I duck down and try to creep again, and ignore the part where my knee is straight up screaming at me. Hands to the ground. Try not to mind the weird sensations of the undergrowth.
And creep.
Until I’m quite sure I’m in the right space, off the boulders that seem to have come down the mountain like a river of rocks. In my periphery, I can still see the faint shape of Ever as they scramble higher up the boulders. We’re not quiet. We’re not subtle. None of us are rogues in real life. But we’ll have to—and we’re going to—make do.
* * *
And I wait. It feels like it’s hours, though it’s probably more likely minutes. It seems as though the sky brightens, though it’s far more likely my eyes have adjusted. My heart rate is a constant pounding, loud enough that I worry anyone could hear it.
I try to keep my breathing under control. Finally, Finn slams his crutches onto the path in front of him, the metallic clicks echoing around us, and starts walking.
At first, nothing.
The mountain remains as quiet and as empty as it was when we walked down.
But then.
A shadow unfurls from behind the trees, right next to the first boulder, a few yards away from me. It almost seems to glide in the direction of the path.
The moonlight catches it, and while I can’t see a face, I can see the body language. Arrogant and comfortable, haughty and once kind.
It is someone we know, but it can’t be. It can’t be.
I can read the cold determination, and everything snaps into focus, and everything makes sense.
Twenty-Nine
Liva
Emotions are distractions, and the only way to grow strong is to break through your attachments,” Father once told me. He’d given me a rabbit for my tenth birthday, and a year later he gave me a hunting knife and an assignment. “Don’t be weak, Liva. To win, you have to make sacrifices. To win, you have to be willing to risk it all. To win, you have to show you’re not afraid of anything.”
And once you’ve reached that point, it’s no longer a matter of people. It’s a matter of value. And your own worth.
Father used to tell me a bedtime story. A story of his first hunt. It wasn’t anything meaningful—a squirrel, perhaps, or a bird. The target changed every time he told the story. But he stayed on the mountain two days and two nights. He stayed in the same places that his forefathers colonized.
And he learned all about himself.
He showed me his scarred hands. He told me that we pay our price in blood because it reminds us to appreciate sacrifice. That every Konig before him has and that every Konig after me will too. It’s what clinches our success.
He took me hunting on a regular basis after that. It was hardly ever about the circle of life for him—he didn’t teach me to respect the mountain. It was the circle of power, of figuring out who exists as competition and who exists as prey. He taught me to take. He taught me to break.
I hated the sight of blood at first. And the smell of it was worse. It would coat my tongue for hours or days after. Those first nights, I had nightmares about empty eyes and matted fur.
But over time, I got better at it. I honed my skills. I learned to read my environment.
The mountain is hungry tonight, and so am I.
I mirror Finn through the trees, keeping pace with him, but staying out of sight.
A small part of me wishes I hadn’t started this, wishes they were still my friends. But I quench that. I know better than to form attachments. I should know better than to form attachments. It’ll only break me.
“You can’t trust anyone.” That’s the lesson Mother taught me, the lesson, she said, we all should learn early. If given the power, we only end up hurting one another—and ourselves. We try to work together, but one of us missteps and everyone falls. We try to build bridges, but they’re only as strong as the weakest link. And these connections we’ve forged, well…they can be the hand that saves us or the weight that drags us down.
Mother once told me that trusting the wrong people nearly ruined her, and she would do everything in her power to stop the same from happening to me. It took me too long to realize what she meant. It seemed so excessive, you know? She’d had a falling-out with her sister, accusing my aunt of treason. Mother said she’d “used her to get ahead in the world” and “stolen her opportunities.” It wasn’t until my friends threatened to do the same that I knew what she meant: people like them would always be tempted to do this to people like us.
I spent time with Finn, and it made him matter more, but somehow he expected more still.
I invested in Maddy’s social standing, and she had the audacity to go from a sports star to a wreck.
I tolerated Carter, who got into my company and started stealing money. And my former best friend knew about it and let him do it.
And all the while, I got blamed for doing my best.
Then, despite it all, Dad offered to pay Carter’s college tuition.
Finn got scholarships for his game development and saw a career ahead of him, through some kind of gender affirmative action, surely.
The people at school who heard about our game started seeing Ever with new eyes—they got offered that internship—and Ever didn’t even notice or care.
What did any of them do to deserve this?
Still, it’s
