Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Shan leads us to a cave. I don’t know why he picks the particular cave, and he doesn’t explain. It’s set not quite at the bottom of the hill, but not at the top. There’s a wide, sandy entrance to it, at which he builds a fire. I watch him work, feeling a certain sense of numbness. I want to rage, scream, and cry. I want to make it clear how very unhappy I am with this terrible situation. But I know Shan doesn’t want to hear it.
“We are going to go back, right?”
I risk the question again once he has the fire going and has stared into it silently for what seems like a reasonable period of time. There is something terribly hypnotic about the way the light dances off his eyes, their shimmering black surface giving nothing away. He must be feeling something. We were just abducted, threatened, and stranded. He must be…
He lifts his head to look at me, and his expression alone tells me that I am not going to like his answer.
“We’re not going back.”
“But…”
“We go back, we face all of the same problems we faced before. We act as pawns for powers who use us for their own ends. We get used, and we get sacrificed and we get nothing. We’re going to stay here, Lettie. We’re going to move far enough away from where they left us that we won’t be found by Wrath or anyone else, and we’re going to start life over. You and I, out here. Free in a way we will never be in the city.”
My heart sinks. He doesn’t understand.
“I have to go back. The crew…”
“Damn your crew. And damn my loyalties. Damn everything we’ve pledged ourselves to because we were once too weak to support ourselves. We’re not weak anymore. We don’t need them anymore. We need each other. That’s all.”
I don’t want to hear what he’s saying. I’m not really even listening. All I can hear is the fact that I am not going to get back to my captains or to my crew. He’s taken me from everything, and he’s going to keep me out here, stranded, captive, alone.
I know better than to argue with him. Shan doesn’t care what I think or what I want. He’s a dictator. He’s no better than Wrath, or Thorn, or Avel. He’s a just another big male who thinks he can stand in the way of my goals. I’ll show him that he’s wrong.
I have already decided I am going to make my own way back. I have some idea where I am. And I am sure that the city itself will act as a landmark at night. The lights from it will be visible in the dark if I just get high enough.
Shan is asleep when I creep out of the makeshift camp. We do not make love that night. I don’t even cuddle with him. He knows I am angry, but he does not do anything to entertain my anger or to assuage it. He lets me sit and bristle and think furious thoughts until finally I pretend to go to sleep.
The second I am sure he too has gone to sleep, I start heading for high ground, further up the hillock in which our cave is located. The starry sky is obligingly bright, which is very nice. All I have to do is find a point from which to see the world around us. This is almost too easy. Wrath is going to regret sending us here once he sees me again. I’m starting to develop an appetite for vengeance, I think.
I get to the top of the hill and look around. Something is immediately wrong. Not only can I not see the lights of the city as I assumed I would be able to… I can hardly see anything. The entire world appears to be silver-tipped forest. The undulations of the canopy almost look like waves in the silver of the night.
Something is moving through it in the distance. Something that looks to my untrained and all too naked eye like a massive tanker moving through an ocean. Then it stops and it extends out of the canopy, and I see a head larger than any I have ever imagined existing thrown back. A roar rumbles out across the wilds, an ancient sound that sends a tremor to the very marrow of my bones. That is a sound my very cells know. A sound all creatures who descend from prey must recognize.
We have not been dropped into the wilds in an amusing and harmless way. We have been left in a place dominated and inhabited by predators that I thought only existed in the collective human consciousness. Whatever I am looking at is bigger than my mind can easily comprehend. It makes the trees look like toys. It makes the whole world seem infinitely smaller. But where is the city? How far out are we really?