“No,” he answered. “That’s fine. You can leave it.”
I finished tying it off and left. If Kazi saw it, she would know I was alive, and I was here, and help was coming.
Do not pass a rose without stopping to smell it.
It is a gift that may not always be there.
I think that is what my mother had said about roses.
All these years later, it comes to me, as I sharpen our spears.
I have not seen a rose since the day she said it. I cannot even remember what they look like anymore.
I’m not sure why she thought a rose was important.
—Miandre, 16
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
KAZI
Scat! Vermin!
Maybe that was what I was now. All I had ever been. An animal.
For hours, I leapt. I ran. I backtracked. I circled. I scuttled beneath bushes, and thorny branches scraped at my skin. My bones throbbed and my breaths were ragged, but like a hunted animal, the urgency of the moment was paramount, and my racing heart masked the pain. At least for now.
You are nothing!
Or maybe I was less than vermin. A shadow.
That was what I needed to be. Something they couldn’t catch.
They were in fast pursuit, which both terrified and comforted me. Yes, follow me. Come away from the graveyard.
At one point I was surrounded, trapped, and hiding in a shadow. They didn’t know I was there. For long minutes I didn’t move. My throat ached with dryness, but I didn’t swallow. And as the sun moved, I willed the shadow into place.
They crawled over the mountain, circling, searching. I heard their calls and taunts. And then one voice rose above the others. Zane’s. He had joined the hunt. Come out, girl! I pressed myself tighter against the mountain, becoming part of the stony wall. I felt his hot breath on my skin again, his hands on my throat. I felt his hunger invade every part of me, and I trembled beneath my cloak. What would get me first? The plummeting temperatures, the wrath of the king, or maybe a Candok bear who wanted his shallow cave back?
But not Zane. Anything but Zane.
I held my hands up to my face, trying to breathe warmth into them. One more night, Kazi. Make it one more night.
Their voices faded. They were moving on. Zane was moving on with them. He can’t hurt you anymore. My head knew that. My pounding chest didn’t. And now he had a greater incentive to kill me. I was no longer working for the king, and I knew his dangerous secret.
* * *
I reached up, sliding my fingers into another sharp crack.
You need a backup plan!
But they didn’t play by the rules!
And neither will your enemy!
I remembered watching smugly as Kaden chewed out an opposing team that Wren, Synové, and I had beaten in a training exercise. Cheating had been our backup plan. We went outside the stated boundaries. Whatever it took to win. Kaden understood that.
I didn’t feel so smug now.