I force my head up and stare into his eyes. “I don’t care how you try to spin it. You said I was to be offed after the wedding.” My chest rises and falls against him, taking in deep breaths. “How, Devlan, did I misinterpret that?”
His blue eyes bore into mine, pale as the moonlight. The freezing water from the stream soaked my skirt, and it clings to my thighs. I shiver. Whether from the fierce look in his eyes or the cold, I’m not sure.
“Larkin’s a fool.” He shakes his head. “He only brought that up to get a rise out of me. He’s a bastard. He knows the mission has been changed.”
“What mission?” I shudder again as the biting night air seeps through my wet dress. “King Hart brought me here to be killed? I don’t understand. Why even bother with a wedding?”
“Zara.” He breathes my name, his breath warming my skin. “I don’t serve King Hart.”
“What?”
His lips press into a firm line, and his eyes widen as they steal over my shock. “I’m a Rebel.”
SIXTEEN
I shake, my body wracked with cold, making it difficult to stand. My mind spins with thoughts of King Hart and Rebels and torture devices. My legs tremble and give out, almost dropping me to the forest floor.
Devlan links one arm under my legs, the other around my shoulders, and sweeps me up. I wrap my arms around his neck as the quick motion nearly sends me forward. My dagger dangles loosely from my hand against his shoulder.
I savor the body heat he provides before we reach the river bank and he deposits me on one of the logs, the same one I sat on the day Sebastian brought me here. The night air presses on my wet dress, and I feel like I’m wrapped in sheets of ice.
He stands beside me and looks down. “You’re cold.” He removes his vest, then his gray tunic. The moonlight washes his bare chest in pale light, the shadows accentuating his lean muscles. I turn my head, forcing my eyes away, but can’t help peeking. He turns around to place his vest on the log and his back catches the light. A large scar slices down his left shoulder blade toward the middle of his back.
My heart thuds against my breastbone. I avert my eyes and sheath my dagger. Whatever made that mark must have been painful. As he turns around, I jerk my head sharply and look toward the woods. “Here.” He comes up beside me. “Lift your arms.”
I’m too cold to fight him. I lift my arms and he slips his tunic over my head. It’s twice, maybe three times the size of me, but it still carries his body heat. I wrap my arms around my stomach, drawing in the warmth. His scent—the sweetness I can never pin down—fills my senses and my chest tightens. I used to associate it and the smell of mint and forest with the protection I felt from him. Now it infuses me with fear.
He sits on the log beside me and stares. Silent. It’s going to drive me mad.
“Were you planning to elaborate on your confession?” My stomach knots with unease at being so near a traitor, but I forge on. “Or is that as much of an explanation as I’m to get?”
He pushes his dark hair back and looks at the vest in his lap, then pulls it over his head. I’m relieved I don’t have to stare at his chest anymore. But his bare arms, flexing as he grips and re-grips his hands, wringing them, are still distracting.
Finally, he says, “I planned to unveil things much later.” He palms his thighs and leans forward. “But your snooping doesn’t give me much choice now.”
I don’t deny it. I was snooping. I straighten my back and raise an eyebrow, urging him on.
“What you, and most citizens for that matter, don’t know is that there is an ever-present uprising in Karm.” His brow creases. “The Rebels have been players in a silent war ever since a battle took place between us and the Force. It was after the Rebels lost that we chose to attack from the inside to bring down the barrier.” He takes a deep breath. “And this is the closest we’ve ever been to seeing that realized.”
I shake my head. “How do I not know about this? How does everyone not know about this?”
“Because, the last time the Rebels exposed themselves and fought against the Force hundreds were slaughtered.” He hangs his head. “The memory of that war has been buried. All those old enough to remember? Gone. Disposed of. The Rebels were nearly all taken out, too. The technology Hart possesses is something no one has seen since the Final War. And it’s something we can only access by getting to King Hart.” He laughs hollowly and looks up. “But as you know, no one can get to him. No one knows where he, or the mainframe that controls Karm, is.”
I grip my sides tighter, my head swimming with confusion and questions I want answered immediately, but I stay quiet. I’ve never heard Devlan speak so much, or so passionately, about anything.
“We’ve worked hard to be unseen, make them believe there’s only a small group so that King Hart believes the threat is close to being eliminated. It’s the only way we’re
going to get someone close enough to him.”
“I can understand wanting change for Karm”—every time the Force beat my father, I prayed for it—“but why the barrier? What about Outside? Why are you risking so much for a wasteland? And one that is rumored to be dangerous?” I suck in a breath. “What if you succeed and it’s worse out there than in here? I mean, at least here there’s vegetation and food and we’re protected from monsters.” I’m surprised the words have left my mouth. After all my fervent arguments about change, this should sound like the answer. But it’s the truth. What are they fighting so hard to get to?
He exhales heavily, the air fogging as it passes his lips. “There’s just too much to explain.” He drives his hand through his hair, frustrated. Then he rises and extends his hand. “Come on. We could talk all night and by dawn there’d still be more to tell.”
I push his hand aside. “I’m not going anywhere until I get some straight answers, Devlan.” I rise to stand before him, my head angled back to meet his shadowed eyes. “Just tell me this. What I heard tonight, if the Rebels are the ‘good guys,’ how could you kill me? I’ve done nothing—am no one.”
His eyes are hard on mine. “You were to be the key.”
Taking a step back, I wrap my arms around myself and shrink against his steady glare. “I’m not a key…whatever that means.”