Outcast

Courier's Daughter - 0.5

C. J. Redwine

Chapter One

“Put your arms out to help you keep your balance,” Willow says, lifting her own arms to demonstrate.

“I want a rope tied around my waist.” The bravado in the boy’s voice quivers, though he glares at Willow as if daring her to notice. Several other children call out in agreement, and my sister turns to stare the class of First Learners into silence.

“If you use a rope when you’re learning to tree-leap, you’ll come to rely on it instead of relying on your own sense of balance. It will become a crutch, and then what will you do when you have to leap through the forest?” Her gaze lands on the six-year-old boy who hovers at the edge of the platform I built on one side of the school’s small playground. “You’ll fall. And if you fall, you’ll probably die.”

The boy swallows hard, his eyes flicking between Willow and the worn planks of the playground five feet below him as if trying to decide which he fears most. The school is built into the heart of our Tree Village. The bulk of it wraps around the huge cradle of an enormous oak, while the outlying classrooms are connected to the main hall by the same walkways that arc between the trees throughout our entire village, giving all of us access to every village structure without ever requiring us to touch the ground. The playground—a large square of smooth planks with a tetherball pole, a hopscotch grid carved into the floor, and a newly sanded collection of wooden bars, ladders, and slides—rests on support beams hammered into the trees beside the main classroom.

“I could fall now,” the boy says, the bravado in his voice seeping away as he looks away from my sister and down to where I stand.

“I’ll catch you,” I say, and open my arms to show him I’m ready. The grateful trust on his face—a striking contrast to the poorly concealed fear the adult villagers show around me—makes something in my chest expand even as it aches.

If Willow and I were from a different family, no one would have cause to avoid us while treating us with terrified deference. We’d have friends like the cluster of older kids our age we sometimes see sitting together on the northern walkways of the village at night, laughing and throwing twigs into the darkness of the Wasteland like they don’t have a single care.

Maybe they don’t. I wouldn’t know. My entire life is a knot of worry wrapped in a shell of controlled calm.

“Tighten your stomach muscles, Eliah, and use the balls of your feet.” Willow shades her eyes against the glare of the winter sun while a faint breeze plays with the black feather that dangles from her ear cuff.

I earned a black feather for my first kill too. So have most of the villagers over the age of thirteen. The difference is that they earned it for hunting deer. Willow and I earned it for hunting people.

“Come on, Eliah,” I say quietly, while the boy hesitantly stretches his thin, boot-clad foot off the platform and onto the maple branch—skinny, but strong—that extends from one edge of the platform to the top of the playground slide. “Your teacher will want you back inside before long, and the rest of your class needs a chance to try it.”

His eyes, dark like mine but still filled with innocence, widen as he takes a wobbly step onto the branch.

“Keep going!” Willow calls. “One foot after the other. Hands out. There!” She grins at me as Eliah moves jerkily toward the middle of the branch, his arms flailing madly while he struggles to keep his balance. Just shy of the halfway mark, his foot slips, and he plummets toward the ground with a sharp cry of fear.

“Got you.” I snatch him out of the air and gently lower him to the playground floor. “Nice job.”

“I only got halfway across.” His lower lip protrudes.

I squat down to his eye level and put my hands on his shoulders. “Last week, you wouldn’t even leave the platform. That’s a lot of progress. You’re very brave.”

A shy smile chases the pout from his face. “Brave like you,” he says before dashing off to recount his adventure for his waiting friends.

His words burn against my heart as I open my arms wide to catch the next student. Brave is for those who stand up for what is right. Who protect their sisters even though it could cost them everything.

Brave isn’t a word for those who obey a monster.

After the last Early Learner, a wisp of a girl whose long braid reminds me of Willow’s, takes two shaky steps before plummeting into my waiting arms, Willow claps her hands once in a bid for silence.

