The Princess Trials (The Princess Trials #1)(103)

A new wave of terror turns my skin cold. He’s… I’ve never seen anything like him.

The Foundling flips me onto my back and pins me down by the shoulders. Pain sears up the left side of my neck, down my forearm, and into my heart. I clench my teeth against the onslaught and jerk my head away from the sight.

“Noble,” he hisses.

“Harvester,” I say. “I’m a Harvester.”

“Lies!” His spittle sprays across my cheek, and my stomach ripples with disgust.

I shake my head from side to side. “Nobles are back there, trying to kill me. That’s why you heard the gunshots. I’m just trying to run away.”

“Why do they want you dead?” he says with a sneer that makes me think he still considers me a Noble.

“They hate me.” I swallow hard. What I’m about to say will probably condemn me, but there’s no blood flowing to my brain. My heart is jumping to the back of my throat, and my flesh is trying to crawl off my bones. “We’re all in the Princess Trials—”

“Princess Trials?” he roars. “You’re one of them.”

“I’m a Red Runner. A spy.”

He pauses. “What?”

“Do you know them?” I whisper.

The man gives me a hesitant nod. “Who leads your cell?”

“We don’t give out that information,” I say through clenched teeth. One of the conditions for joining was never to reveal details of those in my cell. I’ve already gone far enough by admitting to being a rebel. “Let’s just say I’m associated with someone desperate for justice after the unfair slaughter of a Harvester male.”

He releases the weight from my shoulders and sits back on his heels. “Alright, then. I’ll let you go.”

The man’s rib cage stretches down to his ragged pants. It’s barrel-shaped with dimpled, breast-like deposits of fat in the space between each rib. A shudder runs down my spine, and I press my lips together. I hate that the Nobles’ obsession with genetic perfection has poisoned my mind. This man can’t help the way he looks.

My gaze wanders to the quiver on his hip, and I raise my gun. “Do you want to swap?”

He glances down at his quiver. “Do you know how to use a blowgun?”

“My Mom taught me how to shoot.” I sit up and shake the dust out of my hair. Pain shoots out from my shoulder wound at the movement, so I let my right arm flop to the ground. “It’s a skill she learned while growing up in the Barrens.”

He steps back and sweeps his gaze down my form. “My sister was genetically perfect, like you.”

“What happened to her?” Frowning, I peer up at the man.

“After I was born, she stopped visiting,” he says.

My lips part, but no sound comes out. She might have rejected her family because of her brother’s birth defects, but the Guardians also might have done something sinister to prevent her from birthing a child like him.

“What kind of poison do you use in your darts?” He holds out a completely normal hand.

Instead of letting him help me up, I struggle to my feet. “Mandragon berries. What’s in yours?”

He hesitates for a moment, and I don’t know if I’ve hurt his feelings. An apology rises to my lips when he says, “The venom of a golden frog. A dart is strong enough to take down a one-hundred-pound pronghorn.”

“Does it kill humans?”

“The first will paralyze a man, and a second will stop his heart.” He unties the fabric attaching his quiver to his waists and hands me the entire bundle.

As I offer him the gun, an animal roars in the distance. The girls shriek, gunshots echo across the mountainside.

“They’ll be heading this way.” He takes the gun and tucks it into a side-pocket of his pants. “Are you ready?”

I swallow hard. “Can I borrow your dagger?”

His thick brows form a deep V, but he hands me the blade and stands back.

Sending a silent apology to the Thymel siblings, I tear the fabric of my skirt and bundle my outer petticoat into a shape about the same size as a human torso. The man watches my back as I climb the tree and place it on a high branch, where I spot the perfect hiding place, a giant Eucalyptus with rainbow-colored bark a hundred feet away.

I jump down from the tree and offer him my hand. “Thanks. This way, I can protect myself without killing any of the girls.”

The man stares down at my palm, and his hand twitches toward mine. He raises his head and meets my eyes. “Maybe we’ll meet again when the revolution comes. My name is Firkin.”

I wrap my fingers around his hand and squeeze. “I’d like that a lot. Please call me Zea.”

He nods and darts away, while I scale the eucalyptus tree and settle onto a high branch. My heart pumps with anticipation, and I take a deep breath, letting the strong menthol fill my nostrils. The wound on my shoulder pounds, but the pain sharpens my resolve.

As soon as Firkin disappears into a thicket of eucalyptus trees, I load the first dart into the blowgun, throw my head back, and scream.

Pinpricks of light approach from a distance. I lie flat on the thick branch and wait.

The first girl to arrive holds a flashlight as long as her forearm, she sprints past my tree and pauses at the scraps of fabric I left on one of the white eucalyptus tree’s roots. From her blonde hair, which glows silver in the moonlight and her golden dress, it can only be Emmera. She pants like a golden retriever that guards sometimes bring to Rugosa to sniff out alcohol stills and tilts her head up.