he asked as he took in the shattered shell of a woman that was my mother.
“They shot him,” I whimpered.
“What?” My father’s voice was tight, low, like he didn’t trust his own ears. His eyes locked on mine, unreadable, unblinking. “Kera. What did you say?”
“Einar is dead. They shot him,” I said. “They left him by the red creek.”
“Who?” he breathed.
“The alley, by the butcher,” I said, not answering the question.
“Who shot him?” he roared, the sound tearing through the still summer air.
“I don’t know their names,” I stammered. “But Aran was there. I saw him. And he—he didn’t stop them.”
“Aran.” He spat the name like it burned his tongue.
Then he tore through the nearest shed and emerged with an axe in his hand, sunlight flashing off the blade.
And without looking at either of us, he walked on.
Past the field, past the road, straight toward the village. His back unbending. His steps unshaken.
I’d never seen fury in the flesh before.
“No,” my mother sobbed, shaking her head violently. “No, no, no, he’s fine, he’s fine, you’ve made a mistake, you must have—it can’t—it can’t be him—he was just here—”
I hugged her tight. She was shaking so hard it rattled through me. There’s nothing in life that hurts like watching your mother break—
And knowing you can’t fix it. That your arms won’t ever be enough again.
“My little boy,” she kept saying. “My boy.”
My parents were never the same after that night.
My mother started waking up screaming. Sometimes twice.
Sometimes three times. She’d twist in the bed, her fingers knotted in the sheets, calling for Einar.
My father never told me if he found Aran, or any of the other soldiers, he just came back that night with the axe dripping in blood, rinsed it off in the kitchen sink, and put it away like nothing had happened.
And he refused to speak about it.
He told us later that they’d buried the boys at the cemetery. Some of the other men had helped. Isak’s father was one of them.
That was when it hit me. I’d never see my brother again.
He was already in the ground.
My father said we could hold a wake in his memory in a few days, if my mother could bear it. But it already felt too late. Like they’d given up, like they knew the end was coming.
I didn’t just lose Einar that day.
I lost all of them.
And it didn’t matter that I was drowning too. That the grief had turned my heart into stone, every beat cracking me open again.
I had made a promise. To Jorek. To the Wardens. To myself. And I had to move, do something—anything—or I’d sink.
So I went to the bakery the next morning, shaped the dough, baked the loaves and loaded the cart with treason. The routine helped. It gave me something else to focus on, for a moment.
Then I walked to the Blood House.
I was the first one there. It was so strange, standing alone within those walls. Part of me expected the walls to whisper her name. Part of me wanted them to. Maybe they could tell me what really happened that night when Licia and her mother vanished into thin air.
The door creaked open.
Will.
He stepped inside, breathless like he’d been running.
“Kera?” he said, his voice soft. “You’re here… I didn’t think you’d come.”
He walked toward me slowly, his brows drawn together, eyes wide and unsure. That gentle, worried look he always wore like second skin.
“How are you—” he stopped himself. “That’s a dumb question. Sorry. I just—” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Is there something… anything I can do?”
I opened my mouth, but the words abandoned me. Instead, tears found their way down my cheeks, uninvited, unstoppable.
Will’s face crumpled.
“No, no—Kera…” His voice cracked. “I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
His arms wrapped around me. And I folded into him. He didn’t try to hush me. Didn’t tell me to breathe. He just held me through it, through the shaking, the gasping sobs, the sound tearing out of me like something dying. Maybe it was. Maybe I was.
The others trickled in one by one, and I put the pieces of myself back together.
Not that it would help much, judging by the look on their faces when they saw me, everyone knew.
There were fewer of us that day. Not thirty.
Maybe twenty. If that. I spotted Eryx, and Idalie.
And Vidar. Jorek stood by the table, like last time.
“Listen up,” Jorek said, voice steady. “The Eredians have taken Aran, Selma, and Nora. All three are missing. We’re presuming dead.”
He scanned the room, his gaze hard.
“After yesterday… we can’t rule out the possibility that Aran’s been coerced into joining our enemy.”
Silence fractured as a murmur rolled through the room.
“Which means the plan’s fucked!” a voice rang out, raw with panic.
