An Ember in the Ashes (Ember Quartet #1)(46)

I put down my fox. Spire vultures are massive birds with five-inch talons and wingspans that clear twenty feet. Their eggs are the size of a man’s head, their hatchlings notoriously bloodthirsty. But worst of all for Helene, the vultures build their nests above the clouds, atop the most unassailable peaks.

She doesn’t have to explain the catch in her voice. She used to shake for hours after the Commandant made her scale the cliffs. The Augurs know all this, of course. They’ve picked it from her mind the way a thief picks a plum off a tree.

“How did you get down?”

“Luck. The mother vulture was gone, and the hatchlings were just breaking through their shells. But they were dangerous enough, even half-hatched.”

She pulls up her shirt to expose the pale, taut skin of her stomach, marred by a tangle of gouges.

“I jumped over the side of the nest and landed on a ledge ten feet down. I didn’t—I didn’t realize how high I was. But that wasn’t the worst of it. I kept seeing . . . ” She stops, and I realize that the Augurs must have forced her to face some foul hallucination, something equal to my nightmare battlefield. What darkness had she borne, thousands of feet up, with nothing between her and death but a few inches of rock?

“The Augurs are sick,” I say. “I can’t believe they’d—”

“They’re doing what they have to, Elias. They’re making us face our fears. They need to find the strongest, remember? The bravest. We have to trust them.”

She closes her eyes, shivering. I cross the space between us and put my hands on her arms to still her. When she lifts her lashes, I realize I can feel the heat of her body, that mere inches separate our faces. She has beautiful lips, I notice distractedly, the top one fuller than the bottom. I meet her gaze for one intimate, infinite moment. She leans toward me, those lips parting. A violent throb of desire tugs at me, followed by a frantic alarm bell. Bad idea. Terrible idea. She’s your best friend. Stop.

I drop my arms and back away hastily, trying not to notice the flush on her neck. Helene’s eyes flash—anger or embarrassment, I can’t tell.

“Anyway,” she says. “I got down last night and figured I’d take the rim trail to Walker’s Gap. Fastest way back. There’s a guard station at the other end. We can get a boat to cross the river and supplies—clothes and boots, at least.” She gestures to her ragged, bloodstained fatigues. “Not that I’m complaining.”

She looks up at me, a question in her eyes. “They left you in the Wastes, but . . . ” But you don’t fear the desert. You grew up there.

“No use thinking about it,” I say.

After that, we are silent, and when the fire burns down, Helene tells me she’s turning in. But though she rolls over into a pile of leaves, I know sleep won’t come to her. She’s still clinging to the side of her mountain, just like I’m still wandering lost in my battlefield.

???

Helene and I are bleary-eyed and exhausted the next morning, but we start out well before dawn. We need to reach Walker’s Gap today if we want to get back to Blackcliff by sunset tomorrow.

We don’t speak—we don’t have to. Traveling with Helene is like pulling on a favorite shirt. We spent all of our time as Fivers together, and we fall instinctively back into the pattern of those days, with me taking point and Helene the rear guard.

The storm rolls away north to reveal a blue sky and a land clean and glistening. But the crisp beauty conceals fallen trees and washed-out trails, hillsides treacherous with mud and debris. There’s an unmistakable tension in the air. Just like before, I have the sense that something lies in wait. Something unknown.

Helene and I don’t stop to rest. Our eyes are peeled for bears, lynxes, wayward hunters—any creature that might call the mountains home.

In the afternoon, we climb the rise that leads to the Gap, a fifteen-mile-long river of forest amid the blue-speckled peaks of the Serran Range. The Gap appears almost gentle, carpeted with trees, rolling hills, and the occasional gold burst of a wildflower meadow. Helene and I exchange a glance. We both feel it. Whatever’s coming, it’s going to be soon.

As we move into the forest, the sense of danger increases, and I catch sight of a furtive movement at the edge of my vision. Helene looks back at me. She’s seen it too.

We alter our route frequently and stay off the trails, which slows our pace but makes an ambush more difficult. As dusk approaches, we haven’t made it out of the pass and are forced to move back to the trail so we can pick our way forward by moonlight.

The sun has just set when the forest falls silent. I shout Helene a warning and have barely enough time to bring my knife up before a dark shape hurtles out of the trees.

I don’t know what I’m expecting. An army of those I killed, coming for revenge? A nightmare creature conjured by the Augurs?

Something that will strike fear into my very bones. Something to test my courage.

I don’t expect the mask. I don’t expect the cold, flat eyes of Zak glaring out at me.

Behind me, Helene screams, and I hear the crash of two bodies hitting the ground. I turn to see Marcus attacking her. Her face is frozen in terror at the sight of him, and she makes no move to defend herself as he pins down her arms, laughing like he did when he kissed her.

“Helene!” At my shout, she snaps out of her daze and strikes out at Marcus, twisting away from him.