The Offering (The Pledge 3)

“Oh, come on. We’re in the middle of nowhere.” Eden’s gaze moved upward, shifting toward the evergreens that filtered out the late-winter sun. The only sounds were the horses’ hooves and the branches rustling over their heads, and even the branches barely shifted.

At first Brooklynn thought Eden might be calculating the time, the way she concentrated on the cold, barren sky through the occasional openings in the thick canopy, trying to guess how much more daylight they had, but then her black eyes fell back on Brook, unflinching. “You never know who’s listening.” She made a clicking sound then and flicked her wrist so that her reins slapped the horse’s neck. The animal responded, increasing its pace and pulling away from Brook once more just as Eden called over her shoulder, “We’re getting closer. Mind every word now. The trees have ears.”

An eerie sensation settled over Brook, prickling her skin and causing her scalp to pucker as every hair stood on end. She looked up too, her eyes tracking over the same places Eden’s had, finding the same hollows in the trees, the same forks in the branches, tracing the same twists and gnarls and bends until she realized there was nothing there. That she’d been spooked by words, and words alone.

Spirit stories, like the ones she and Charlie and Aron had told when they were younger, as each had tried to convince the others of hauntings and apparitions and ghoulish occurrences.

The same way Eden had tried to convinced Brook with her tale of eavesdropping forests.

Nonsense, Brook told herself. But she slowed her horse anyway, deciding to keep closer to Charlie now despite her doubt.

Because regardless of all else, and no matter what Eden and Charlie insisted, Charlie was still her queen. And Brooklynn was there to defend her.

VI

Sometimes nightmares were real. That was my first thought when the imposing razor-wire fences came into view. Even in the glow of the colossal torches that had been placed at uneven intervals along the perimeter of the settlement, the enclosures themselves were intimidating. The metal was oxidized from weather and time but still appeared rugged and sturdy. The barbed spikes protruding from the fence were so long and so sharp that I was sure they could impale an entire human torso. And they likely had, from everything I’d heard about these places.

From what I could see, the buildings behind the fence line were no less daunting. No more inviting. I shuddered for their inhabitants, wondering what it must have been like . . . before.

I wondered too what it was like now. Now that the work camps had been dismantled. Now that the unwanted children who lived here were no longer wards of a barbaric system in which they were worked to the brink of collapse, and then tortured as a punishment for their lassitude.

Still, it wasn’t exactly what I’d imagined—the settlement— nestled deep in the forest and hidden away from the rest of the world. I supposed I’d imagined a place more barren and desertlike. More like the vast regions of the Scablands, although I knew there were camps there as well. This wasn’t the only one.

As far as I was concerned, there were too many of these camps in Ludania. Camps where children who’d lost their parents, or whose parents could no longer provide for them, or children who’d been forced to leave home because their parents were the more dangerous option, had been sent to live under Sabara’s rule. Here they had labored and toiled until they’d reached the age of legal consent, at which point they’d been reassigned to society, where they’d been required to labor and toil under a different kind of regime.

I’d already outlawed the work camps, but like all my decisions, it had caused a scandal of sorts. There were always those who were opposed to change, even when it benefited the greater whole of society. Even when it benefited those without voices of their own.

My plan was to reorganize the camps into something more humane, a place where children would be fed and cared for and educated. A safe haven. Many of those who’d been in charge of the camps had been detained and arrested for their crimes against the children they’d been in charge of.

Those who were found liable would be grateful that they lived under my rule, where the worst I would do was exile them to the Scablands. Sabara’s gallows were unforgivable.

“Are you sure it’s safe to be here?” I asked, following Eden’s lead and tethering my horse to a branch. Eden glanced up once more, just as she’d done when we’d been riding earlier, when she and Brooklynn had been discussing me as if I couldn’t overhear them, when I’d been nervous and talking too much. I’d ignored them then, but now I followed her gaze, wondering what she was searching for.

The sky had shifted from pale and cold to a frigid field of black. There were hints of a bright moon and pinprick stars that made intermittent appearances from between the trees that had grown denser and made it harder to navigate.

And then I saw something, in the branches high above me. At first just the barest shift. A quiver so minor that I nearly missed it against the dark canvas of night. But as I waited, it came again. Stronger this time.

No, not stronger. Louder. It came like a sound, a crackling whisper. A rustling.

I tried to pinpoint it, to track it with my eyes, but it was as fast as it was slight, and the darkness seemed to swallow it up before I could reconcile it.

“There,” Eden said, pointing to the place I hadn’t been able to find.

“Where?” Brook was standing behind us now, trying to see what Eden had.

I held my breath, waiting, my heart pounding too hard. And then it came again . . . shifting, rustling . . . and a leap. “I see it,” I exclaimed. But as quickly as I’d made the announcement, whatever it was vanished amid the backdrop of black foliage and tree limbs.