“Quiz time.” Willow glances past the platform to the school door, where Shawna Hawkeye stands laughing with another teacher, ready to call her students away from their weekly tree-leaping lesson and back into the safety of her classroom. Shawna is my age, and there was a time, long ago, when she played with Willow and me, stealing roasted almonds from Bay’s Mercantile at the southeast corner of the village and tree-leaping like it was a game instead of a necessity.

That was before our family vocations caught up to us. Before her mother settled Shawna into a study routine with piles of textbooks salvaged from the ruins of cities long gone and prepared her to become a teacher.

Before Dad put a knife in my hands and a bow in Willow’s and showed us what it meant to be a Runningbrook.

The thought of my father is a poison that eats through me until I’m filled with fury and loathing. I clench my jaw and deliberately empty my mind of all but the task before me, forcing the anger back behind the wall of calm I need as desperately as others need air.

Shawna glances our way and catches me watching her. Her mouth snaps shut, cutting off her laughter. She crosses her arms over her chest and presses against the door frame like she thinks somehow just attracting my attention is a death sentence.

I want to ask her why she thinks the elders would allow us to teach tree-leaping to the Early Learners if we’re such a threat to everyone’s safety, but I don’t. Instead, I look away and tell myself it doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. Not when there isn’t a single thing I can do to change the way the villagers look at us.

“Quickly, before your teacher calls you back inside,” Willow says. “Why do we live in the trees?”

“Because of the beast,” a little girl says.

“And because we don’t want to obey a city-state leader,” another girl speaks up.

Willow nods. “That’s right. Because beneath the ground lives a fire-breathing creature who tunnels up and destroys what it finds. And though the city-states have discovered a way to keep the beast at bay, we build homes in the trees where we’re safe, because we want the freedom to live as we choose.”

“I’m not leaving the village, so I shouldn’t have to learn how to tree-leap.” A boy with knobby knees and dirty fingernails raises his chin in defiance.

“What if you have to leave?” I ask, keeping my voice gentle. “What if something happens, and you have to flee the village?”

“What could happen?” Eliah asks, his wide eyes meeting mine.

“Highwaymen could attack us. Soldiers from one of the city-states could decide to force us to fight for them. A fire could—”

“But that’s your job. You protect us from the bad people so that we never have to leave.” A girl with soft pink ribbons in her hair speaks with the uncomplicated confidence of the innocent, and it’s all I can do to hold her gaze while my blood churns and something heavy lodges in my throat.

If only the things Dad required us to do were as simple as protecting the village children from people who might want to harm them.

“Yes, that’s our job.” Willow saves me from having to answer. “But you don’t want to grow up relying on other people to keep you safe. You want to know how to take care of yourself. You want to be strong and independent.”

“Like you?” The girl looks at Willow while behind us Shawna calls for the children to go inside.

Willow flashes a quick grin. “Like me. Time to go back to your classroom.”

The children groan in unison, but obediently walk toward Shawna, who flaps her hands at them to hurry them along and then slams the door without ever once glancing at Willow or me again. I shrug off her reaction and turn away.

For a moment, the morning is perfect. The warm scent of Harvey Eagleclaw’s pumpkin rolls drifts from the bakery to the left of the school. Bright-red cardinals hop along the smooth railings of the village walkways. Beside me, Willow’s smile matches mine, the cold edge that lurks inside her banished beneath the enjoyment of teaching others what comes so naturally to her. My chest still aches from Eliah’s faith that if I’m the village protector, I must be brave.

But then Willow’s smile uncurls into a thin, flat line, and I turn to look behind me.

Dad stands at the edge of the playground, his long, dark hair pulled back with a frayed thong and his leather coat—stained in places with the blood of those he declared his enemy—flapping in the breeze.

Silently, Willow moves to his side, her shoulders drawn back, her chin held high. I wipe my face clean of all expression as I follow her.

