The forest was so quiet, it felt as though it was holding its breath.

It had only been an hour since Clarke had relieved Felix and taken his place at the lookout point. But each minute was piling onto the next like a weight bearing down on her, heavier and heavier. Cooper should’ve been back by now. It shouldn’t have taken the whole day for him to talk to the raiders.

She didn’t want to think about the possibility, but maybe it had all gone wrong.

Clarke stretched as best she could, without creeping too far out of position, trying to wring the thick worry out of her limbs. There was no sense in panicking. She would just have to wait and hope.

A twig cracked behind her. Clarke glanced quickly back. There was no one there. She took a deep breath, trying to quiet her racing heart. She wasn’t doing anyone any good by waiting here. It would make more sense for her to go look for Cooper, in case he needed backup. Whatever that meant in this case.

She crept toward the edge of the forest that bordered the fortress, wondering whether to ignore the prickle on the back of her neck. Bellamy had had feelings like that, and his instincts turned out to be right. But Clarke wasn’t like that. Her whole life had been about learning to trust her brain instead of her heart. That’s what they’d taught her during her medical training. That’s what her parents had impressed on her when she’d confronted them about their gruesome experiments. She had to think in terms of the “big picture” and the “larger good,” even when her gut was shouting something far different.

It grew brighter as she approached the edge of the forest, and the trees cast long, strange shadows in the moonlight. A shape emerged, the silhouette of a person. Clarke’s breath caught in her chest and she froze, unsure whether to dash for a tree or stay perfectly still.

She waited. She didn’t breathe.

The figure didn’t move.

Her heart was beating so fast, she was sure whoever was out there could hear. Still the figure didn’t move. But whoever it was had to have spotted her. There was no point in trying to hide.

“Cooper,” she called hoarsely. “Is that you?” Once the echo of her voice faded, there was only silence.

Slowly, she walked forward. “Cooper?” she tried again. “Are you okay?”

As she moved closer, Clarke realized that it wasn’t Cooper. It wasn’t anyone, really. She squinted, wondering if her eyes were deceiving her. But, no… she could see it clearly—the loose clothes stuffed with straw, the crude human features on the gourd head—it was a scarecrow, a thing she’d once read about.

Normally, encountering pre-Cataclysm artifacts filled her with excitement and wonder, but not this time. Something was wrong. They were too far from any crops for this to be a new scarecrow, and there was no way an old one could’ve survived the Cataclysm.

A few meters away, Clarke froze. No… she blinked… it had to be a trick of the light.

“No,” she breathed. “No, please.”

It wasn’t a scarecrow. Not entirely. Because, while the loose clothes were indeed filled with straw, the head wasn’t made from a gourd like she’d first thought.

It was a real human head.

Cooper’s.

Clarke screamed. She couldn’t stop it. Her shrieks rang up into the trees, sending two birds flapping away wildly. “Help!” she shouted. “Someone, please, help!” And then before she knew what she was doing, a name burst out of her throat. “Bellamy!”

She gasped, her head spinning, but then her initial wave of terror and revulsion receded, and her training kicked in. She staggered forward, steeling herself for what awaited. Cooper’s head had been severed and placed on a spike, on which someone had also affixed the body of a scarecrow—straw stuffed into Cooper’s clothes.

His face was round and bloated, his skin a stomach-churning blue. But the blood near the neck stem was still wet. This had happened recently. Clarke scanned the shadows for signs of movement. She took a deep breath and slowly walked around the gruesome effigy, then let out another gasp.

On the scarecrow’s back were written the words Serve or die. And they’d been written in blood.

“Oh shit,” someone whispered. Clarke spun around and saw Paul staring at the scarecrow, his face white with horror.

“I know…” Clarke said, forcing herself to breathe as tears began to fall down her cheeks. “We should look for the body. We can’t leave him like this.”

“What? No way,” Paul said, backing away.

“Okay, fine, I’ll deal with it later. But we need to figure out what to do next.”

But Paul had already turned around and was breaking into a run.

“Hey!” Clarke called. “Where are you going?”

A crashing sound made Clarke jump to the side. She grabbed a stick from the ground and raised it above her head, ready to pummel whoever emerged from the trees.

“Clarke! Are you okay? I’m coming! Clarke!”

She dropped the stick as Bellamy sprinted out of the shadows. When he saw her, his red, sweat-covered face collapsed with relief and he pulled her into a tight embrace. “I heard you scream and I thought…” His words were drowned out by a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “Thank god you’re all right.”

A few moments later, Luke emerged, moving smartly despite his limp, and dragging Paul with him.

“What’s going on?” Bellamy snarled, turning to Paul. “What did you do to her?”

