I can’t sleep. My lips are still swollen from Logan’s kisses, and the ache I feel for him wants to spill out of my fragile skin, envelop me, and tempt me to forget everything that lies ahead.
But I can’t. Beneath the ache, the silence lives within me, demanding justice for Dad. For Oliver. For all of us. Willow accused me of wanting nothing but revenge. She was wrong.
I want redemption.
I just don’t think I can get it without exacting revenge first.
After tossing and turning on the soft bed of moss I made for us, I give up trying to sleep. I’m careful not to wake Logan as I get up. He looks peaceful beneath the pale light of the stars. I want to trace the lines of his face and memorize the way his skin feels beneath my fingertips, but I don’t. He needs to rest until it’s time for him to take the night watch shift from Quinn.
I walk a few paces away and sit with my back to a thick, silver-trunked oak. A few yards to my left, Willow sleeps in her tree cradle, her bow in hand. I don’t see Quinn, but it doesn’t matter. I didn’t get up for conversation. Besides, his calm stoicism is unnerving, and I never know what to say to him.
I sit in silence, listening to the distant hooting of an owl and the occasional whisper of a breeze as it tangles itself within the leaves above me. It’s the first time in days that I haven’t had someone talking to me, watching me, or expecting something from me. It doesn’t take long for my thoughts to fill the void with violent images. Oliver’s eyes growing distant as his blood spills onto me. Logan’s mother lying at the Commander’s feet, her back flayed raw, slipping away from her little boy until there’s nothing left. Dad, risking everything to keep the Commander from gaining a weapon he could use to obliterate any opposition, and then giving his life to save Quinn and Willow and trusting Logan and me to finish his mission.
“Want company?” Quinn asks quietly. I have no idea how long he’s been standing in front of me.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say no, but I was wrong. I do want conversation. Even with Quinn. Anything to save me from the overwhelming images in my head.
“Sure,” I say, and he sits against the tree across from me, his long legs folded under him, his eyes scanning the area before coming back to rest on me.
“I hate it when people ask me how I’m doing,” he says as if this conversational opener should make sense to me. And strangely, it does. Because the last thing I want to be asked right now is how I’m doing.
“I wasn’t going to ask you that.”
He smiles, a flash of white teeth against his dark skin. “I’ll return the favor.”
We sit in silence for a moment, then he says, “You’re a lot like your dad, you know.”
The words both hurt and heal, and I don’t know how to respond.
“He always seemed so sure of himself, didn’t he?” he asks.
“Because he always knew what to do.”
Quinn smiles again, yet I swear I see sadness on his face. “No one always knows what to do, Rachel. We all just do the best we can with what we’ve got. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it ruins everything.”
He looks away, and the breeze tugs at his black hair.
I say the words before I really think them through. “What did you do that ruined everything?”
“It’s complicated.”
I know the feeling. I’m about to back out of the conversation with the excuse of needing more sleep when he takes a deep breath and looks at me.
“I killed a man too. I thought I had to. I’m still not sure if I was right, but because of my actions, Willow and I were cast out of our village.” His voice is low and steady, but sadness runs beneath it. He sits in silence for a moment, then says, “What’s been done is done. I’ve had to learn how to live with what was left.”
Shock robs me of speech for a moment. I lean closer to study his face, looking for the lie. For proof he’s saying what he thinks I need to hear so he can gain my trust. The only thing I find in his expression is naked truth. I feel like an intruder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
He leans forward and traces patterns into the soil at his feet. “You aren’t prying. You asked because you know how it feels to think you’ve ruined everything. You’re hoping if my story has a happy ending, there’s hope for yours.”
I shift uneasily against the tree trunk. I’m not sure I want to know, but I have to ask, “Does yours have a happy ending?”
His finger pauses, pressing into the dirt as he slowly raises his head to look at me. “I don’t know. I haven’t reached the end.”
“Oh. I guess I thought … you seem so settled. So comfortable with yourself and others. I thought maybe you—”
“Had answers? I might.” He shrugs. “But they’re answers I had to find for myself. I don’t think they’ll work for anyone else.”
I should probably feel awkward, sitting in the dirt across from a boy I barely know talking about the things that haunt us, but instead, I feel a tiny sliver of comfort. Here is someone who understands. Who knows what it feels like to have blood on his hands and not know if the guilt he feels should be his to bear alone. And he isn’t broken. He’s found a measure of peace, with himself and with others.
It gives me hope that someday, after I’m finished with the Commander, I might be able to shatter the silence inside me, grieve for those I’ve lost, and find a way to forgive myself for what I’ve caused. Someday, I might find my own measure of peace.
He leans back, and we sit in companionable silence while the tree branches creak and shiver in the wind and the stars slowly trek across the vast darkness of the sky above us.