Rachel doesn’t want breakfast, but agrees to eat something when I point out she can’t execute our plan on an empty stomach. I don’t want breakfast either. The knowledge that I’ve lost the only father I’ve ever known burns within me.
My heart aches, a constant pain that makes it hard to breathe. Losing Oliver is like losing the best part of me. The part that believed I could rise above. The part that said I was worth something even before I proved him right.
I don’t know how to move forward without him, but I have to. I have to put our plan in motion. Get Rachel away from here. Find the package. Find Jared before a Rowansmark or Baalboden tracker finds him first. And return to Baalboden with a foolproof plan for destroying the Commander and avenging us all.
I don’t have solid plans in place for all of it, and I’m worried the grief that tears at me with bitter fingers will compromise my ability to think, but I do know how to get us through the Claiming ceremony and into the Wasteland, so I decide to focus on that alone. There will be time for both grief and planning later.
Rachel dresses in the bathroom, and when she enters the living room, I take one look at her and feel as though all the oxygen has been suddenly sucked out of the air.
The dress fits her. The neckline dips down and curves over breasts I didn’t realize until just this minute were so … substantial. I force my eyes to scrape over her trim waist, but in seconds I’m staring once more at the way the glittering line of thread along her neckline barely contains her.
Every man who sees her will be paying attention.
Me included.
I don’t want to admit my attraction to her is strong enough to rise above my grief and my sense of responsibility, but they’re breasts. And they’re nearly spilling out the top of her dress. I look around for a scarf or some other piece of cloth to cover her up, but all I have is a scrap of a kitchen towel, and I already know she’d never agree to it.
Which settles it. I’ll have to stand in front of her the entire time.
The deep blue of the dress brings out the blue in her eyes, and the diamonds sewn into the bodice sparkle in the light.
Which draws the eye straight to her breasts.
She’s wearing the dish towel. I don’t care what she says.
“Acceptable?” she asks, and bends to look down at her full skirt. I want to tell her to straighten up and never bend down again, but my mouth has unaccountably gone dry.
Acceptable? She’s breathtaking.
I nod, but when she slides her skirt up her leg to strap her knife sheath to her thigh, I turn around and begin rummaging aimlessly through the papers on the kitchen table.
“How am I going to reach this in a fight?” she asks, and I make the incredibly foolish mistake of turning around while her pale leg is still completely exposed.
I turn back around and address my comment to the table in front of me. “Make a slit in the silk and that stiff, crinkly stuff beneath it. You can hide the slit with your arm while you’re on the stage, but you’ll be able to reach your weapon if you need it.”
I wait until I’m sure she’s had enough time to cover herself again before turning. Her leg isn’t showing anymore, but she’s bending over her travel bag, packing a box of flint.
What kind of man looks at his ward like she’s a temptation? Especially on the heels of such trauma and grief?
I instruct myself to regain my common sense and focus on getting ready for the day. Closing my eyes helps. First order of business: Make sure Rachel isn’t in danger of going into a homicidal rage at the wrong person again.
“Be sure you know if the person you’re drawing on deserves what you’re about to give him,” I tell her. I have to trust that she’s found enough of her equilibrium to handle herself. There’s no way I’m sending her into Center Square today without a weapon.
Second order of business: Make sure we have everything we need. “Let’s do a last bag check,” I say, and realize I can’t do my end of it with my eyes shut.
Which isn’t a problem because I can just look at my bag. I don’t have to look at her and see her double-check the contents of her pack—fuel, clothing, Switch, dagger, and a bow with arrows. I don’t have to see the way the sunlight plays with the red-gold strands of hair she’s left unbound.
She ought to look girlish with her hair down below her shoulders. Instead, the wild strands make her look both fierce and feminine, a combination I’m confident every single man signed up to Claim today will find irresistible.
When I realize I’m staring again, I look down at my bag and carefully go through it without once looking up. Everything is there, and I feel a sense of accomplishment for breaking whatever strange hold Rachel’s had over me since the moment she came out wearing that cursed dress.
“I’m ready,” she says, and I look at her, standing in the sunshine, grieving and beautiful, her boots peeking out from beneath her silk skirt, her eyes hard with something I’ve never seen there before.
I look, and I’m afraid.
That he’s taken her innocence. That something will blow up in our faces today, and this will be our last moment of peace together.
That somehow I’ll fail her. Oliver. Jared. Myself.
