It’s late and I’m tired.
I trudge the empty paths of the Wilds with a heavy step. The sky above is an inky black, clouds obscuring any stars, keeping the woods dark and full of ominous shadows. A misting rain fills the air. The moon is so faint it might be a memory.
I’m leaving coins with less care this morning. A handful here, a tiny stack there. I don’t look for messages in the dust or touch any waiting gifts. I just want to do what I can before there’s any chance I’ll be missed.
I dip a hand in my pouch for a handful of coins, then move to drop them beside the ax blade at the fifth house.
“Don’t be mad, Fox,” says a soft voice.
My heart trips and stumbles, but there’s a part of me that isn’t surprised. I sigh and turn. “You gave your word, Violet.”
“I know, I know.” She uncurls from the shadows, shivering in her sleeping shift. Her eyes are wild and guileless. “I started to think maybe I imagined it. You know? Like maybe it was a dream. I had to make sure you were real.”
“I’m real.” I glance at her feet, bare in the grass. A bandage is still tied tightly in place, but it’s not the same torn muslin I used. “How’s the foot?”
“Good!” she whispers, and there’s a gleeful note in her voice, as if she’s relieved I’m not angry at her. “I told my mother it happened in the stable.”
I nod and drop the coins on the stump beside the ax, then turn away to move on.
She swishes through the long grass to walk beside me.
I sigh and keep walking. Maybe if I say nothing, she’ll grow bored and go home.
I’m not that lucky. “Where do you go next?” she says.
“Right back where I came from if you insist on following.”
“My cousin doesn’t think you’re from the Wilds. You’ve got too many coins. That’s why you wear the mask, right? Why did you pick red? Are you—”
“Violet.” I round on her.
Her eyes stare back at me, wide and innocent. “What?” “Go home.”
“But I want to help you.”
“You can’t.” I glance down. “And even if you could, you’re in bare feet. You’ll end up with something worse than an arrowhead.”
“I’m always in bare feet. I walked my toes through my last pair of boots, and Mama says there’ll need to be snow on the ground before she’ll find coins for a new pair.”
Oh.
Despite what I’m doing, I’d somehow forgotten just how very desperate some of these people are.
I reach into my pouch and pull out another few coppers. “Here,” I say brusquely. “That should be enough for boots to last until then.”
“Oh!” She takes them and slips them into a pocket of her sleeping shift. “Thank you, Fox. But I’ll give them to Toby. He lives next door. His da broke his arm, so he can’t work at the mill. Mama has been baking them extra bread.” Her voice drops. “Toby’s mother died last winter.”
I’m not sure what to say. I want to give her another handful of coins, but there’s a part of me that wonders if she’ll just give them to another neighbor.
She glances at the path, and her eyebrows flicker into a frown. “Don’t you have more coins to leave?”
“I do.” I turn and start walking again.
She strides along beside me. “Maybe people will see us and think we’re Wes and Tessa!”
She sounds like this would be the ideal scenario. “The whole point is not to be seen,” I say.
“But I saw you.”
“Trust me, I’m regretting it al—”
A shout erupts somewhere ahead of us on the path, and I swear, then duck into the foliage, dragging Violet with me. She squeals at the suddenness of it, and I slap my hand over her mouth.
“Quiet,” I snap in her ear, my voice low and rough.
She nods quickly behind my hand. Her breathing is quick, and she’s all but straining against my grip, trying to see the path. Footsteps are definitely heading this way.
“I hate going out all this way,” a man is saying. “That rebel meeting isn’t supposed to be until the end of the week.”
Rebel meeting. I’m frozen in place.
“I know,” grunts another one. “But I saw the coins on a step. That thief is out tonight.”
I bristle. I’m not a thief. Violet cranes her head around to look at me. My heart is pounding in my chest, begging for action.
I glance down. My clothes are all shades of black and brown, invisible in the faint moonlight, but her sleeping shift is pale and might as well be a beacon in the darkness.
“Take off your mask,” she whispers behind my hand. My eyes snap to hers. “What?”
“Take off your mask. Say you were taking your sick sister to find a physician.”
“I—what?”
She gives me an exasperated look, like I’m the crazy one, then flops against my shoulder dramatically, her head lolling back, her eyes half open. She goes limp so quickly that I barely catch her before she tumbles into the undergrowth.
Well, damn.
“Look!” a man calls, and I swear inwardly. “What’s that up there?”
I’m frozen in place. I can’t take this mask off. I can’t.
Or … maybe I can. It’s the middle of the night, and there’s little moonlight. I couldn’t name a single officer in the night patrol, and I rarely have cause to be in the Wilds. The chance of anyone here recognizing me at this hour is low.
But not nonexistent.
Violet hisses, “Move, Fox.”
