Luna
A tug—low, gentle, and completely unwelcome—rouses me half awake, my eyelids crinkling.
No.
Something warm nudges my shoulder, welted yet soft. A palm, a person. Their presence looms above me as my brain comes alive, but I don’t open my eyes.
Three weeks.
It has been three weeks since I slept with both eyes closed. I’m owed a night free of responsibility.
A groan rumbles up my throat.
“Come on, beautiful. You gotta get up.”
Beautiful.
All at once, it’s Sawyer’s baritone voice that registers. The scar tissue on his palm presses against the skin of my shoulder. His smell, masculine and woodsy, enters my nose.
My eyes pop open.
I jerk up in bed, hand flinching for Thorne’s knife clipped to my undergarment. But I catch myself before I wield it. My heart skips at the sight of Sawyer.
Danger? Friend? Foe?
“Woah.” Sawyer’s hands raise as he slowly pulls away. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
“Wha—” I blink several times. My knees pull up as I tug my black nightgown over the knife.
The urge to survey my bedroom hits hard, the photograph of me with Thorne beckoning my eyes to the shelf flooded with books on psychology.
Books on manipulation, trauma, acting—a cartoon-villain collection of intent.
I keep my eyes on Sawyer.
“What are you doing here?” My voice is so shaken it doesn’t sound like mine. But hers. As if she and I have melded together—a victimless victim at the mercy of this man, this manipulator.
Pathetic.
“I need you to listen very carefully.” The bed dips as he sits, shifting the blade at my thigh. His eyes are so serious, I don’t dare look away. “Do you remember where we crossed the river the first time we met? It’s about twenty-two-hundred feet from the Grove. Do you think you could find it?”
My eyelids pinch. All I can do is nod.
“Good. I’m going to give you directions from there that’ll lead you to the fenceline. Try to remember this exactly, okay?”
The fenceline…
The fenceline where he’s…
My eyes widen as I sit up straight. A chilled draft sweeps up my neck and pulls my attention to the open window—the one he must’ve climbed in. “Wait, what?”
“There’s a spot in the fence where the current is weak. It’s how I’ve been leaving. I can’t take you, but I’ll tell you how to get there. Listen carefully: from the river crossing—”
“You’ve been climbing the fence?” My stomach sinks low.
A weak spot in the current…
It cannot be that simple.
Mouth open, Sawyer blinks to recalibrate.
“There’s a hole beneath you can crawl through if you have another person to hold back the chain-link.
The current is weaker, but if you get stuck, it’ll still kill you, so you need to get someone’s help.
Which means you need to buy yourself some time until they’re no longer watching you closely. Thorne—”
“Did you dig the hole?” My voice is far too even. Angry. Ashamed. Scared. My chest hardens to rock as I brace myself for the answer.
“It was already there. But listen…”
It was already there.
For an unknown amount of time.
Paving the way for an unknown number of people.
Faces sift through my mind, one after another like flipping through a catalogue—the faces of my people, old and young and knowing. Crimes happening beneath my nose.
“Luna?”
I blink. Sawyer’s concerned expression comes into view. “What?”
“Did you hear me?”
Oh my God, I’m not even listening.
I clear my throat; brush hair from my face. “Sorry.” I raise my pitch while working to rattle my vocal cords.
Focus.
“I’m just…” I tuck my chin and soften my eyes. “I can’t believe you’re helping me escape. Thank you.”
“Thorne will help you escape,” Sawyer says. “There’s a pair of rubber gloves hidden in the brush close by that he can use to hold the fence.”
That’s why he needed Zephyr.
“If you have to go by yourself, put the gloves on and find something bulky to brace the chain-link. Just be certain no metal touches your skin. It’s dangerous, but…”
But he was going to chance it.
“Here are the directions. Remember this, okay?”
Gladly.
“From the river crossing, you’re going to walk another five-hundred seventy-three steps forward before you come to a large oak tree with roots arched from the ground.
There’s a bear trap right beside it. Turn your feet thirty-five degrees to the left and walk another one-thousand-eight-hundred and six steps until you come to—”
“Wait.” I hold up a hand, eyes drawing to the desk where a pad and pencil wait.
But the desk is by the shelves. And the shelves ruin everything.
“Can’t you just show me?” I throw the blanket off and shift to the side of the bed. “We can leave now. Together. Just let me throw on some clothes, and—”
“Please.” Sawyer rests his palm on my thigh as my feet plant on the shagged rug. “Just listen…”
My toes curl around soft tendrils of wool as I stare into sky blue eyes—so stunning, so ignorant. This is a time for action, but for the smallest of moments, he holds me stalk-still. Tomorrow, this rug will no longer be a luxury and these eyes will no longer be beautiful.
