I swipe my hand across my mouth and look at the guys again. “What do we do now? The way you’re picturing it, anyway.”
They hesitate, exchanging glances. Jacob speaks first.
“We keep going after Engel. Find out what we can about what we are and how to fix what they’ve done to us—and how we can destroy the assholes who did it to us. They’re the ones who need to pay. For Griffin. For everything.”
Zian hunches his shoulders in apparent discomfort. “I just want to get rid of this shitty ‘talent.’”
“We are close,” Andreas says. “We could reach her in just another couple of days. And after we see what answers we can get… then we could decide where we go from there.”
I draw my knees up to my chest and hug them, my mind whirling with everything that’s happened, everything I’ve learned.
I want answers too. I want to meet the woman who was pushed out of the facility she built—who recorded my first smile like it gave her joy.
It’ll be a hell of a lot easier getting to her if we’re all working together. A hell of a lot easier to make sure the guardians don’t recapture us if we have each other’s backs.
Do I trust the guys to actually havemyback now? I guess in a way they always did. Even when they thought I was a traitor, they stepped in every time I faced the slightest threat.
The only people they didn’t protect me from was themselves.
I know what I’d prefer, and I know what makes sense, and they aren’t the same thing. But if I have to choose…
I’ve survived more than a week of them treating me like the enemy. I can make it through a couple more days of their company while they’renotbeing assholes, right?
As long as they aren’t acting like jerks and pissing me off, they shouldn’t incite the twisted power inside me.
And the poison is gone. If I change my mind, I can leave whenever I want.
I sway to my feet again and square my shoulders. “All right. Then let’s stick to the plan.”
Thirty-One
Riva
The chilly autumn breeze winding between the trees north of Glenlily licks under my braid and makes me wish I had a proper jacket instead of just this hoodie. We didn’t want to risk going into anywhere as public as a store, and the old clothes we found in the farmhouse didn’t include any outerwear.
At least I’m back in my comfortable shirt and cargo pants instead of that overlarge dress.
I tug the zipper right up to my chin and tramp on, aware of the guys around me at the edges of my vision. We’ve spread out through the hilly terrain both so that we can select paths where we’ll make the least noise picking our way through the brush and so we have a wider view between us over our surroundings.
We skirted the tiny town called Glenlily about an hour ago, already having left behind the pick-up truck we commandeered after crossing the border into Canada by train. If the guardians suspect we might come this way, they’ll definitely be watching the roads.
We have no idea how much farther their surveillance might reach. There might not be any of them up here at all if they haven’t considered that we’d be interested in their former boss—or whatever exactly Ursula Engel was to them.
But we need to keep watch not just for possible attackers but for Engel’s property itself. Andreas has only gathered that it was somewhere north of Glenlily. He has no idea exactly how far.
I’m hoping “north” was at least relatively accurate. It’d be awfully easy to walk right by a secluded home in this dense forest.
There was a single gravel road stretching north from the town for the first mile or so, which we were initially following along. But it petered out into what was more of a private lane, and then an overgrown path I’m not totally sure most vehicles could even navigate.
Zian is keeping it within range of his penetrating sight, though, since we have to assume Engel hassomeway to bring supplies up here. Somehow I doubt she’s living off the land right through the Canadian winter.
Can you subsist on maple syrup and pine needles?
A stone dislodges under my foot, but I catch my balance before I even fully stumble. Two pairs of eyes immediately shoot to me—Dominic’s at my left and Jacob’s at my right.
But this time, neither gaze holds any hint of hostility. Dom veers a little closer with a lifting of his eyebrows that I know is a question, asking if I’m okay.
I give him a quick nod. My insides still twinge at random moments, like there are a few tiny cracks that weren’t perfectly fused, but I spent most of yesterday resting in one train car or another.