The Forest of Vanishing Stars(51)

“Aleksander!” she hissed into the darkness. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust, and when they did, she could see the outlines of the group’s huts, lit by a nearly full moon. She heard people sighing in their sleep, someone shifting on a reed bed. Otherwise, the night was silent, ominous. She could still hear the echoing call of the ravens in her head.

She stood motionless and listened until she could hear footsteps, just a single pair around the perimeter, moving in a steady circle. It was Aleksander on patrol; she needed to find him quickly and tell him that something was wrong. Her heart continued to hammer in her chest as she set out in the direction of his footfall. “Aleksander!” she whispered again.

But when she reached the perimeter and saw a man’s shadow coming toward her, she stopped, startled. It wasn’t Aleksander.

“Leib?” she asked in confusion as he quickened his pace to approach.

“Yona? What is it?” His voice was laced with fear. “Has something happened?”

She shook her head as he stopped beside her. “Where is Aleksander, Leib?”

When Leib’s eyes settled on her, they were dark, shuttered. “He’s not here.”

“But he was on patrol tonight. If he’s not here, where is he?” She blinked and saw the ravens again, calling out their warning in her mind’s eye. She scanned the forest, but nothing moved in the darkness. “Leib?”

“He’s…” But he didn’t finish his sentence. Instead, he shifted uncomfortably and stared down at her. When she looked up and met his eyes, the depth of the pity there knocked the breath out of her, and all at once she knew. He wasn’t in danger. That wasn’t what her dream had been foretelling at all.

“He wouldn’t,” she whispered.

“Yona—” he began.

But she was already moving back toward the camp, and she knew exactly what she would find even before she reached the shelter that Sulia and Luba shared, the one with the web of woven marsh grass draped across the front for privacy. Slowly, her heart slamming against her rib cage, she pulled back the curtain of green and peered in.

On one side of the sloping lean-to, Luba lay on her side, snoring softly. On the other side lay Sulia. And on top of her, his back bare, moving in a rhythm that Yona recognized with a sick, immediate certainty, was Aleksander.

“Oh!” Despite herself, Yona let out an audible gasp, which was enough to make Aleksander turn awkwardly, rolling away from Sulia.

“Yona!” he choked as he scrambled upright and hastily tugged his trousers back over his hips.

It all seemed to be happening in slow motion. Sulia was protesting, reaching for Aleksander, even as he distanced himself from her, his face white in the shadows. Sulia grabbed for her dress, her face a mask of fury as she tugged it over her head and said Aleksander’s name. But he was already moving away from her, moving toward Yona, as he stammered an explanation. In the corner, Luba continued to snore heavily, oblivious.

Yona didn’t wait to hear what Aleksander had to say. Instead, she took a few steps backward, into the clearing, and then she turned and ran, stumbling into her hut, the one she had shared just the night before with a man she had believed loved her.

But it had all meant nothing, and now, as she lit a piece of pine bark with shaking hands and hastily gathered her things, tears coursed down her face like rivers. She ignored Aleksander as he entered behind her.

“Let me explain, Yona!” he said, reaching for her, but she twisted away.

“What could you possibly say?” She didn’t look at him. She was shaking, and she didn’t trust herself not to fall apart. She had never felt this way before, and she had no idea what to do.

“You don’t know, because you don’t come from society like we do,” he began.

“Enough of that! Enough of trying to make me feel like an outsider! I know I’m an outsider, Aleksander! I just didn’t think it mattered to you!”

“That’s not what I meant, Yona!” He touched her arm again, and again she pulled away. “Just that you’re different than we are.”

She snorted. “I’m different, so I couldn’t possibly understand what it feels like to be betrayed?”

“That’s not what I’m saying! What I mean is that it’s not like what you’ve probably read in your books, Yona. It’s a whole different world out here. I was just trying to find some happiness for a little while, to forget the misery…”

“And you couldn’t do that with me?”

He opened and closed his mouth a few times before looking away. “You don’t look at me anymore the way Sulia does. She needs me to save her.”

“So you don’t want me because I’m not helpless?”

He looked back at her, his jaw set. “It’s just…” He raked his hands through his hair. “It’s more difficult with you. And with Sulia, it is easy. Isn’t life hard enough?”

Her heart suddenly felt hollow. “I make your life more difficult?”

“That’s not what I mean, Yona. Please, just stop packing your things and listen to me for a moment. You don’t understand.”

Indeed, Yona had little experience with the way people were supposed to interact with each other. But she knew enough to know that when a man loved a woman, he didn’t do this. Not a good man, anyhow. And she knew, just as surely as she knew her own soul, that she couldn’t stay here for another second. She may have helped the group to find their way, to survive the winter, but they knew the things she knew now. And they were Aleksander’s group, not hers, as he and Sulia had just made abundantly clear. Yona had ignored Jerusza’s warnings, had opened her heart incautiously, had made an enormous, unthinkable mistake by believing she was actually a member of this family. Even now, she could hear Jerusza’s laughter, soft and cruel in her memory.