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  Rifter’s tone was sarcastic. His voice came from directly over her, but she had not even heard him approach.

  Wren dared to open her eyes and she saw that he was standing beside her, completely unscathed for his trouble and only a little winded. She should have been thankful that he had rescued her, perhaps, but she could only stare up at him in horror.

  He offered his hand and she took it without thinking, still in shock.

  “You just killed them!” she exclaimed, glancing down at the bodies that littered the shore.

  Wren had never seen a dead body so close before, and it was not a pretty sight. Blood pooled out across the sand; their tongues hung limply. Her stomach churned, and coupled with the panic that was still lingering, she thought she might be sick.

  He stared at her a moment, hard, trying to figure her out. Then, she saw his eyes shine as the corners of his mouth turned up. He laughed, and the notion of it was ghastly to her.

  He’s laughing at this violence, she realized, and she felt a line of heat flare across her cheeks. And at me.

  “That’s a good one,” he said, slinging the blood off his blade before he put it away.

  “It’s not a joke!” she cried. Wren couldn’t seem to find a place to direct her eyes. She didn’t want to look at the blood, or the ocean, or at him. She glanced upward at the sky, but it wasn’t long before she was looking back at his laughing eyes.

  He was staring at her again, looking incredulous.

  “What would you have rather I did with them?” he asked, stepping closer to her. “They wouldn’t have been so gentle with you.”

  She didn’t answer, because she would have to agree with him if she said anything. She had been frightened, and she knew that what they had been planning to do to her would not have ended well if he’d not shown up.

  Wren saw how he looked at her so pointedly, and she had nothing else to say against it.

  “Who were they?” she asked instead.

  “Scum,” he said, pushing the nearest corpse with his foot to roll the body over. She stared at him blankly.

  “Pirates,” he clarified. “They prowl when they dare, but I don’t let them get far when I see them. They are vile men who don’t deserve to live.”

  Was that true? She didn’t know a lot about pirates except from stories, but vile was certainly a word she might have used to describe them. But to be killed like this? She just wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

  “I knew they were close,” he explained. “I saw the boat down the beach when we first arrived here. I don’t like it when they get too close to my territory. I was trying to hunt them down, but they found you instead. I guess it worked out anyway.”

  “You guess!”

  “You distracted them,” he explained with a careless smile. “It did me a favor.”

  She was smoldering. What if he hadn’t come back when he had? What then?

  You should be glad he came back at all, she told herself. That’s more than you would get if you were back home.

  Rifter touched her face, making her focus on his eyes. She felt a shiver rush through her, and she wasn’t sure whether it was from dread or excitement.

  “You’re alright, aren’t you?” he asked gently. “Live another day. That’s all that matters.”

  Wren could do nothing except keep silent, and Rifter shook his head at her.

  “I see a mimic’s found you already too. You’re such an easy target.”

  “How do get it off?” she wanted to know, ignoring how he chided her this time. “I don’t like the idea of it.”

  “You don’t get it off. You’re stuck with it now. Once one molds to you, that’s it. It’s with you for life and it’ll always have your shape – though they have been known to get away. If it does, you’ll want it back. You get strangely attached to the things.”

  He turned away, done talking to her for now. She saw him counting the bodies and then he dipped his fingers into the blood of the nearest one and wiped four streaks across his bare chest beneath the coat of leaves. Wren forgot her displeasure long enough to be horrified even further.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as she observed his grim display.

  “Marking my kills,” he told her easily. She suddenly remembered the two red lines on his face when she had first met him. They hadn’t been paint, but blood.

  He’s dreadful!

  “Just for you,” he began in a mockingly good-natured tone, “I won’t take their heads with me.”

  Rifter grinned and began to walk away, leaving her standing there, feeling like she’d been awakened from a pleasant dream by violent shaking.

  What sort of boy is this? What have I done by coming here?

  “Are you coming or not?” he asked, and she pulled her eyes up from the blood long enough to realize that he had gone several steps away from her.

  “Well, I’m not sure that I want to go with you,” she said honestly.

  Once again, he laughed. “Where else are you gonna to go?”

  Wren looked around, as if she hadn’t already seen all there was to see. Unfortunately, he was right. She wasn’t sure if she could find her way back if she started off, and swimming was out of the question. She could wait here until more thugs came along, or she could go with him. She already knew which was safer.

  Aren’t you forgetting something?

  “Wait!’ she said, remembering suddenly. “Where are my brothers?”

  “I left them behind,” Rifter said with an easy shrug. Wren felt her skin grow hot with fury. Hadn’t she told him that the whole reason she’d wanted to come here was so that she and her brothers could escape their life?

  “The point was that they could come with me!”

  “I looked them over, but I wasn’t interested in them. I’m interested in you. You’re the one who found this place. They didn’t. Besides, I already brought you all this way—”

  “Well go back and get them!” she insisted.

  He gave her a hard stare, but her expression was just as firm as his was. He must have seen that, because he gave up first – to her surprise.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said firmly as if that was to be the end of the argument. “First, you come with me.”