So I let a moment stretch—half-captive, half-captor.
Then I rest my hands on his forearm and turn my breath shallow. Quick. The best sign of a high heart rate.
“I stole from them. Earlier, during the ceremony, and by now, they know about it. I would bet my life that there are Keepers right outside waiting for me.”
Then why are you here?
“As soon as I’m caught, they’ll take me to the mines along with the other failed initiates.
You do not want to be a failed initiate, so tomorrow you will do anything they tell you…
You have to try to blend in until their guard is down and Thorne can erase your face from their security system.
Now, back to the directions… Once you notice a huge chunk of traps—”
“Wait, Sawyer, wait,” I say before he can start spitting useless ‘directions.’ “If you stole from them, then they know you planned to leave. They’ll torture you until you tell them how, so everything you’re saying is useless unless we try to use it right now.
They’ll have the fence fixed by morning. ”
By midnight.
Sawyer shakes his head. “Don’t worry, I’ve got that covered.”
“How?”
“I built a makeshift ladder and hid it in some brush in a lightly patrolled area. I’ll let them think they broke me down before I give it to them, so I promise, they’ll believe it.”
Ha.
Sneaky bastard.
“I don’t know how much time we have, so listen, okay? Once you reach the cluster of traps…”
Sawyer continues on while I watch his lips move with swift, urgent jerks. Number after number of nonsensical directions to a spot I could find within the hour. Without his help.
I don’t need to fake this. The traitor is Zephyr. The key is a weak current in the fence.
All information is known, but I let him go on anyway, my lungs loosening by the word. Warmth blooming in my cheeks, down my neck, across my chest.
“Are you getting this?” Sawyer asks, dragging me from my thoughts.
I clear my throat. “Yes… But what about you? How will you escape?”
He doesn’t answer right away. His lips part while his eyes cloud.
He doesn’t have a plan.
“I’m like a mouse,” Sawyer says. “I’m very good at squeezing through tight spaces. I’ll find a way out.”
“Did you come back for me?” I ask, voice low—a weak question for a useless answer. Later, he’ll think me cruel for asking it… He’ll be right. “Is that why you didn’t leave after finding the money?”
He breaks from my gaze to stare at his jeans, lips parting with an apology that never slips through.
I don’t ask why. In a way, he’s already told me.
I don’t leave people in burning buildings.
“Why wouldn’t you tell me all of this before?
” My knee tips against his as I turn and tuck my hands beneath my thighs.
As my wrist grazes the knife, I look down to see it bulging through the ink-colored silk hugging my body.
It’s a far cry from the white of a Seraph’s nightgown.
All it would take is a glance of those penetrating eyes for him to see me for who I am, but I have never been more right and wrong about a person in my life.
Sawyer Hansley only sees what he’s looking for.
“You wouldn’t have waited until I was gone,” Sawyer says. “If you’d tried to run while I was still here…”
He would’ve failed his initiation, and his plan for escape would have been ruined.
Selfish… Yet self-sacrificing.
Clever… Yet blind.
I have been as wrong about this man as he’s been about me.
“I have to go,” he whispers like he’s sure there will be Keepers standing right outside the door. “I’m sorry, Luna. For everything.”
He gets up and walks to the entryway but pauses when I speak.
“I’m coming with you.”
He sighs, turns halfway. “You can’t. It isn’t—”
“I know a way out of this place.” I step up to him, glance at the door, and lower my voice as he had. “One where Keepers won’t be waiting for us.”
His eyes widen the slightest bit, interest visibly piquing. Interest… but not quite hope.
He looks down as I take his hands.
“We leave together or not at all.” My voice is a meek whisper. I expect him to look up, say something, but he doesn’t. He runs his thumb over my knuckles and wiggles the ring donning my third finger.
“I found it in your pants’ pocket.” My voice falters, as nervous as if I told a lie.
He looks up at me and lets go of my hands. I hold my breath as my face tingles with bloodloss.
“What’s the way out?”
My shoulders sink with a sigh.
“Come on.” I move toward the door. “I’ll show you.”
“Luna.” Sawyer takes my hand to stop me. “We’re in the Head Keeper’s quarters. It’s heavily guarded.”
Heavily guarded…
Right.
As if I’d let people wander my quarters without permission.
“Just trust me.”
He makes a face but doesn’t protest as I pull from his hold and crack open the door, cringing as the hinge creaks. I make a show of peeking into the empty hall, and of course, see no one.
I slip an inch out the door before my body tenses and a sense of disorder washes over me.
“What’s wrong?” Sawyer asks as I turn.