The Offering (17 page)

She didn't jump at first, but she met the challenge of the oncoming surf with as much zeal as I did. And after just a few experimental minutes of wading and retreating, Brook was chasing me into the breaking waves, splashing me the way I'd splashed her.

When at last we emerged, we were both shrieking and laughing, and soaked in water that made our clothing itch and stick to us like a second layer of salt-laced skin. Sand clung to our legs, which were bare to our knees, as we trudged back to Eden with our shoes in hand.

“Finished?” was all Eden asked as she surveyed each of us in turn.

Even wet, Brook managed to look alluring, her damp curls framing her perfectly flushed face, while I was sure my hair looked like damp sea grass and only highlighted the fact that my lips had turned a glacial shade of blue. I shivered as another gust of wind blasted along the coastline.

“Y-y-yes.” I bit my lip to keep my teeth from chattering, and tasted the salt that clung to it.

As we trailed Eden up the path, Brook nudged me. “You killed my father,” she said, her voice low so there was no way Eden could hear us above the sound of the waves.

I stopped where I was, stunned by her statement, and by the lack of rancor or accusation hidden behind her words. She wasn't sullen, and she wasn't avoiding the topic any longer.

I wrapped my arms around myself, bracing myself against the chill of the wind that beat at us. “I know, and I'm so sorry.” I bit out each word slowly, almost cautiously, as if I might scare her away again, and I was so terribly afraid we might never get back to where we'd once been if I did.

Eden was no longer climbing, and stood watching us impatiently. I held up a finger, letting her know we'd be right there.

“I know you are,” she admitted, the hint of a smile pricking her lips. “You've said so at least a hundred times.” She shrugged, and then sighed a deep and liberating sigh. “I suppose I just wasn't ready to hear it back then.” The smile fell away, becoming something less playful and more reflective. She reached out to me, this time holding her hand out like
when we were little girls and we held hands everywhere we went, running and skipping and hopping through rain-filled puddles. “I am now, though.”

I clasped her hand, squeezing it as tight as I could manage. And then I whispered, “I really am, you know. I'm so very, very sorry, Brooklynn. I never meant to hurt you.”

She squeezed back until my knuckles ached and my eyes burned. “I know. And the truth is, I'm glad he's dead. It just took me a while to figure it out.”

She pulled me toward her, so our shoulders bumped together, and we started walking again. Hand in hand.

Just like when we were children.

As grateful as I was that Brook and I had mended the rift between us, all I could think about on our way back was the campfire we'd burn when we returned to the VAN. I was chilled all the way through, and even though we couldn't afford to waste any of our drinking water to bathe away the brininess from my skin, I'd at least be able to change into dry clothing.

But when we reached the top of the cliff, it wasn't the VAN or the smoke still drifting up from the smoldering remnants of our fire that caught my attention. It was the people gathered there.

They converged around our vehicle, and I stopped walking, trying to make sense of their presence. To discern what they were doing there exactly.

I watched as a woman came out of the VAN, picking her way down the steps carrying a crate in her arms. I recognized the box as one that was filled with jars of pickled vegetables,
and realized that these people were helping themselves to our provisions.

They were stealing our food—our supplies.

My first thought was to stop them, and before I could tell myself otherwise, I was lifting my hand. Already I could feel the tingling in the tips of my fingers. I knew why, of course. I meant to put an end to their looting.

I hadn't considered using Sabara's ability since the night I'd used it to keep Brooklynn's father and his men from taking Angelina, when I'd feared for what they might do to her. I had used it then, killing them all by squeezing their throats closed from the inside out.

The second I summoned her power, I knew I'd made a mistake. Sabara slipped out of the shadows and began taking control of me. Darkness cloaked me, like a heavy curtain, blotting out all reason. Blotting me out.

No
, I insisted,
you can't do this
. But already my vision grew black.

“Charl—
Layla
!” Brooklynn smacked my arm down and shoved me aside. “We've got this! You stay put.”

I blinked several times, dazed by Brook's actions and her warning. Slowly, however, my judgment returned and Sabara slunk away once more. I wondered how much longer I could keep her at bay. How long I could pretend she wasn't wearing me down.

I stared at my hands, unable to believe I'd been willing to do something so horrific, hardly able to believe I'd been capable of drawing the ability forth in the first place. I'd always believed Sabara had lent me her power when I'd needed it.

Now I wondered if I couldn't summon it at will, a thought that revolted me, convincing me further that the two of us were far too enmeshed.

I turned to see Eden drawing a weapon from the back of her waistband—a small-caliber handgun I hadn't been aware she'd had with her. And when I glanced to Brook, her hand had disappeared into one of the boots she carried, and reemerged wrapped around the handle of a curved knife with sharp, serrated teeth.

Eden called out to the foragers, “Put it back—all of it—and no one gets hurt!”

The woman with the crate froze, her eyes finding us, and then searching out the others who were rummaging around our campsite. I wondered if she were calculating their odds.

I tried to imagine what we must look like, three women out here on our own in the middle of nowhere, with a vehicle chock-full of supplies. Then I really considered who I was traveling with, and how we appeared.

Eden, with her shorn purple hair and muscled arms, was menacing on a good day. But today, after her skirmish with Brooklynn, she was donning a shiner of a black eye that only served to make her more intimidating than ever. And Brooklynn might be pretty, but she wore an air of confidence about her, especially when, like now, her shoulders were squared and her jaw was set. Her own bruises and bedraggled hair only served to emphasize the fact that she wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty.