  He snatched up her hand, and she was thankful that it was not the one with blood on it. Somehow – despite her revulsion toward what she had seen him do – she felt calmer at his touch, and found herself wondering if he was holding her hand because he wanted to flirt with her, or simply to keep her from escaping. She had never held hands with any boy aside from her brothers, and she had to admit that it made her feel a bit mushy inside.

  Wren relented on the issue for now, consoling herself that there was still time to convince him to go back after Henry and Max. There were a few days – perhaps weeks – before either of her brothers were to be sent away from the Home, considering that Henry didn’t decide to run away first.

  If I had only woken them up before, maybe they would be here with me now.

  Or maybe I wouldn’t be here either.

  That thought brought her around to consider how she had come to be here now – how she had been grabbed and blinded, spirited away without a warning.

  “You know,” she started, “you didn’t have to kidnap me like you did. I would have come willingly.”

  “Do you ever stop complaining?” he sighed for his own amusement. “That’s the way I always do it.”

  “Well it was really very rude. You can’t just take what you want all the time.”

  He stopped and turned on her so abruptly that she almost ran into him. He peered down at her with cool blue eyes, and her heart leapt into her throat.

  “What’d you say your name was again?” he asked, his eyes narrowing to slits.

  “Wren,” she told him, annoyed that he hadn’t cared to remember.

  “Wren,” he addressed her, and she tried to pretend that she didn’t like the way he said it. “It’s my world. I can do as I please.”
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  She could see that he was serious. Initially, she wasn’t sure how she should feel about the way he looked at her, but then he changed his demeanor and smiled.

  “I don’t like anyone to know the way here,” he explained. “That’s the reason I took you as I did. Can’t have just anyone knowing how to find this place.”

  Wren swallowed hard, but she believed that made sense. She was sufficiently humbled, and once he had seen that, he allowed them to continue on – but he let go of her hand, and Wren felt a bit saddened at that.

  4

  Rifter guided the quiet girl across the beach and to the tree line, where they passed into the woods. It wasn’t long before Wren had realized that the tropical trees from the beach had become a forest of pines and oaks which reached to the sky with leafy fingers.

  How unusual… The world had changed in an instant.

  She stole a glance at Rifter, seeing he had pulled his hood back up over his head, and she guessed that he was in good camouflage. If he was being very still, she didn’t think she would have seen him. She couldn’t say the same for herself, however. Her gown was practically glowing in the moonlight, welcoming trouble.

  Wren found herself looking at his face, and she began to feel lenient toward him.

  I shouldn’t be too disagreeable at once, she told herself. It was good of him to save me from those pirates, and to bring me here. He didn’t have to.

  Rifter didn’t say much as they walked, keeping an eye out for danger, she supposed, but since things seemed quiet to her, she decided to try talking to him.

  “May I ask you another question, Rifter?” she asked nicely. She thought that he would respond to being asked permission, and as she watched him, she could see the little smile on his face. He was amused she’d asked to ask a question.

  “Alright, but just one more for now,” he teased.

  “Earlier at the beach – and at the orphanage as well – there was a strange little light zipping around. I assume it was a fairy, but where is it now?”

  At the mention of that, Rifter stopped dead in his tracks and Wren had stepped ahead of him before she’d even realized it. He’d grown pale – white as a ghost.

  “Oh hell,” he groaned, and Wren was stunned, unable to grasp what had brought on his severe reaction.

  Rifter looked all around, and Wren guessed he was looking for the light, but of course it wasn’t there, as she’d said.

  “Just, uh, wait here a minute,” he instructed her, and a second later he’d taken off like a rocket into the sky and disappeared.

  Where...? She shook her head, dismissing the thought before it had finished.

  He is not very considerate sometimes.

  The darkness settled in around her, and she felt alone here in the middle of the woods, more so than she had at the beach before. The shadows were thick, encroaching on her space, and she began to hear the sounds of the night beasts prowling through the brush.

  I hope he will come back soon. Where did he go?

  Standing there, unprotected, a strange sound began to drift into Wren’s ears – soft at first but growing louder. She felt that she had heard it before, but she didn’t recall what it was until a glowing orb came cutting through the trees, halting to dance erratically in front of her.

  “Oh! There you are! Rifter went off looking for you.”

  The creature did not respond except in whispers, which Wren thought sounded rather nasty. They were of a hideous, hissing quality that she didn’t like.

  “I’m very confused by you,” Wren said thoughtfully. “I’m not sure that we’re friends but I don’t know why you don’t like me. Is it because I was chasing you all over the sea before? I realize that you were trying to get away from me, but I was asleep, you see. I was dreaming. I couldn’t help my actions.”

  Wren paused a moment as she considered, but the orb kept moving about, leaving trails of light in the air as if it was on fire.

  “Would you just be still a moment?” Wren asked. “I’m trying to speak with you civilly.”

  To humor her, the orb did come to a halt in the air, hovering in front of her face. Wren could see into the light then, and what she saw made her gasp.

