The Offering (The Pledge 3)

When she opened her eyes again, eyes that were completely and totally white, and completely and totally sightless, she declared, “She’s close. She’s very, very close.”

And then she blinked, her vision swimming back into focus as she saw Xander leaning forward, watching her intently. She frowned as she realized what exactly she’d just seen in her vision, and where Charlaina was.

“The army,” she said ominously, reaching for Xander’s only hand. “They’re almost upon her.”

X

It was well after midnight when we finally departed Graylond. The feeling that we were safer traveling under the cover of darkness was likely an illusion, but it was an illusion I clung to. It made me feel better to think that we were as invisible as the world around us.

I’d wrapped myself tightly in my shawl as we’d prepared to leave Deirdre’s home, long after the last of her children had gone to bed and the plates had been cleared from her table. We’d given her the crate she’d tried to steal from us earlier in the day—filled with jars that would likely last them until summer.

I hesitated at the door, letting Eden and Brook go ahead of me to the VAN. “Here,” I told Deirdre as I held my hand out to hers. “I’ve no idea of its value, but you can likely get a good price for it.” She opened her palm and looked at the sapphire pendant I’d dropped there, still warm from my skin.

She shook her head, her green eyes somber. “I couldn’t. It’s yours.” But I pushed her hand away. “I insist. You need it more than I do. For your children.” And it was true. Where I was going, I had no need for jewelry or sentimental keepsakes. I needed nothing at all, save my name and my blood.

Deirdre could make the money for a necklace like this last for months, years maybe. It could support her even if her husband and daughter never returned. I knew guilt was making my decision, but it didn’t matter to me.

I pushed again, until she finally acquiesced, closing her fingers around the jewel. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you, and safe travels.”

It was Brook who first noticed it, the sound—or rather the feel—of thunder. It seemed to come from nowhere, and yet everywhere, all at once.

We hadn’t gone far when she told Eden to kill the engine, and then the lights. And we all sat, awash in the darkness, letting the rumbling sensation fill our lungs, our veins, and find rhythm with our heartbeats.

“What is it?” I managed, when my voice finally found its way free from the drumming in my chest.

“I don’t know,” Eden admitted. “But we have to go. Now.” Neither Brook nor I argued as we followed Eden from the VAN, evacuating it and leaving it where it stood, on the open expanse of ground that had once been a thoroughfare. We took nothing, saving only ourselves. We followed silently as she climbed the slopes of the stony precipices that dominated the southern coastline. To lose our footing here, now on these rocky cliffs that overlooked the even rockier shores, would mean certain and swift death. All the while, the ground shook and the gravel beneath our toes shuddered and shifted.

But Eden climbed without pause, higher and higher, somehow finding traction where I doubted there was any. She pointed here and there, so we could follow suit. She was patient but demanding, and insisted that we climb higher and keep up with her.

“Where are we going?” Brook hissed, but Eden shushed her.

“Silence,” was all the explanation she offered.

The sharp-toothed rocks ripped my pants, and my fingers and knees were raw by the time Eden finally allowed us to rest, leading us inside the mouth of a cave that was carved into the hillside.

She prodded us farther in, until the cavern narrowed and we couldn’t go any deeper. As I glanced down at myself, I knew why she wanted us so far inside. Even in the intense blackness of the cave, my skin was notably visible.

“Here,” she told us. “We’ll wait here.”

I looked to Brooklynn, who gave me a slight shake of her head. “Wait for what?” I asked Eden.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But when the ground stops moving, we’ll know it’s over.”

PART III

max

The bird-faced warriors appeared like the scourge of death. They didn’t send a scouting party, the way Max had. Instead they came all at once, a vicious flock, arriving on horses and in tanks and on foot. In the fire from their torches, and from the headlamps of their vehicles, he could see their iron masks, elongated and conical, curving and coming to a spiked point at the tip, like they wore deadly black beaks. Their hobnailed boots and the hooves of their horses ate up the earth beneath their feet as they marched en masse—a deadly wall. Their tanks and armored assault vehicles flanked Max and his men on both sides. Harbingers, Max thought, of things to come.

He started to go down there, to warn the villagers who stood in the warriors’ path, so they would at least stand a chance, but Claude held him back.

“There’s nothing you can do for them,” he whispered into Max’s ear as he dragged him back into the darkness of their hiding spot. He kept his hand clamped warningly over Max’s mouth. “Not if you expect to save Queen Charlaina.” The mention of Charlie caused Max to stop struggling. Claude was right, of course. He had to find Charlie before the Astonian troops did. But that didn’t stop the bile that rose in his throat as he watched the first homes being burned. Or as he listened as women and children and men screamed from within—and without—those walls as they tried to escape. To save themselves. Fire and gunshots filled the sky, and Max flinched again and again, but never once did he close his eyes. He needed to remember this. To memorize every last reason he despised Queen Elena, and the troops from Astonia, and the terror they rained down on Ludania’s citizens.