“I didn’t do anything. They did that.” He gestured wildly at the scarecrow.

Bellamy spun around, seeing it for the first time. “Oh my god,” he muttered, taking a few shaky steps backward. “Holy shit.”

“Let go of me, you idiot.” Paul groaned as he tried to free himself from Luke’s grasp. “I had nothing to do with this.”

“Then why were you running away?” Luke said through gritted teeth, tightening his hold until Paul let out a whimper.

“Because it’d be insane to stick around here. Look what they did to Cooper! We have no chance in hell of rescuing anyone. It’s time to get out.”

“You want to abandon them?” Clarke said, unable to keep the disdain out of her voice. Bellamy shot her a look of pride for standing up to Paul.

“Yes. We are out of our freaking depth here. My thoughts and prayers go out to our people on the inside, et cetera, et cetera, but we are marching home right now.”

“You can go,” Bellamy said, wrapping his arm around Clarke. “But the rest of us are staying. We have work to do.”

Bellamy and Clarke walked a little behind Luke, who was dragging along a whining, whimpering Paul. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Bellamy asked, glancing back over his shoulder. “What you saw… what they did to Cooper…”

“I’m okay,” Clarke said, though the quaver in her voice suggested otherwise. “After we tell the others, I’ll go back and tend to the…” She trailed off before she could say the word body.

Bellamy tightened his hold. “I’ll go with you. We’ll do it together.” Even with her medical training, the thought of the morbid task made her slightly woozy, and Clarke leaned against him, knowing he’d never let her fall.

“I’m so sorry,” she said softly. “I can’t believe I let Paul do that to you. I’ll never forgive myself.”

Bellamy didn’t respond, but he didn’t loosen his grip around her either. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet and measured. “I know you won’t. That’s why I’m sorry about the terrible things I said. You carry so much pain with you, Clarke. And I used that against you. I knew how to hurt you, and I went for it. Can you forgive me?”

She knew he was right, but hearing the tenderness in his voice was enough to make that weight disappear, if only for a moment. “Yes, if you can forgive me.”

He let out a long sigh. “I haven’t really been myself lately. You were right to be cautious.”

She stopped walking and turned to look up at him. “I love all of you, Bellamy Blake.”

He smiled and kissed the top of her head. “I love you,” he whispered into her hair.

The others were waiting anxiously for them when they returned. Clarke told them about Cooper, and then went to hold a shaking Vale, who’d collapsed into tears.

“He didn’t have to come,” Vale said in between sobs. “He volunteered because that’s the kind of person he is… was…”

“And we’re sure as hell going to make sure he didn’t die in vain,” Bellamy said, pacing over to some bags by the fire. “We’re going to rescue our people, and then we’re going to make the bastards pay. For Cooper. For our camp. For god knows what else they’ve destroyed, and think they can get away with it.” He reached into one of the bags and pulled out a gun.

“We got them from our enemy’s armory,” Luke explained to Clarke. “We emptied the whole thing out. We carried what we could here, before we heard you scream, and we hid the rest of it in the woods. I also had the opportunity to look at the structure itself. It looks impregnable from a distance, but when you get close, you discover fissures running all along the foundations, probably caused by the blasts from the Cataclysm and natural erosion over time. All it would take is careful placement of even a handful of these explosives and those outer walls would come tumbling down.”

Luke nodded to Bellamy. He stepped forward and picked up the thread.

“During the chaos, the raiders will run for their arsenal—and they’ll find it emptied out. Some of them will already have weapons on hand, of course. We’ll focus on those people, disarm them first, then head to the armory, where the rest of them will be gathered together in a tight space.”

“Sitting ducks,” Felix said, smiling weakly.

Clarke’s heart clenched a little. Bellamy had used those same words when he’d confronted Clarke about his suspicions before the Harvest Feast. He must’ve sensed her pain, because he lowered his gun and walked over to take her hand.

“Once they’ve been neutralized, we’ll find our friends and lead them home,” he went on. “Maybe we’ll even take back some of the food and supplies they stole from us on the way out.”

Paul snorted. “Three problems. This is a sophisticated enemy, their fortress is a death trap, and… oh yeah, you’re all going to die.”

“Funny how you keep saying you like you’re not coming with us,” Jessa said, nudging her gun at him. Paul’s face went bone white.

“Clarke, you know this is insane, right?” Paul looked at her imploringly.

“Well,” she said slowly. “It’s brash and reckless and a little bit impulsive…” Bellamy started to flush slightly. “But it’s also clever and brave. All the things I love most.” She smiled at him. “Lead the way, Councilor.”