“Intruders spotted a half day’s journey to the east.” The creases around Dad’s eyes deepen as he scowls at us. “Time to stop playing with babies and do your real job. My bet is they’ll be here after nightfall. We’ll give them a proper welcome, won’t we?”

His smile twists something inside of me, and I hesitate a beat too long before nodding along with Willow. Dad’s expression goes flat and cold, and his scarred hands become fists.

“Won’t we, boy?” he asks with quiet menace.

My tongue feels too thick for my mouth as I say, “Yes.”

Yes, we’ll give them a proper welcome—the kind Dad has beaten into us since the day we were born.

I don’t know who is foolish enough to approach our village, but I’m sure of one thing: None of them are going to survive the night.

I’m also sure that Eliah was wrong. I’m not brave at all. I’m trapped, Willow is trapped, and every time I give in to my father I come a little bit closer to losing what little I have left of myself.

Chapter Two

Dad, Willow, and I rest for the afternoon in preparation for the night’s hunt. Just before the sun goes down, Dad receives a final report from the village scouts—the intruders are a band of highwaymen. We move east of the village to establish our position in the trees and wait for them to arrive.

The wind rattles the brittle branches of my tree as I wait. I pull my fur-lined hood closer and flex my hands inside my deerskin gloves to keep the circulation flowing.

Soon they’ll show themselves. I’ve been hearing the soft crunch of snow beneath their boots for a while now.

Fools.

Trying to sneak up on our village is a difficult task even on a clear night. Trying to sneak up on us with a crust of icy snow underfoot is suicide.

In the tree directly across from me, Willow stretches along a branch, her arrow strung, her bow drawn. She flashes a quick glance my way, her smile a shade too bright for my comfort.

Several trees to my left, an owl hoots, slow and mournful. I grip the hilt of my long stone knife as Dad’s signal fades into the silvery night sky.

It’s time.

Seconds later, the highwaymen materialize out of the dark forest, moonlight gliding over their drawn swords like ice. Ten men walking two abreast. Four are shorter than my six-foot frame, though the length of their swords takes away the advantage of my longer reach. I’m faster, though.

I’m always faster.

They pass Dad’s tree, and now I can make out the details of their clothing. Coats cobbled together with sleeves from one jacket, a hood from another. Mismatched shoes. Pants covered in patches and seams until the original design is impossible to distinguish.

Highwaymen are scavengers who pillage the remains of the cities that once were, salvaging anything they can lay their hands on to use or sell at one of the city-states. I don’t care what they do to the ruins of the old cities. But highwaymen are also notorious for attacking travelers or Tree Villages throughout the Wasteland, stealing anything of value and often leaving their victims wounded or dead.

I take a deep, slow breath and close my mind to anything but what lies in front of me. A whisper of sound disturbs the night, followed immediately by another. Two men in the middle of the group drop to the ground, dead. Willow’s arrows still vibrate in the soft flesh between their eyes.

Even as the rest of the men turn, shouting to one another and drawing their swords, two more arrows fly. Two more men fall.

Men scramble for the trees, tripping over roots and branches, shoving one another out of the way.

Willow draws her bow, and a man in the front shouts her location but never gets the chance to attack. Dropping from my tree, I land just behind him and snatch a handful of his hood. Then I yank his head back, whip my knife up, and slit his throat. Releasing him, I flip backward, narrowly avoiding the slash of another man’s sword as it slices through the air in my wake. He rushes toward me, but Willow buries an arrow in his back, and he stumbles to his knees.

Two more men attack me, and I crouch, waiting until they’re almost upon me. Trusting Willow to drop the one to my left, I lunge for the other, spin to the inside of his sword arm, and bury my knife in his chest. He coughs once and sags against me. I lay him on the ground.

Dad drops from his tree, lands behind the two remaining men, and laughs. In each hand he holds a wickedly curved knife. The men whirl around, but Dad is no longer there. Diving between their feet, he slashes each of them behind their kneecaps as he rolls forward and flips around to face them.

