Reign of Shadows (Reign of Shadows, #1)(40)

Amose’s sawing breaths grew more labored and spaced apart until he took a last shuddering drink of air. He went utterly still.

Silence pressed down, a palpable weight on my shoulders as I bowed over him. There was only the noise of whirring insects circling his lifeless body.

I held his rough hand even as the warmth started to slip away from him.

Fowler approached behind me, his right heel hitting the ground a little harder than his left in his trademark tread. “Come on, Luna.”

“This doesn’t even affect you. Does it?” My lips felt numb as I spoke. And yet my body didn’t feel numb. All of me ached as raw and exposed as an open wound. I felt too much. That’s what Fowler was probably thinking. He thought me soft and weak and fragile. He didn’t need to say the words for me to know.

“You get accustomed to it.”

“I suppose that’s true.” Out here, how could anything else be? He had seen more death than me. Except I didn’t want this to be my normal. I shook my head. “But I don’t want that. I don’t want to be like you.” I turned and lifted my face in his direction, my voice cracking in supplication, as though he could somehow stop this from happening to me.

His fingers closed around my arm, his touch solid and impersonal as he helped me to my feet. “I don’t want to be like me either.” There was a hard edge to his voice that made something inside me wither away with the realization that this world could bend and twist people into things even they didn’t want to become. That perhaps I was destined to change whether I wished it or not.

He led me from the hut. I inhaled the musky air as soon as we cleared the threshold, the coppery-sweet odor of death less strong. There was that at least.

“Thank you for letting me stay with him until the end,” I said, deciding some acknowledgment needed to be given. “I know you didn’t want to. Perhaps you’re not as hard as you think—”

“You better hope that’s not true. For both our sakes. I can’t afford to be soft. Stop asking it of me.” He strode away, his purposeful strides biting into the soft ground.

I sucked in a cold breath and followed after him. “He didn’t deserve to die alone.”

“We all die alone, Luna.”

It was a bleak thought that chased me as we continued on our way.





TWENTY


Fowler


WE WALKED FOR hours, staying close to the edge of the copse until we had to break out across barren landscape again. Wind buffeted us, cutting like knives on our exposed skin. I dug in my pack and gave her a scarf to wrap around her neck and cover her chin.

Finally, in the far distance a grove of trees appeared. Twisted, ghostly shapes, they stood in perfect symmetry. A long-ago orchard, the branches cracked like old bones, stripped of leaves and whatever fruit used to grow there. I led us in that direction, eager to leave behind the overexposed grassland and give us some relief from the bitter wind.

Once we stepped inside the orchard’s maze, I could see it was vast with rows and rows of trees.

As we moved down one intersecting path, the trees arching overhead, she asked, “What is this place? The trees grow very precisely every few feet without fail.” She inched toward one of the blackened trunks, pressing her palm against the tough skin, testing its texture.

“They were planted that way. It’s an orchard.” I flicked my gaze over one gnarled-up tree that I passed. “Was an orchard.”

She hurried to catch up. “What kind of—”

“It’s impossible to identify anymore. They’re dead.”

She held silent after that. Now that our steps fell quieter, I moved at a faster pace, on direct course for Ortley.

There were places like Ortley that had managed to cling to life. I’d passed through a few of them since I left Relhok City. Those pockets of civilization were like that dead field of sugarcane behind us, rotting, withered echoes of the past, still fighting for their last breath even after all these years. Disease, famine, or dwellers still infiltrated, but the inhabitants managed to hang on, growing smaller and weaker after every invasion.

Not Allu though. Miles off the coastline, the island was free of dwellers and close enough to reach by boat. Its surrounding waters yielded plenty of bounty to eat. I just had to cross a continent to reach it. And I had to do it with her.

I glanced back again to catch her wringing out the edge of her tunic. Water dripped free. When she released the fabric, it unfurled, wrinkled beyond repair.

I scanned the horizon and faced forward again, thinking of our destination. Ortley was one of the only cities east of Relhok still standing. I’d heard of it all my life.

The village was reportedly fortified. Much like Relhok City, there was a population that had managed to survive the dwellers better than most. On occasion, merchants from Relhok traveled there to trade. Of the countless men the king sent over the years, a few returned. A type of kelp grew in the lake outside the once prosperous city. It contained healing properties useful when brewed. It could also be cooked into a soup, which was always convenient when you were on the brink of starvation.

I walked steadily down one of the several paths that crisscrossed the orchard. That kelp, along with other supplies, would be useful to acquire for the rest of our journey.

Food mattered. Weapons. Labor and skills. Those were things to trade. I could offer my services and work for a few days. It wouldn’t be the first time. It was a long journey to Allu. A few days’ sweating for some supplies would be worthwhile.