Creators(44)

Through the darkness, I heard Lockwood’s pained, desperate cries. I realized he had lost a mother, too. I forced my eyes opened and stared at my nearly destroyed friend, then reached forward and pulled him into my arms. Lockwood hugged me back, crying into my shoulder. I held him tighter. I forced back my tears because my friend needed me.

Once Lockwood settled down, I asked the question I was most afraid of. “And Louisa?” His face fell. He covered his eyes with his hand and began to cry again.

“She’s not dead,” Henry quickly clarified. “It’s just that—”

“She lost the baby,” Robert explained. “She’s in a bit of pain, and we have to watch for infection, but she should be fine.”

“But…I don’t understand. How could she still live?”

“She lost so much blood. They had to make a decision. Your father chose to save Louisa,” Lockwood said quietly.

“How? I don’t understand,” I said again.

Lockwood swallowed, turning his eyes from mine. “He had it cut out.”

The baby. She lost the baby. The thing we had been so worried about. I shuddered at the mixture of relief and horror that rushed through me. Was that what war really was? An endless battle between these two contradictory emotions?

My sister would live. I would get to keep her. There was no way of knowing if she would have been able to deliver the baby, but it was devastating all the same.

“At least there’s that,” I said dully.

…

After one of my father’s men denied me access to my sister, claiming she was sleeping, I found a bit of secluded woods. I needed to be away from the road of anguish. I sat and leaned against a tree, attempting to find some sort of sense in the events that had taken place.

I remembered a story my father had told me when I was younger. It was a story connected to the Native Americans. A government that once ruled this land had made these people leave their homes and travel thousands and thousands of miles to some new place. They were called inferior. The government tried to take everything from them. My father had explained that thousands had died on these death marches. They had called it the Trail of Tears.

I wondered if that was what awaited the survivors of the attack on the camp. Where would we go now?

I reached up and touched my forehead. Somehow, I had reopened a cut. I brought my hand down to see my fingers covered in blood, and a fiery anger flared up in me. I was sick of us naturals being bossed around, hunted, and murdered for being who we were.

It didn’t need to be this way. There had to be some place where this didn’t exist. McNair’s words came back to me then: I figure there has to be a place all this is a bad memory. Eastern and Western. Chosen Ones and naturals. We’ve got to put a name to everything. I want a place with no name.

And it was in that moment I made a promise to myself and McNair—I would find that place. It had to exist. I would do whatever it took to locate it. I would take the people I loved there, and we would be free from this madness.

But not before I did something else. I took my bloodied finger and began to make slash marks against the backside of my hand. The council had burned their slash marks into the back of my neck, marked me their property. I would mark them, too.

Sharon.

Eric.

Louisa’s child.

Emma.

James.

James still existed, but they had tortured him. Altered him. And I would make them pay for it.

I would get revenge for what had been done to them.

“You need to add another one.” Henry sat down next to me, and I furrowed my brow. “Sharon, Eric, Louisa, Emma, and James. But you forgot a name on that list.”

“List?” I asked. I hadn’t realized I had been saying the names aloud.

“Don’t think I don’t know what those mean. You forget who you’re talking to,” he replied. He took my hand gently in his, then wiped a bit of blood off my finger and added another slash mark.

“Who’s that for?” I asked.

“You.”

As Henry and I sat together against the tree, watching another day give in to darkness, I swallowed. “Is this because of me? Did they come here because of what I can do?” I asked. “Did I bring this on my people?”

If I had, I would never be able to forgive myself. Eric. Sharon. My sister. All touched by tragedy because of me. It didn’t seem right that so many should have to suffer so I could live.

“No. This isn’t about you,” Henry said. He leaned his head against mine. “It’s about your father.”

I turned slightly in order to look at Henry. My forehead pressed against his. As I watched the sun dance in his eyes, I knew, in that moment, what I had given up. He hadn’t been the destiny I had chosen, but that didn’t mean the path with him would have been a terrible one. It just wasn’t the path for me. I took his hand into mine.