“I’ve made a new magnetic bracelet for you,” I say, and scoop it off the table. It’s a cuff of battered copper that covers the tracking device I’ve worked so hard to perfect. I’ve burned the outline of a Celtic knot into the center and filled it with brilliant sapphire wires, each attached to an inner gear that, unbeknownst to her, can turn this tracking device into a weapon.
I’m hoping I never have to activate it. But it’s better to be prepared than dead.
She takes the cuff, runs her fingers over the wires, and then tugs it over her arm. “Why do I need a new magnetic bracelet if I’m going to be in the Wasteland?”
“I hid the tracking device inside of it.”
“How will we know if it’s working?”
“You’ll feel a gentle buzz against your skin, and the wires will start to glow. They’ll glow brighter the closer we come to him.”
I don’t tell her I’ve embedded a tracking device inside the cuff that will lead me to her as well. Just in case.
“Then we’re ready,” she says, and the hardness in her eyes makes me ache.
I want to give her something more valuable than just another one of my inventions. Something that will remind her of love. Family.
Me.
I reach into my front pocket and close my fist around the leather pouch I’ve carried since the day my mother died. “I want to give you something else,” I say as I pull the pouch out into the open.
“What is it?” She glances at her bag as if wondering what else she can possibly add to the pile.
“No, not a weapon. Something more … feminine.”
Which sounds incredibly stupid, but I don’t know how to do this.
She frowns and looks down at herself. “I think I’m already feminine overkill.”
“Yes,” I say in fervent agreement, and she raises puzzled eyes to mine. But I have no intention of explaining myself. Instead, I say, “I have a gift for you. It would mean a lot to me if you’d accept it.”
She holds out her hand, and I press the soft, time-worn bag into her palm while making sure to look at the wall behind her. She tugs open the brown drawstring and dumps the contents into her hand.
It’s an intricately designed silver pendant made of a dozen interlocked circles with a glowing blue-black stone in the center of it. The necklace hangs on a glittering silver chain. It’s the one thing of beauty I can call my own.
“It was my mother’s. The only thing I have left of hers,” I say, and hope she understands that this means she’s my family now.
She clenches her fingers around it, and then slowly reaches out to hand it back to me. “I can’t accept this.”
I close my fingers around hers, the necklace still resting in her palm, meet her eyes, and say what Oliver once said to me.
“You’re worth so much more than anything I can give you. If you can’t believe that right now, believe in me.”
She stares at me, and I hold her gaze. I don’t know what she sees in my face, but she turns, lifts up her hair, and waits for me to fasten the chain against the back of her neck.
When she turns back, the pendant rests against her chest, glowing like it was always meant to be hers. I can’t tell what she’s thinking. She still looks fierce, running on rage and grief. But one day, maybe, she’ll look at the necklace and realize I see much more inside her than the tangled mess she feels now.
“It’s a Celtic knot. The same design I burned into the cuff I just gave you. It symbolizes eternity. The stone is a black sapphire, which symbolizes faithfulness.” I reach out and trace my finger over the pendant.
She looks at my finger, and then back at me, and a tiny tremble goes through her.
“It means”—I lean closer and will my words to take root within her—“I will always find you. I will always protect you. I won’t let you down. I promise.”
Something softens the fierceness of her gaze. It’s a small shift, but I catch it. “Do you remember the first time we met?” I ask, closing my hand around the pendant, her skin warm against mine. “Reuben Little stole bread from Oliver, and you chased him through the Market, cornered him in an alley, and were pelting him with items from the trash heap.”
“Oliver sent you to find me, so he wouldn’t have to tell my dad I’d run off into the Market on my own again. I was eight,” she says, and grief shivers through her voice at the memory.
It shivers through me, too, and I welcome it. It’s my last connection to Oliver.
I lean a little closer, until the space between us can be measured in breaths. “You were this wild girl with spirit, brains, and so much beauty it almost hurt to look at you. I was this penniless orphan, spurned by our leader and scrounging in trash heaps for my dinner. I never thought I’d be in a position to offer you protection, but I am. And nothing is going to stop me.”
“Nothing is going to stop me, either,” she says, and I hear the warrior she’s becoming coat her grief with purpose.
I lean my forehead to hers, our breath mingling for a moment, while my hand still clenches around the pendant and every rise and fall of her chest scrapes against my skin and makes me feel alive in a way I’ve never felt before.
Then she steps back, picks up her bag, and feels for the weight of her knife sheath beneath her skirt. I strap on my sword, heft my bag, and meet her gaze.
“Ready?”
Her smile is vicious as she holds her hand out to me. “Time to start paying our debt to the Commander.”
I match her smile with one of my own, lock fingers with hers, and together we walk out the door.