  There was a little woman inside there, held aloft by the rapid movement of dragonfly wings. Her body was golden, and if it had been to Wren’s size, it would have been long and lean – statuesque. She wasn’t wearing very much at all, but her hair was long, though it floated all around her ethereally. Wren guessed it might have been the air from her wings that kept it floating all about.

  “You are a fairy inside there! I knew it!”

  The lovely beast didn’t seem to care for her commentary, moving again so that Wren could not make her out.

  “You know, I’m not sure how we got to be enemies, but yet I’m not entirely convinced that you weren’t the one who encouraged me to sleep when I nearly fell into the machine at the mill – yet I don’t suppose that’s possible. You couldn’t have been there. Someone would have seen you. At least, I did think I had seen you before that…”

  The light kept drifting forward and then moving back toward her. It whispered to her as if to say: come, come. Wren was not sure she wanted to follow. If she had been leery of Rifter, she trusted this sprite even less.

  “Rifter told me to stay here,” she said firmly, but the whispers only grew more rapid and insistent. The sound of them curled around her ears and slithered over her mind like serpents. She tried to ignore them but they wouldn’t go away. Even clamping her hands over her ears didn’t work, and then finally she couldn’t take anymore.

  “Alright!” she cried. “What do you want to show me? But I’m not going far.”

  The glowing bulb seemed pleased by that and drifted off through the trees. Wren was uncertain, but she followed it. It moved slowly ahead of her, truly making an effort to go at a pace that she would be able to keep up with it. Wren tried to keep watch around her, unsure of where she was being taken.

  Not much more, and then I’m stopping, she told herself.

  Just about the time she was going to say that she wouldn’t go farther without Rifter, she lost sight of the fairy.

  She wouldn’t have thought that the light could disappear as easily as that, bright as it was, but yet the fairy had simply vanished. Wren looked around her, quite unsure of where she should go now or even where she had come from. The trees were very large here in this portion of the forest, and everything looked the same.

  Though she had her suspicions that the fairy had done this to her on purpose, Wren supposed she must give her the benefit of the doubt and ask nicely for her to come back.

  “I lost you,” she called, but not too loudly. “Where did you go?”

  At that moment, part of a nearby tree reached out to grab her.

  An arm slid beneath her throat and she felt something hard pressing against her temple. A jolt ran through her and she barely had time to acknowledge her panic before there was a voice in her ear.

  “You have five seconds,” it said quickly. “Who are you and what are you doing here, or I put a bullet through your pretty head.”

  “Wait! Please!” She struggled against the arm, but it held her tightly.

  “That’s the wrong answer.”

  Near her ear, she heard the hammer of a gun click back. Her eyes grew wide with panic. It was all happening so quickly! She was going to die and this would be it? No!

  “Stop!” The word echoed back to her, and she realized that she wasn’t the only one who had said it. From the corner of her eye, she could see that Rifter had found her – not a moment too soon and thankfully not one too late.

  “This yours?” the one behind her asked in his direction, and Wren was simply praying she’d get out of this.

  Rifter seemed to like the sound of that, because he nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. Let her go, Nix.”

  They know each other, she thought with relief. The arm holding her loosened, and once she was able to break free, she w
ent directly to stand near Rifter. From there, she was able to look at the face of the one who had nearly killed her.

  He had messy blond hair down to his chin, stringy and damp. He was not dressed in leaves but in a brown cloak that hung over his lean body, camouflaging him. The cloth was dirty and stained, but she could see the weapons. He was loaded with them. There was the pistol in his hand, a quiver full of arrows on his back with a bow, and a sword at his hip – not to mention a knife tucked in the top of his boot. There was a streak of blood drawn under his right eye, and Wren knew what that meant now.

  He’s killed someone today.

  His blue eyes examined her with unrelenting scrutiny. He was around the same height and age as Rifter, and if she had her guess, she might have said they were brothers. They really did look similar, she thought, but the forest was dark and who could say for sure?

  Was there a difference between them? Was there anything warm about this one’s face? Rifter had at least been friendly to her, but this one called Nix didn’t seem at all remorseful for his actions.

  “I thought we decided that a girl was a bad idea,” Nix said finally, in Rifter’s direction. He spoke as if she wasn’t there – as if she didn’t even understand his language.

  “We talked about it, yes, but you don’t decide. I decide,” Rifter told him swiftly.

  Nix didn’t seem to like the sound of that. His lip drew back and his eyes got a little sharper. Then, suddenly, his mouth curled up in a snide smile.

  “Of course. How silly of me. That’s how it’s always been. Why would I think this time would be any different?”

  Rifter looked ready to counter that, but it was then that they all heard the whispers, and a bright light came shooting into their midst.

  “There you are, Wisp,” Rifter said levelly, as if her whereabouts had never been a concern of his.

  The wisp did not seem pleased, and ranted on hatefully for a few moments, darting around him so energetically that Wren had to step back.

  “Don’t talk to me that way,” Rifter scolded as if he understood her perfectly. “And where the hell were you? I told you to find the pirates. Didn’t you know I had already taken care of them? I was looking all over for you.”