“Which means we’re fucked,” someone snarled back.
“Yes,” Jorek said, steady as a blade. “But we’ll still leave tomorrow morning to join the Wardens, and we’ll decide then whether to continue or change course.
This is what we have to count on. Losing.
Losing friends, losing family—they’re sacrifices made for freedom. But their deaths will not be in vain.”
His emerald eyes locked on mine.
“I heard about your brother,” he said. It wasn’t I’m sorry or my condolences. Just… acknowledgment. I don’t think he really cared. It felt more like he knew he needed me, and was hoping I hadn’t spent the past day sobbing instead of dutifully baking bread, like I promised.
I swallowed. My throat felt dry and brittle, like burned crust.
“The bread is in the cart,” I said.
Eryx walked over to check, and started quietly counting.
Jorek continued. “The Eredians are retreating. I got word—two of them were killed last night. They’re licking their wounds, going to that ceremony and we’ll use that. We’ll use their arrogance, to take them out.”
Eredians? Two Eredian soldiers, killed? I didn’t believe it. They’d seemed invincible until then, but someone had taken two of them out.
Then I thought of the bloody axe. No. Not my father. They had rifles. He couldn’t have—unless they never saw him coming.
“They didn’t take Aran,” Vidar muttered.
Everyone turned toward him.
“He joined them.”
“You don’t actually think that?” Idalie gasped.
“He was there.” I managed, steadying my voice the best I could. “Aran was there when they killed my brother. He just watched.”
I saw it again. That noise, not a gunshot, not to me. It was the sound of the world ending. And then Einar falling. The blood soaking through his shirt, dark and thick. The way he looked at me.
Will wrapped his arm around my shoulder.
“You don’t have to be here,” he whispered. “No one would blame you.”
But I would.
Because if I stopped moving, I would collapse. And I didn’t think I’d be able to get back up again.
“Maybe Selma and Nora joined too,” Eryx boasted. “We don’t know. Maybe they went willingly.”
“Willingly?” Idalie’s voice snapped across the room. “You think Selma just packed a bag and joined them? Why would she do that? She hates those vultures more than anyone.”
“Then explain it,” Eryx said. “Either they’re dead, or they’ve switched sides. I don’t know which one’s worse.”
“Or they’re being tortured for information right now,” someone said.
That would definitely be the worst option.
Will and I sat on the porch long after the others had left. I guess I didn’t want to go home.
It had been decided. They’d leave at first light.
“Do you have to?” I asked.
I already knew the answer, but I asked anyway.
I didn’t want him to go. But at least he was doing something.
At least someone was. I don’t think any of them believed they could win.
It was more like they didn’t care if they ended up dead, as long as they got their revenge. As long as they died fighting.
I let my eyes rest on him longer than I should have.
His ash brown hair was windswept and messy, his face half in shadow beneath the trees.
The faint scar curved under his eye, and the stubble along his jaw made something in my chest pull tight.
He still looked like Will, but he wasn’t a boy anymore.
“We know where they are,” he said. “And we’re going to kill every last one of them for what they did. Their leaders. Their guards. Even their cooks. All of them.”
He turned to me and cupped my face in his hands like he was trying to memorize it. Like he didn’t want to forget me.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered.
“How can I not?” I snapped. “It’s suicide. I—I can’t lose you too.”
I wasn’t trying to be cruel, to make everything about me, I just needed him to see it.
How much it hurt.
“I have to get back to work,” I said, cutting him off before he had the chance to speak. Then I turned and started walking toward the gate.
“I’ll be back,” he said softly. Like he meant it. Like saying it out loud could make it true.
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ll come back to you,” he said again, firmer this time. “No matter what happens. I will. I promise.”
I wanted to believe him.
Gods, I wanted to believe him, but all I could think was that it might be the last time we sat there together.
I rolled my eyes, trying to cover the ache building behind them.
“If you see Aran…” I started.
Will’s eyes flared, the soft blues burning red.
“I will kill him,” he growled.
His gaze then dropped for half a second, to my lips, then back up to meet my eyes.
“Will you come see me off?” he asked, but all I could see was him holding back all the things he couldn’t say, because I was doing the same thing.