The men scream in agony. One falls to the forest floor. The other limps to a stop and tries to hold his sword steady. It isn’t going to help him. An arrow streaks past and the man falls to the ground with a heavy thud.

Dad whips his hand in the air. “Leave the other for me, Willow.”

Bile climbs up the back of my throat as my father advances on the injured man.

“Dad,” I say as the man clutches his leg and moans in pain. “He’s already down. He isn’t a threat now. Just make it quick.”

I’m trying to stop floodwater with a river stone. Once my father begins, he never stops.

I turn away, trying to block out the sound of the man’s screams as Dad draws out his victim’s death with vicious glee. When the screams finally fall silent, I draw in a breath of icy air and force myself to sound calm.

“Let’s get the bodies away from the village before we draw any wild animals to us,” I say, bending to scoop my hands under the arms of the man with the arrow in his back. He moans softly, and I stiffen.

I know what I should do. What Dad and Willow would do. I should slit his throat and toss him onto the pile without a second thought. And if he had a weapon out with intent to attack, I would.

But the thought of killing a now defenseless man makes my stomach churn.

Worse, though, is the thought of what Dad will do if he discovers that we have a survivor. It would be an act of mercy to kill the man myself.

I lean forward with my knife ready.

Chapter Three

“Surrender,” he gasps, and I freeze, inches from slicing into him.

“What?” I whisper.

“I surrender. Take me as your prisoner. I surrender.” His words are nothing but faint, pained gasps, but they land on me like physical blows.

No one has ever surrendered to us before. No one has ever been given the option. I think of the dusty jail cell in the village council house and wonder what the village elders would do with an actual prisoner.

He moans again, and reaches a hand toward the arrow in his back. I kneel on him before Dad or Willow can see him moving, cover his mouth with my gloved hand, and rip the arrow free in one swift motion.

His scream vibrates up my arm. I press my hand against his mouth until he falls silent and try to figure out what to do. My thoughts churn rapidly, and my hands shake as Dad’s training, my own instincts, and the memory of Eliah’s trusting voice calling me brave all collide inside my head.

“What you got there?” Dad asks, and I jump.

Standing, I step over the man, and lift the arrow so Dad can see it. My voice is hoarse as I say, “Thought I’d get an early start on retrieving Willow’s arrows.”

“Well, don’t just stand there. Clean it off,” he says.

I nod and bend to wipe the arrow clean on the forest floor. My chaotic thoughts slowly settle as one irrefutable idea takes hold of me and feels—finally—like truth.

I can’t kill this man. It isn’t courage, and it isn’t rebellion against Dad’s rules. It’s a simple fact. I don’t have it in me to kill an unarmed man, and I’m not going to pretend I do. If Dad calls it weakness and tries to beat me for it, I’ll handle it.

I’ve had years of practice.

I glance at the man beside me and frown. I’ll have to tell Dad we have a survivor. Announce it to him in a way that twists the idea of taking a prisoner into something advantageous to him.

Maybe I can make him believe the man is a trophy guaranteed to improve our standing within the village? Someone the elders can question so we can get current news about things happening in the northern city-states—the ones we rarely hear about?

Dad might go for that.

“I’ve been thinking,” I say.

“Who gave you permission to do that?” Dad asks, yanking an arrow from the forehead of a man to my left.

I set my jaw, and continue calmly. “The elders are so used to us protecting the borders, they’ve forgotten to appreciate the service we provide.”

Dad straightens abruptly, and I feel the heat of his glare even though darkness shadows his features. “What are you talking about, boy? We’re respected.”

“We’re feared.”

“What’s the difference? The elders know that if they don’t pay us our due, we could let the next band of scavengers destroy the village.”

Actually, I think the elders are afraid that if they don’t pay us our due, we could slit their throats as they sleep. But I don’t say that.

