Defend the Dawn (Defy the Night #2)(34)

Oh.

Despite what I’m doing, I’d somehow forgotten just how very desperate some of these people are.

I reach into my pouch and pull out another few coppers. “Here,” I say brusquely. “That should be enough for boots to last until then.”

“Oh!” She takes them and slips them into a pocket of her sleeping shift. “Thank you, Fox. But I’ll give them to Toby. He lives next door. His da broke his arm, so he can’t work at the mill. Mama has been baking them extra bread.” Her voice drops. “Toby’s mother died last winter.”

I’m not sure what to say. I want to give her another handful of coins, but there’s a part of me that wonders if she’ll just give them to another neighbor.

She glances at the path, and her eyebrows flicker into a frown. “Don’t you have more coins to leave?”

“I do.” I turn and start walking again.

She strides along beside me. “Maybe people will see us and think we’re Wes and Tessa!”

She sounds like this would be the ideal scenario. “The whole point is not to be seen,” I say.

“But I saw you.”

“Trust me, I’m regretting it al—”

A shout erupts somewhere ahead of us on the path, and I swear, then duck into the foliage, dragging Violet with me. She squeals at the suddenness of it, and I slap my hand over her mouth.

“Quiet,” I snap in her ear, my voice low and rough.

She nods quickly behind my hand. Her breathing is quick, and she’s all but straining against my grip, trying to see the path. Footsteps are definitely heading this way.

“I hate going out all this way,” a man is saying. “That rebel meeting isn’t supposed to be until the end of the week.”

Rebel meeting. I’m frozen in place.

“I know,” grunts another one. “But I saw the coins on a step. That thief is out tonight.”

I bristle. I’m not a thief. Violet cranes her head around to look at me. My heart is pounding in my chest, begging for action.

I glance down. My clothes are all shades of black and brown, invisible in the faint moonlight, but her sleeping shift is pale and might as well be a beacon in the darkness.

“Take off your mask,” she whispers behind my hand.

My eyes snap to hers. “What?”

“Take off your mask. Say you were taking your sick sister to find a physician.”

“I—what?”

She gives me an exasperated look, like I’m the crazy one, then flops against my shoulder dramatically, her head lolling back, her eyes half open. She goes limp so quickly that I barely catch her before she tumbles into the undergrowth.

Well, damn.

“Look!” a man calls, and I swear inwardly. “What’s that up there?”

I’m frozen in place. I can’t take this mask off. I can’t.

Or … maybe I can. It’s the middle of the night, and there’s little moonlight. I couldn’t name a single officer in the night patrol, and I rarely have cause to be in the Wilds. The chance of anyone here recognizing me at this hour is low.

But not nonexistent.

Violet hisses, “Move, Fox.”

I reach up and jerk the mask over my head, scrubbing my hand through my hair to muss it up, then shove the silken red fabric down into my pouch. I stand, dragging her with me, trying to awkwardly scoop her into my arms.

She doesn’t help at all. I’d be impressed by her commitment to the act if I weren’t so irritated.

“Who’s there!” another man shouts, and I hear the click of a crossbow bolt being loaded.

This could go very badly. I take a slow breath so I can strip any tension from my voice. “Is that the night patrol?” I call. “I need to get my sister to the physician.” I try to add a plaintive tone to my words, but I wasn’t prepared to perform on demand, and I likely just sound aggravated. “She can’t wake.”

Violet somehow goes even more limp, and she nearly slips through my arms. I adjust my grip, then pick her up fully. She’s even thinner than I thought.

Then I can’t think at all because two crossbows are pointed right at me.

I’ve envisioned this outcome a dozen times, but my imagination didn’t prepare me for the bolt of fear that pierces my chest. I almost can’t breathe around it. For an instant, my thoughts spin, because it’s obvious that they don’t recognize anything about me—and just as obvious that they’d pull those triggers without thinking twice about it. I’m alone and it’s dark and there’d be no one around to care. No one would even notice. Not for hours.

“Please,” I say. I have to clear my throat, because my breathing has gone ragged. “My … my sister.”

Violet lets out a low, painful moan.

One of the men lowers his crossbow, and he leans in. “What’s wrong with her?”

She didn’t have the sense to listen when a masked outlaw told her to go home.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I found her like this.” I think better of it, then tack on, “Sir.”

In my arms, Violet begins making retching sounds, and it’s so realistic that I almost fall for it myself. But the man springs back.

I hold her toward the other man with the crossbow. “She can’t stop vomiting, sir. Can you help me carry her?”