wooden floor—until Braeden was alone. He rose slowly, hands instinctively going to the pockets of his grease-and- soot-streaked trousers, then thinking better of it and lifting them.
“Is this about the Fourth’s horse?” he asked. “He says my father didn’t shoe it properly but—”
“Braeden Smith.” The regulator with the cudgel walked toward Braeden. “You are hereby charged with breaking the First Law of the fortress.” The whispers and gasps of the students almost drowned out his next words. “You have been accused of having supernatural blood. Werewolf blood. You will be taken to the stocks and watched for signs—”
“What? No! I’m not a—”
The regulator grabbed Braeden by the arm and twisted it, but Braeden broke free. He looked around, as if lost, then his gaze fell on me. He let out a snarl and flew at me. I stood my ground as Priscilla and the other girls ran, shrieking.
“You did this!” Braeden said as he charged. “You treacherous bitch!”
I made a move to dive for safety, but he grabbed me in a headlock, still ranting as I struggled. The regulator with the syringe crept up behind Braeden. As he injected him, Braeden stiffened. His hand dropped to mine. A quick squeeze. Then he hit the floor, unconscious.
A day later, they had their proof. Braeden had transformed into a wolf. We’d known he would. Braeden had grown up on the Outside and knew the gene ran in his family. As with most supernatural powers, it left whole generations untouched. We had hoped it would pass Braeden. It didn’t.
On the day of his branding, nearly everyone in the fortress crowded into the square. I read once about hangings in the Old World, how people would watch with great delight and baskets of food. There was no joy here, certainly no feasting. We came because if we did not, then someone—a regulator, a minister, a prefect—might notice our absence and decide we were not as committed to the laws as we should be. Or, worse, that we had cause to fear the same fate for ourselves.
They’d given me a place of honor, on the raised platform with the First’s and Second’s families. As Priscilla clutched my hand, I noticed her mother frown, but Priscilla’s chin shot up in a rare show of defiance, and she held my hand tighter. Her father noticed and nodded, first at me, then at her. She glowed at his approval.
Priscilla and I had always been schoolmates, but now that she believed I’d informed on a werewolf, I had risen to the status of friend. Friends with the Second’s daughter. How my mother would laugh if she were here to see it. No, she wouldn’t laugh. She’d rub her hands and plot how to use it to her advantage. That’s what it was all about in the fortress—getting ahead, surviving and thriving.
For my mother, surviving had meant accepting life as a whore. It’s a real job in the fortress, just like a blacksmith or a doctor or a farmer, and it’s considered just as necessary for the stability of the community. She accepted it. I wouldn’t. There were other ways to survive, if you were willing to take chances, including the chance that you wouldn’t survive.
They led Braeden out. He’d been stripped to the waist, his feet bare, his trousers even filthier than they had been when the regulators had taken him in. His face was unshaven, dark shadow on his cheeks; his hair unwashed, falling over his face. Making him look like an animal.
I looked at his chest—the lean muscles, the old scars, the healed burns—and remembered all the nights lying in our cubbyhole, touching him, whispering with him. There were new marks now, lash welts crisscrossing every inch of bare skin.
“They’ll beat me, Rayne,” he’d warned. “You need to be ready for that.”
“I know.”
I tried not to see the welts, but of course I did, and the rage built inside me until Priscilla’s hand twisted in mine. I realized I was clutching too tight and loosened my grip.
Taking deep breaths, I forced myself to look at the figure on the stage and see another Braeden. To see the boy who’d been bought from the Outsiders to replace the blacksmith’s dead son.
In the fortress, couples are allowed only one child. If that child dies, they can have another baby, but that isn’t a solution for someone like the blacksmith, who needed a replacement for the strong, healthy ten-year-old son who’d been his apprentice.
The day that Braeden was brought in, everyone had again found an excuse to be in the square. They’d ogled the boy, who’d looked much as he did now—barefoot and filthy. They’d whispered about his eyes, how savage he looked, how angry, how dangerous. But I hadn’t seen anger—I’d seen terror.
I remembered him again, at twelve. A prefect’s son and his friend had cornered me behind the schoolhouse and decided that since I was going to be a whore someday, I should be willing to take off my shirt for a credit, and if I wasn’t, then they’d take it off without paying the credit. Braeden came around the corner and sent them scattering with an ease that made my weak kicks and punches look like the struggles of an infant. I’d asked him for lessons in fighting and said I’d pay. He’d said he didn’t need that kind of pay, and I’d lost my temper, snarling that I wasn’t a whore and when I said pay, I meant credits. He’d been amused, I think. But he agreed. Only he wouldn’t trade for credits—he wanted me to teach him something: how to read and write.
When they lifted the brand, I was thinking of Braeden again, at fourteen, the first time he kissed me. I tried to focus on the memory, but I could smell the fire and see the glowing metal.
“The brand is nothing,” he’d said. “I’ve had worse burns. You know that.”
I’d seen those burns. Some accidental. Some not. Mr. Smith might call Braeden his son, but he slept in the barn and worked from sunrise to sunset, and if he didn’t do a good enough job, he’d be beaten, sometimes burned.
Yet this was different. I saw that glowing metal coming toward Braeden’s back, and I had to drop Priscilla’s hand before I squeezed hard enough to break bones. I gripped my legs instead, my fingers digging in.
The brand sizzled as the metal touched his back. His body convulsed. I swore I smelled the stink of burning flesh. He didn’t cry out, though. They always cried out, even the grown men, sometimes dropping to their knees, howling and weeping. But after that first flinch, Braeden stood firm, gaze straight ahead, biting his lip until blood trickled down his chin.
Next the regulator pressed soot into the wound. That’s when Braeden almost lost it. His eyes bulged with agony, and tears streamed down his cheeks. His gaze rolled my way. His eyes met mine and he mouthed, “Just a burn,” before looking away again.
“He saw you,” Priscilla whispered. “He said something.”
“Cursing me to a thousand hells, I’m sure,” I said, my voice thick.
She put a thin arm around my shoulders. “You did the right thing. Can you imagine if no one had discovered him? A werewolf?” She shuddered. “The last werewolf in the fortress ate three children before he was caught.”
I doubted it. I’d been with Braeden when he changed to a wolf, and he’d never even nipped at me. Priscilla’s story was an old one, passed down as an example of how horrible supernaturals could be and why they must be rooted out at all costs. There probably had been a werewolf. And children might have died in the years leading up to his discovery, but that was hardly unheard of in the fortress. Disease and death stalked the young and old here. It grew worse with every passing year, as supplies and food sources dwindled.
There were no words after the branding. The charges and the sentence had been read beforehand. Now all that remained was the final part of that sentence. The casting out.
A horse-drawn cart waited beside the stage. The regulators prodded Braeden toward it. When he gazed about, as if blinded and befuddled by pain, they gave him a tremendous shove off the stage, and he hit the cart with a thud, crumpling at the bottom. A regulator jumped in after him and forced him to stand. It took a moment for Braeden to get himself steady—there was a post in the cart, where they often had to tie the convicted to keep him upright—but Braeden managed it and stood there as he had on the stage, gaze forward, expression blank.
The crowd followed in a procession behind the cart. Now there was a little spring in their steps. This was the part they looked forward to, as they jostled and jockeyed for a spot near the front. Not to watch a convict cast out. Again, that struck a little too close to everyone’s gravest fear. But they were about to see a sight they’d talk about for days. The Outside.
The cart rolled along the dusty streets, past the wooden buildings. Children too young to watch the branding leaned out the open windows. Mothers tugged at the children, but only halfheartedly. It wasn’t a sight for a child,
