3
Fisher disappears into his tent, the flap dropping behind him. No one else says a word as a guy and a girl, both about our age, approach us.
“Where should we put ’em?” one asks Calliope.
“Bunkhouse twelve is empty,” she says. “Put a watch on. We don’t want them wandering off.”
Calliope stares at Rook for a heartbeat before turning and entering Fisher’s tent without a backward glance.
“Always nice seeing you, Cal!” Rook shouts after her, a few snickers following his comment.
“Rook,” one of our newly appointed escorts says. He’s tall and lanky, with russet skin and black hair braided in neat rows along his scalp. He wears a sleeveless leather shirt showing off a pair of heavily tattooed arms.
“How’ve you been, Cole?” Rook asks.
Cole grins. “Can’t complain.”
“Safira,” Rook says to the girl. “Nice hair.”
I take in her bob, dyed silver with purple streaks, and have to agree.
Safira flips the ends. “Thought I’d try something new.”
My gaze darts between them. Why does Rook know so many of the people intent on locking us up?
“She looks like a Crust,” Cole grumbles at Safira.
“Stop that! I look cute.” Then her gaze falls on me, obviously cataloging my own purple hair hanging down my back in messy tangles. “Right, new girl?”
She is cute with a little nose, full lips, and big brown eyes.
“Sure,” I answer, and she preens before sticking her tongue out at Cole. “Can someone tell me what Crust means? Everyone keeps calling me that.”
Safira waves a hand as if it’s of no real importance. “Upper crust. It’s an old saying from the Warming Age that referred to rich people.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Not sure who started it,” she continues with a shrug.
“Do you call everyone from New Manhattan that?”
“Sure,” Safira replies.
“Not everyone in the city is rich.”
“Oh,” she says. “Well . . .”
“But you are,” Cole says, pointing at me. “You sound rich.”
“Yeah,” I say, huffing in exasperation as I sense Rook trying to rein in a laugh. “So I’ve been told.”
“Got yourself in a bit of trouble, I see,” Cole says to Rook. “What else is new?”
“Wouldn’t want to get bored,” Rook answers with a shrug and a grunt, stretching his injured side. “Can you get our bags?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Safira says. “We’ll see to it.”
Rook snorts out a laugh and winces.
This entire exchange is so incongruous with our surroundings that I just stare at him. He’s joking with the people holding us prisoner, and I have no idea if that should comfort me or terrify me.
We follow Cole and Safira through the encampment, passing more tents and buildings and dozens of people, including numerous children.
They stare up at me with wide eyes and open mouths until their caregivers shoo them away, pinning me with mistrustful looks.
I want to tell them I don’t mean anyone harm.
That I’m lost and alone and I wish I could go home. But I don’t think anyone would care.
We’re brought to another area, where a few small tents stand in a circle. It’s quieter here, absent the same warm camaraderie of the clearing.
Cole leads us to a tent and lifts the flap. “In you go. Your castle for tonight, or however long the commander wants to wave his dick.”
Bunkhouse twelve turns out to be a round tent with three narrow beds in the center. The blankets look a little scratchy, but the mere sight of a pillow and a mattress reminds me that my limbs feel like they’re filled with rocks.
“Pick whichever you like,” Safira says, entering behind us. “It’ll just be you two in here. Truly the royal treatment.”
“Why is this empty?” Rook asks, scanning the tight space. There’s only about a foot between each bed, so I need to turn sideways to shuffle between them.
Cole tips his head. “A few months back . . .” He cuts off, looking at me before turning to Rook. “The usual.”
“Got it,” Rook says. “Sorry for your loss.”
Cole shrugs and lifts his hands in a what can you do sort of gesture, while my attention bounces between them and I wonder what they’re talking about.
“We’ll find your bags and get some food sent in right away.
Safira will be guarding you for the next few hours.
” He tosses me a wink. “Don’t worry. She doesn’t bite. Much.”
With that ominous statement, they both duck out of the tent.
I hear them talking to someone on the other side before the flap opens again, revealing Vess carrying her med kit. She offers me a wary look before addressing Rook.
“Let me check your bandages.”
Rook lifts his shirt, and she pokes and prods at him with a tongue wedged between her teeth. “Looks like you’re gonna live.”
“Thanks, Vess,” he says, his tone laced with sincerity.
“Don’t thank me,” she says as she wraps him up in a set of fresh bandages. “Cal said we had to keep you alive. Plus, I’m not interested in getting on the high commander’s bad side.”
Rook’s mouth presses together.
The high commander. As in High Commander Athira.
One of his parents? Or someone he’s related to at least.
