They landed hard, in a heap. Greer scrambled to free herself from under his heavy weight.
“Stop running!” Lachlan demanded. He rolled atop her so that she was pinned in place, unable to flee, unable to fight as he pressed into her ribs and the jut of her hip bones. “Everyone warned me. They said I was making a mistake, setting my sights on Mackenzie’s mad bitch of a daughter, but I didn’t listen. I thought I knew better. I thought your father’s riches would be worth it.”
He seized hold of her leg, fingers clamped around her ankle as tight as a vise, and began dragging her down the slope. She twisted, trying to flip to her stomach to protect her head. Lachlan was hauling her down without regard for any rocks or underbrush. She grabbed at anything she could in an attempt to stop him.
His hand came out of nowhere and fell across her cheek with a heavy slap. “You’re going to be worth it. I’m going to make all this worth it.”
Greer blinked, seeing stars. She’d never been hit before, not in childhood horseplay, not in a schoolyard tussle, not even in the dangerous moments of Hessel’s darkest anger. That she had now, by this brute of a boy she was trying to help, made her want to howl.
Fiery anger kindled in the pit of her stomach, smoldering and sharp. It licked its way up her spine, crackling with such an intense, heated pressure that she bared her teeth, loosened her jaw, and let her rage rip its way into the world.
The effect of her scream was immediate.
All around her, trees pitched backward. Small branches were ripped from their trunks, leaving behind fresh wounds of green wood. The air turned visible, rippling into a tight series of waves that shot from her, racing toward the horizon and taking hold of anything in their path.
Struck in the chest, Lachlan went somersaulting down the rest of the hill, tumbling over himself as he was thrown back through the woods, back through the brambles, all the way back across the town border.
He landed in a heap and did not move.
Her voice, pierced so sharp and completely deafening, tore past the Warding Stones and spread over the town of Mistaken. She could picture the scream rocketing to the Great Bay, across its waves to the coast, and out to sea.
She clapped her hands over her mouth, and the sound died.
The seconds after the scream were filled with the most profound silence Greer had ever known.
It was as if the entire world listened with bated breath, cringing and cowering as it waited for what would come next.
She couldn’t hear the calls of Hessel or the Stewards, the sounds of the search parties, or the rustles of forest creatures that they stirred up. There was no birdsong, there was no chatter of small beasts. There wasn’t even the whistle of the ever-present wind.
There was just…nothing.
Then came the notes of Third Bellows, three long blasts announcing the end of another day, the start of another night. Even they sounded cowed, dwarfed by the immense magnitude of Greer’s anger and pain.
The Bellows sounded, and the sun set, and Lachlan did not move.
The Bellows sounded, and the sun set, and Greer remained on the far side of the Warding Stones.
Feeling as if her head were stuffed with goose down, Greer picked up her pack and stood.
Movement on the far edge of the clearing caught her attention. It was Hessel.
She saw him see her. She saw him see Lachlan.
As he hurried to the young man’s broken body, she turned away with disgust. Let them have each other.
Greer studied the climb ahead of her. She was facing a forest painted unfamiliar by the shades of falling night. In the dark bruise of twilight, she could just make out the tracks of her beloved.
She set off after them, and did not give Mistaken a single backward glance.
Part II
The Wilds
I am rather inclined to believe that this
is the land God gave to Cain.
—Jacques Cartier,
