I jerked awake, rattling my chain, surprised I’d fallen asleep at all. Yes, I was exhausted, but I’d also be dead soon, so all in all, it didn’t make a ton of sense.
The stars, though. This was no Luxembourg City. It wasn’t even fully dark yet, but already, they were all arrayed for me in this utterly overwhelming violet sky. Every single one.
In Rio Dulce, too, Maeve would be able to see Sternenflüsterin. She’d be able to see every constellation she’d ever made up, and that far south, maybe a few new ones, too.
Meanwhile, I’d be dead, but I’d always suspected that was probably what it would take to save her. Frankly, it hadn’t seemed like that big of a deal, back when there’d been nobody but Maeve that I cared about leaving behind, and nobody who cared aboutme. But now?
“It worked, you know.” If Resi, for whatever reason, was telling the truth, and my plan had somehow succeeded despite the laughably terrible odds, then I knew I’d never see Louisa again. Ever. There’d be no way for her to find me.
Ihopedthere wouldn't be because that was the best chance for her, and her family, and the other girls, to be safe. And it was the only hope I had left.
Some water sure would be nice, though. My thirst had become a fire, a craving that drove me to inhale the harsh, dry air as if it could somehow condense into liquid in my mouth. But only blood lingered, a metallic tang that intensified with every sand-raked swallow.
Worse, the cuts on my legs and hands had festered with sores, rashes, and cavities. With each movement, grains of sand grated against them. My whole body was burning from the inside out. Or maybe the outside in. In any case, from everywhere.
And it was cold. It was fuckingcold. I shivered and cursed the desert, and my luck to have wound up in a place whose weather made the least goddamn sense of any biome on earth.
And now an exhaust-spewing SUV was sputtering up the road. Noam.
A growl formed deep in my throat. It seemed my transformation into an actual dog had begun.
As Noam approached, only my eyes moved. As the goon raised the pickaxe, I squeezed in on myself like a frightened snail. But I couldn’t wriggle, couldn’t squirm, couldn’t even move. All I could be was a target. This time, at least, everything went black early.
Much to my dismay, I woke up alive. I didn’t think my pain could get worse, but, well, I’d been wrong a lot recently. Hell,thatwas torture in itself.
Cry, you bastard. You’re going to die here, and no one’s going to ever fucking see, so let it all go. Do it. Cry.
But I couldn’t. Maybe I’d forgotten how.
“I told you, baby, let the tears fall,” whispered Resi in the moonlight.
I went rigid. Where the hell did this motherfucking bitch keep jumping out from?
“You’ll feel better.”
I growled into the bit again. It wasn’t a threat, really, or a plea for help. It was a plea for death.
Kill me. End this. I don’t care.
Like before, I wasn’t sure if I meant it. But I also wasn’t sure that I didn’t.
Resi smoothed the hair on the crown of my head, the few strands untouched by blood, and planted a light kiss that, if I didn’t know whose lips they were, I might have leaned into. Just because it was something that wasn’t pain.
Instead, I managed to jerk away by a centimeter. For Resi’s sake, I could accomplishthat.
“Still defiant, huh? Oh, honey. I tried.”
A crumpling noise, and I blinked to see her hold up a manila envelope. My heart lurched, somewhere deep inside. When her hand emerged, set delicately in the ridges between her thumb and finger, glinting triumphantly in the moonlight, was a microchip.Mymicrochip, because who else’s would it be? She hadn’t ever successfully removed any others, as far as I knew.
“It came out,” she said. “Still transmitting. It just didn’t travel as far as you’d hoped.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, and it all came back. The envelope. The formula. Lemaya.
It was over. Resi would destroy the formula, of course. And instead of helping free slaves, I’d only managed to get one—Lemaya—killed. And soon enough Louisa, myself, and probably a hell of a lot of other people, too.
“Your bro Corey didn’t think you’d seen enough of that for one lifetime,” Resi said, though I could barely hear her anymore. Was it too late to choose death? If I couldn’t do anything to stop this, I probably should. “But luckily, I do, so I have a little deal for you.”
She reached down delicately, opening the case she had been carrying from the start, revealing a vial of sulfuric acid. Because shewouldhave a vial of sulfuric acid.