While Vess finishes her work, a wave of dizziness overcomes me, and I sink onto the bed. The spot on my head is tender to the touch, and I feel a cut scabbing over that means I was definitely bleeding at some point.
“Can you check her, too?” Rook asks.
Vess gives me a dubious glance.
“No,” she says firmly. “I don’t work on Crusts.”
“Vess,” he says, admonishment in his tone. “Don’t be like that. Poet hasn’t done anything wrong.”
Vess starts packing up, refusing to make eye contact. “I can leave you some supplies.”
Rook’s jaw clenches, and I can tell he wants to argue, but his shoulders drop. “Fine.”
Vess nods and lays out a few items on the bed before she opens her case of vials and injects Rook with another dose of painkillers.
This also catches me off guard. They have medicine and supplies. Ways of caring for themselves that don’t seem so different from ours.
As if reading my mind, Vess huffs out a derisive snort.
“They’re all the same,” she says to Rook, latching her case shut.
And then she’s gone, leaving Rook and me alone for the first time since our capture. He scoops up the items Vess left behind and drops to a knee before me.
At first, he doesn’t make eye contact. Maybe because he can’t stand to look at me.
Does he feel any guilt for how he betrayed me?
He was there the night Raine was taken. When I told him what I’d seen in that video, he said he was planning to tell me everything.
But what did he mean? I can’t seem to form the question around the thickness of my tongue.
Probably because I’m not sure I’m ready for the answer.
My stomach rumbles, and I try to remember the last time I ate. Dinner in the cafeteria with Domino and Journey when they teased me about kissing Rook.
My heart squeezes as I think about our cozy little room. Kisses in the shadows. Touching each other by the light of the fire. Whispers of our dreams and hopes.
Finally, he looks up, and our eyes meet. My heart flutters inside my rib cage, and I will it to settle. I’m angry with him. I want answers. I deserve that.
“Can I take a look?” he asks, gesturing to the bump on my head. I want to refuse, but there wouldn’t be any point.
I nod, and he leans in, gently probing the spot. I try not to flinch, but his eyes darken when he picks up on my discomfort.
“I’ll kill her for this,” he says calmly.
“Why did she do it? I wasn’t hurting anyone.”
“So you wouldn’t see the way we came.”
“How far from New Manhattan are we?”
“A few days’ walk.”
“And I was out the entire time?”
“Vess used some stuff from her kit to keep you unconscious.” My eyes widen, my stomach twists, and Rook rushes to add, “It was that, or Cal was going to keep knocking you on the head.”
“Oh.”
I shiver and wrap my arms around my waist. Anything could have happened to me, and I would never have known.
“And you . . . walked?”
“I did. They took turns carrying you. Vess took care of me, too.”
While Rook cleans and bandages my cut, he’s so close that I feel the softness of his breath on my lips. Note the dusting of freckles over the bridge of his nose. The way the green and gold melt with the copper flecks in his eyes.
He’d become my safe place at Amery. The calm in the storm of my life. My protector. My friend. And I thought maybe something more, too.
Now I don’t know whether to lean closer or shove him away.
His fingertips graze the edge of my jaw. My breath quickens, my pulse hammering at his nearness. I hate that my body still trusts him when I’m not sure the rest of me can.
When I can’t stand it a moment longer, I sit back, severing the moment. “I’m fine now.”
“Sorry,” he says, though I’m not sure either one of us really knows what he’s apologizing for. He’s still kneeling in front of me, like he can’t bear the idea of being too far away.
“Rook, who are these people?” I ask. “Why do you know them? Why are they locking us up?”
His gaze jumps to the tent entrance, where Safira is no doubt keeping guard. He’s friendly with her but doesn’t trust her completely, and the canvas walls of our bunkhouse don’t offer much privacy.
Rook balances a hand on the edge of the bed frame.
“There are numerous pockets like this scattered across the Wastes,” he says, voice low.
“Encampments where people live and spend their time hunting these lands for resources and signs of life.” He pauses, and I get the sense that while that is the truth, it’s not the entire picture.
“I lived in an encampment for a few years. Not this one, but a different one, though you get to know each other when you’re living in the same quadrants.
People often travel between camps, switching groups depending on where they’re headed.
So that’s how I know Cole and Safira and a few of the others. ”
He’s saying a lot of things I can’t quite keep up with.
Quadrants. Where they’re headed.
“And Commander Sterling?” I ask. “Fisher? Is that how you know him, too?”
“Ah.” Rook rubs his chin. “That’s a little more complicated.”
He glances back at the doorway and then at me, lowering his head.