But before I went anywhere, I had to see Neil. I had to explain myself, ask him to forgive me for keeping my secret. Tell him my plan to hide in the woods. Maybe—my heart twisted with fragile hope—maybe he would come with me. Maybe we would flee together and make a new life.
My back was a throbbing mess of pain by the time I reached his father’s farm. I went straight to the barn, where I knew he was most likely to be.
I heard his voice even before I opened the door.
He turned when I opened it, and his eyes widened at the sight of me. He stood in the light of a sunbeam, the tips of his dirty blond hair glowing golden. His mouth dropped open, and the cup he was holding, which smelled like his father’s moonshine, fell to the floor with a clatter.
“Mere!” he cried.
Shapes stirred in the shadowy recesses of the barn behind him. I spotted his best friend, Ludd, and Ludd’s fiancé, Beth. They stepped forward and stopped at Neil’s back, forming a line. A wall. Ludd put a hand on Neil’s shoulder as if to steady him.
“Neil,” I breathed, tears springing to my eyes. I was exhausted and in pain. I just wanted him to take me in his arms and tell me everything would be all right, the way he’d done a thousand times before. “I’m alive. They released me.”
I took a step toward him, but he flinched at my outstretched arms and pushed me gently away.
I stopped.
“Neil?”
He looked at the floor. His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. “Go away, Red.”
Confusion made me stupid. I didn’t understand until I looked at Ludd and Beth.
Their faces were hard, their eyes like flint.
“Marked,” Beth muttered.
“You’ve been keeping secrets from me, Red,” Neil said.
My voice caught. I had to clear my throat, and when I spoke, the words wavered. “I couldn’t tell you, Neil. They held me down and forced the mark on me—”
“You lied!” he shouted. “You lied to me!”
“I never said I didn’t have it.”
“You hid it from me. That’s lying. You knew that I wouldn’t…” He broke off, staring at nothing, and then he shuddered. “I-I kissed you. I told you I loved you in this very barn.” He spat in the hay as if to cleanse his mouth from the memory. “All the time, I had no idea what you were.”
Every word was like a razor against my skin.
“Neil,” I said brokenly. “Please—”
He shook his head and shuddered again. He still wouldn’t look at me.
“Get out,” Ludd snarled when I didn’t move. “Go join the werewolves. You’re not one of us. If you were, we’d be toasting your heroic death right now. But you’re a traitor.”
Pain filled my chest. I was struggling to breathe. “It wasn’t my choice to be marked. I had no choice in that. But I won’t have a baby for them. I won’t make more monsters. I can promise you that. I—”
“You should have taken a knife to yourself,” Beth said. “Cut out your own heart rather than make babies for the enemy. It’s what I would have done.”
I stared at them, forced into silence by the hate in their eyes.
“I tried,” I started. “I got an ax, but my grandmother—”
“Don’t make excuses for yourself,” Beth interrupted with a vicious laugh. “You didn’t have the bravery to do what needed to be done. Shall I finish the job for you?” She looked around wildly, as if searching for an ax. She spotted a lead rope dangling on a nail and seized it. “Shall I strangle you?”
She took a step forward, but Neil grabbed her elbow and held her back. He looked at me, his eyes wet, and grimaced. “Get out of here, Mere. Don’t ever come back.”
“Neil,” I said again. It was my final plea.
“Go,” he whispered.
I turned and ran.
~
Neil’s family’s farm was hacked from the forest that always encroached upon us, with the Thorn Trees reaching their tangles like thorny tentacles across the fences and into the pastures and the garden as if seeking victims to strangle.
I was limping by the time I reached my grandmother’s house. I had one hand pressed to my side, where a stitch throbbed, and the other was clenched in a fist and stuffed in my mouth to hold back a sob. Neil’s expression of revulsion and betrayal kept replaying in my mind along with Beth and Ludd’s words.
They hated me.
They wished I’d died instead. They’d rather I was a dead hero than a living marked woman. These people who’d been my friends. We’d laughed together, cried together, shared hopes and dreams as we sat in that same barn hundreds of times and made plans to join the Order of Crimson and fight for our people.
Now, it all felt like a dream.
I halted when my grandmother’s gabled green roof rose into view above the bushes that lined the road. Dread filled my body, spreading from my center to my fingertips and toes.
Would she reject me too?
I approached the front door slowly, anguish haunting my steps. I put my hand on the knob and let myself in. The front room was hushed, the fire burned down to ashes, sunlight striping the white-washed walls. Dust hung in the air, as if the place were deserted. As if she had already abandoned me.
“Grandmother?”
Footsteps sounded. I held my breath.
“Meredith.”
Grandmother rushed into the room, arms outstretched, and I fell into them with a cry. She held me close, squeezing me before I made a sound of pain.
“Sit,” she gasped, her voice thick with tears as she steered me to the couch. “We must talk.”
“I can’t stay, Grandmother,” I whispered. “Since they know I’m one of the Chosen now, they’re going to come for me. They want to take me to the capital. I only came to say goodbye to you, and to warn you. I’ll go to the forest—”
“Listen to me, Meredith,” she whispered, interrupting my desperate stream of words. “There are things I haven’t told you.”
The words on my tongue faltered. “Grandmother?”
“Not everyone died that day the Sworn came,” she said, her voice barely audible.
Her words hit me like a pile of rocks.
“Who?” I managed to say.
“The Sworn took prisoners. Your mother and Kassian were taken to the capital, your father killed.”
I was stunned. For a moment, I couldn’t think.
My mother and Kassian. Alive, when I thought them dead. ALIVE. I felt my understanding shift, like the foundations of my life had been upended by an earthquake, and I was standing in the wreckage, stunned, as dust and rocks settled around me.
They were alive!
“Why did you never tell me this?” I demanded when I could speak again.
She looked me in the eye. Her gaze didn’t falter. “They were as good as dead,” she said firmly. “I wanted us to put the past behind us. I wanted you to be safe. I knew if you knew they were alive and imprisoned somewhere, you wouldn’t rest until—”
“You were right,” I said. “I wouldn’t have. I would have crawled on my hands and knees to get to them. Where are they, Grandmother? Are they still alive?” An image filled my head. My mother and best friend locked in one of the Sworn dungeons. All this time, while I walked in the sunshine, and kissed Neil—