For once, Allyra was glad for it. Snide comments about her appearance were easy to handle. In fact, any topic other than her ability to survive The Five Finals was preferred.
“What are you waiting for?” Laureline demanded irately. “Let’s go.”
Allyra fell into step with Laureline. The walk back to the house was another twenty minutes that she had to fend off Laureline’s veiled barbs, but blood was pooling in her clenched fist and dripping down her leg. The wadded cloth she had pressed to the wound was doing little to stem the flow. It was probably a good idea to get it bandaged properly.
They picked their way through the thick sugarcane field, carefully brushing aside the thick fronds to avoid being sliced by the leaves. It had become a habit for Allyra to tear off a few pieces of sugarcane and peel away its hard exterior to suck the sweet nectar from the spongy, fibrous stem—a sugary reward for a hard training session. But that required two hands, and she didn’t think blood would complement the sweetness.
Rob was waiting in the clearing, standing beside his Land Rover, already packed and ready to go. His eyes widened in concern as he took in her bloody appearance. “Ally! What did you do?” A few quick strides and he was by her side.
She batted away his hands as he tried to get a better look at the cut. “Shower first, and then you can look.”
Reluctantly, he stepped back and nodded, no less concerned. “Go then, before you bleed out.”
The borehole water was cool as it washed over her, carrying away the sweat and dirt of the training session. Her blood mixed with the water, creating a pink-and-white candy cane swirl across the cracked shower tile and into the drain. The blood seemed to stain the tile, and Allyra rubbed her toe across one in a halfhearted attempt to clean it, but she soon gave it up for a lost cause. The tile might once have been white, but years of dirt and grime and mold had turned it a vaguely suspicious beige. Allyra decided red might actually be an improvement.
It was tempting to stay under the cool stream of water, but she didn’t linger. There was no running water or electricity in the safe house they were living in. The cottage provided by the Rising was little more than four concrete walls held together by a corrugated iron roof. This was a place designed for survival; there were no luxuries here. Taking a shower meant hand cranking borehole water for fifteen minutes to enable a three-minute shower.
Using a threadbare towel to dry herself, Allyra took a moment to look at her reflection in the mirror. Her mirrored self was somehow both familiar and alien. The long brown hair, pale skin and gray eyes were all the same, but there was a hard set to her shoulders and an icy determination in her eyes that were new. The naïve, hopeful girl of the days before the Between was gone.
Another difference was the new scars that marked her skin. The jagged scar across her ribs was starting to fade, but the physical reminder of her encounter with the Ancient would never truly disappear. In contrast, the two wounds Jason had delivered during the Final Trial were already barely visible. Thanks to her Gifted healing ability, her body would not bear the physical remnants of her battles. Though the same could not be said of her mind. Every time she closed her eyes, Allyra saw the red glare of the Ancient’s eyes glaring back at her. She turned away from the mirror as an icy shiver crawled down her spine.
* * *
Rob and Laureline were on the couch waiting for her. Rob had his arm slung over Laureline’s shoulders, and she was curled into his side, her long, slim legs tucked beneath her.
For as long as Allyra had known Rob, which basically amounted to her whole life, he had always been…unsettled, in the romantic sense. There was never anything mean-spirited about the deliberately short relationships that Rob maintained; it was simply that the word commitment wasn’t part of his genetic makeup. But looking at the way his arm curled possessively around Laureline, Allyra suspected that this relationship may be the one to break the mold. She sighed silently. She might actually have to learn to like Laureline, if only for Rob.
Allyra cleared her throat pointedly. Like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Rob leapt to his feet and guided her to the wooden dining table on which the contents of his first aid kit were spread. He was quite the field medic, an outcome of his years of outdoor adventures, and his skill had come in handy over the last month, dealing efficiently with the range of her rather numerous injuries. His touch was gentle as he took hold of her arm to take a closer look at the cut.
“Ouch,” he hissed sympathetically, “arrow?”
Allyra nodded with a wry grimace.
Rob shook his head. “We should’ve blunted the heads.”
“I needed to train with some aspect of danger. It would’ve been useless training with the knowledge I could never be hurt.”
Rob fell silent. It was a well-worn argument, and one Allyra had won, but it didn’t mean Rob liked it much. With his head bowed over her arm, Rob worked quickly and efficiently, applying disinfectant and then a sturdy bandage.
“Done,” he pronounced a few minutes later. “Thanks to your ridiculously