Me? I had no idea how I appeared. Certainly less daunting than the other two, but looks could be deceiving. I was
determined to make it across the border. To get to Elena, to discover the meaning of her message, and to attempt to keep my country at peace. I'd do anything to make that happen.

Besides,
I told myself
, I'd survived Sabara. I could certainly survive some local scavengers
.

If I'd had to lay odds right then, my money would have been on the three of us.

“
We don't want no trouble
,” the woman said in strangely punctuated Parshon, her southern Ludanian accent giving it a lilting sound. She bent slowly at the waist to set the crate on the ground at her feet. When she rose again, she kept her hands in front of her. “
Din't know there was someone laid claim to this stuff already
.”

I shot a meaningful glance at the embers of the barely dead fire and doubted the veracity of her statement.

“We don't want trouble either,” Brook chimed in, speaking in Englaise. She didn't bother to hide her blade as she approached the strangers. Her feet were bare, but her confidence was in full force. Both Eden and I were right at her back. “But this ‘stuff,'” she added bitingly, “is most definitely ours.”

As we neared, it became clearer who we were up against, and suddenly my belief that we would come out of this unscathed spiked.

They were kids, mostly. But not like the ones we'd just left behind with Caspar at the abandoned work camp. These kids seemed scrawnier and less organized. The longer I studied them, the more certain I was that the woman who'd spoken was their mother. They all bore hair that was the same honeyed shade of auburn, and their eyes were all varying shades of
green—moss, jade, emerald, and even one pair that reminded me of the sea I had just been in.

Two of them, a girl and a boy, both of whom had freckles peppered across their noses, wore clothing fashioned from identical fabric, with perfectly sewn stitches. Since the mother had spoken in Parshon—the vendor's tongue—I wondered if she was a seamstress by trade.

The boy, who'd been poking a stick into the remnants of the fire, dropped it when his jade eyes settled on Brook's knife. He raised his hands in the air, so high it was nearly comical.

The mother whacked him on the backside.
“Drop your hands,”
she muttered, speaking again in Parshon. And then to us, in Englaise, she tossed back, “Honestly, we want no trouble at all. We'll be on our way now.” As if reading the knowing look she cast their way, the children—four of them in all, ranging in age from about five or six years to somewhere around ten or eleven—gathered around her, making her look very much like a mother duck gathering her brood of ducklings.

The idea of mistaking them as dangerous thieves now seemed absurd.

Brook sheathed her knife and replaced it in her boot.

The girl who was the smallest of the children and part of the matched set with her brother tugged at the woman's skirt. “But, Mama, I'm hungry. And it's so far.”

I hadn't even had the chance to respond when Eden turned to scowl at me, already shaking her head as if she'd read my thoughts. “No, Your Maje—” She lowered her voice. “No way,” she amended from between gritted teeth. “They're thieves,” she insisted. “We can't. We won't.”

But I was already shoving my way past her, my mind made up. “They're children, Eden.” And then I told the woman, “We have more than enough. Stay and eat with us before you go.” I couldn't imagine casting them off without at least feeding them first. I smiled at the little girl, who peeked at me from behind her mother's back.

Eden sighed, her exasperation as loud as the wind.

“No, no. We couldn't,” the woman said, but the little boy, his eyes still wide and transfixed on Brooklynn, despite the fact that she no longer held her knife, quietly pleaded, “Please. Just a little . . .”

That was it for Brook, and she too came over to my side of the argument, proving she indeed had a heart. “Really,” she asserted, although a little less adamantly than I had. “It's okay. We have plenty.”

The woman's shoulders sagged as she looked around at her ginger-haired brood, all of them watching her eagerly for a sign of consent. Then she nodded, turning to meet my eyes as she reached out to pat the boy's head. “Thank you,” she told me.

The children ate voraciously, finishing a first round of salted squirrel and sliced cheese, and then asking for more. We sliced fresh fruit, which they devoured just as ravenously, letting the juices run down their chins and slurping it from their fingers. But even after that they weren't satisfied, so I pulled out a loaf of bread and we warmed it in front of the fire before drizzling it with honey.

While they ate, I quizzed their mother. Her name was Deirdre, and I learned as much as I could about the fishing village they'd come from. She told us how she used to make the finest fishing nets for miles around, and that their village had prospered. Trade had kept them all fed and full and clothed and housed.

Now, however, Deirdre and her younger children were forced to fend for themselves while her husband and her oldest daughter—like most of the other capable men and women from their village—had gone off to volunteer in the militia.

“Militia?” I asked, not sure I fully understood.

Deirdre just nodded. “Locals willing to fight for our country but not wanting—or able—to join the military. Either too old or too young, or not fit enough to be in the armies. Most of our villagers decided to join the militia so they could stay together, rather than being divided and sent to the far reaches of the country. Last we heard, the queen's army was gathering every militia to meet near the Astonian border. Talk is, war isn't so far off.”

Guilt knotted my stomach, so I only listened while everyone else ate.

I wondered how many other families were in similar situations. How many other mothers were off scavenging for food, trying to make ends meet for their children while they awaited word of the war. Waited to find out if their loved ones would even return home alive.

“I feel sick.” The little girl called Meg rubbed her hand over her protruding belly to emphasize her point.

Brook grinned back at her. “Well, you should. You just ate an entire week's worth of rations. At that rate you'll grow up to be a big, strong soldier like your sister.” She tousled the girl's hair. “Too bad we've got to get going, or I'd teach you a few moves myself.”