I reach up and jerk the mask over my head, scrubbing my hand through my hair to muss it up, then shove the silken red fabric down into my pouch. I stand, dragging her with me, trying to awkwardly scoop her into my arms.
She doesn’t help at all. I’d be impressed by her
commitment to the act if I weren’t so irritated.
“Who’s there!” another man shouts, and I hear the click of a crossbow bolt being loaded.
This could go very badly. I take a slow breath so I can strip any tension from my voice. “Is that the night patrol?” I
call. “I need to get my sister to the physician.” I try to add a plaintive tone to my words, but I wasn’t prepared to perform on demand, and I likely just sound aggravated. “She can’t wake.”
Violet somehow goes even more limp, and she nearly slips through my arms. I adjust my grip, then pick her up fully. She’s even thinner than I thought.
Then I can’t think at all because two crossbows are pointed right at me.
I’ve envisioned this outcome a dozen times, but my imagination didn’t prepare me for the bolt of fear that pierces my chest. I almost can’t breathe around it. For an instant, my thoughts spin, because it’s obvious that they don’t recognize anything about me—and just as obvious that they’d pull those triggers without thinking twice about it. I’m alone and it’s dark and there’d be no one around to care. No one would even notice. Not for hours.
“Please,” I say. I have to clear my throat, because my breathing has gone ragged. “My … my sister.”
Violet lets out a low, painful moan.
One of the men lowers his crossbow, and he leans in. “What’s wrong with her?”
She didn’t have the sense to listen when a masked
outlaw told her to go home.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I found her like this.” I think better of it, then tack on, “Sir.”
In my arms, Violet begins making retching sounds, and it’s so realistic that I almost fall for it myself. But the man springs back.
I hold her toward the other man with the crossbow. “She can’t stop vomiting, sir. Can you help me carry her?”
He stumbles back a step, too.
“Oh no, Will,” she moans. A hand flops onto her stomach. “It’s going to come out the other end.”
If she somehow makes that happen, I am absolutely dropping her.
But the first patrolman grabs the other’s arm and jerks him back another step. “Get her to the physician, then,” he snaps. “Be quick about it. You’re not supposed to be out after midnight.”
“Yes,” I say quickly, nodding like a fool. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
He glances at Violet and curls his lip when she groans again—but then he turns away, striding through the darkness.
I keep walking, sticking to the main path. Violet hangs limply in my arms and doesn’t make a sound aside from plaintive moans.
Eventually, they’re long out of sight and I’m out of breath from carrying her for so long. For as thin as she is, she’s certainly not tiny. The next time she lets out a sound, I say, “That’s quite enough. They’re gone.”
She all but springs out of my arms and grins at me. “I
was rather good, wasn’t I?”
“Good enough,” I allow. I shove my hand into my pouch to find the mask.
“I saved your life, Fox!”
I give her a look. “You endangered it by following me.”
She scowls. I ignore it and untie the knot in the red silk so I can put the mask back on.
As I do, though, I realize she’s studying me. Maybe it’s not as dark as I thought.
I set my jaw and turn away, glaring into the woods. I’ve taken too many chances tonight. “Forget what you saw.”
“I don’t want to,” she says dreamily. “You’re more
handsome than I imagined.”
That’s so unexpected that it startles a smile out of me. She’s barely more than a child, but I don’t want to hurt her
feelings, so I say, “I’m honored, but my heart longs for another, Violet.”
“Truly?” She sighs. “Is it very serious?”
That actually makes me laugh. “Quite.” I tie the knot in place, then turn back. “Who’s Will?”
“My cousin.” She pauses. “What’s your name?”
“Fox is fine.” I glance down the path, then up at the sky. “What’s the rebel meeting they were talking about? Do you know?”
She shakes her head—then nods. “Mama says the Benefactors have a new leader. But it’s not one of the consuls.”
Interesting. “Do you know where the meeting is?”
“No—but most gatherings take place in the commons.
Do you know it?”
I do, but I shake my head. “It’s not important. Will you be able to get home safely?”
She nods. I fish another handful of coins out of my pouch and hold them out to her. “For boots this time.”
She inhales sharply, but I narrow my eyes, and she nods. “Yes, Fox.” She sighs.
When she takes the coins, I study her in the darkness. “I might not be able to come around very much for a while.”
Her eyes flash wide. “What? Why? Because of me? Did I
—”
“No. Not because of you.” I hesitate. She’s already seen
my face, and hopefully I won’t come to regret that. I can’t afford to give her much more information. “I will return as soon as I can, but for now, I have duties that will … that will keep me away for a matter of days. Possibly weeks.”
Possibly forever. But I don’t say that.
Her lips part. “But … but we need you.”
I flinch, then glance in the direction of the Royal Sector. “I know. But right now, there are others who need me
more.”