“They don’t realize we can be valuable for more than this.” I gesture at the bodies scattered across the forest floor. Sensing movement from the man behind me, I speak louder. “What if we brought them a prisoner? Someone who had information about what’s going on in the northern city-states? Surely providing a prisoner for them to question would be worth more money and more respect.”

Dad doesn’t have a chance to answer. Instead, the man behind me moans, a guttural sound of pain that instantly ends the discussion.

I close my eyes and feel sick as Dad steps past me.

“We got ourselves a survivor,” he says, kicking the man in the stomach.

Willow climbs over the body of a man at the edge of the clearing and heads our way. The sickness in me spreads.

“He’s unarmed. We could bring him to the elders—”

“We don’t take prisoners, Quinn.” The note of finality in Dad’s voice warns me not to argue. “Now, I’ve had my fun for the night. Who wants him?”

Bending closer to the ground, I plunge my gloved hand into the snow so I can scrub the arrow clean.

I can’t convince Dad to take the man prisoner. Either I stand back and let this unfold in front of me, or I defy my father and give the man a quick death. Dread sinks heavily into the pit of my stomach as I consider my meager choices.

Dad hauls the man to his knees and balances him against his legs as Willow comes to stand beside me. Slowly, I get to my feet and hand her the arrow.

“Come on. Which one of you wants him?” Dad’s tone is less pleasant now. We’ve taken too long to respond to his generous offer. His eyes slide past me and rest on Willow. I’m hurtling toward the inevitable. I see it in the way he smiles at her, the way she’s already shrugged off the carnage behind her, the curiosity on her face as she assesses the injured man.

I look in her eyes, and I see my father peeking through.

How many more can she kill outside the heat of battle before she forgets to remember they’re human? Before the coldness that lurks inside of her takes over?

My pulse pounds, and my skin feels flushed. I was wrong. Those who protect their sisters even if it costs them everything aren’t brave. They’re desperate.

Willow says, “I’ll take him.”

“He’s mine.” I shoulder my way in front of her, my knife already in my hand. My heart feels like a stone carved into my chest. The truth that bloomed inside of me moments ago wilts beneath the realization that I can kill an unarmed man if it means my sister doesn’t have to.

“Oh, ho! Look who suddenly has a taste for blood.” Dad’s laughter clings to me like a disease.

“Hey! I claimed him!” Willow says.

I can ignore them both. But I can’t ignore the pleading in the eyes of the man on his knees. His gaze burns into me, another black mark on my soul.

I swallow, though there’s no spit left in my mouth, and raise my knife. Better my soul than Willow’s. At least mine still knows how to feel guilt.

“How do you want him?” Dad asks, and pulls the man to his feet. The man struggles briefly against Dad’s grip. “Looks like he’s got some life in him yet. Maybe we should let him run. Give him a little head start before you hunt him down. Been a while since you’ve done any decent hunting at night.”

The dread crawling through me bites the back of my throat. This isn’t a game. This is someone’s life.

Willow steps forward, and I block her with my body. Dad releases the man.

“Run, you worthless scavenger! Run!” Dad laughs again, and tosses one of his knives to Willow as she tries to get past me again. “Both of you can hunt him. May the best one win.”

I close the distance between myself and the highwayman in two steps and slice my blade through his throat before he can move. He stumbles back, half raises one hand to his throat, and then crumples. His blood gushes onto the ground, a fast-blooming rose consuming the snow beneath him. I turn away and struggle to breathe past the sudden tightness in my chest.

“What was that?” Dad strides forward and slams his fist into my chest. “What was that, Quinn? What?”

I absorb the blow like I’ve absorbed every blow he’s aimed my way the last few years, and meet Willow’s eyes instead.

“We didn’t come here to hunt an injured, unarmed man. We didn’t come to torture and kill for sport. We came to protect the village.” I look at the ground, at the river of blood creeping toward my boots, and say, “It’s finished.”

Dad grabs the front of my coat and shakes me. “I say when it’s finished, boy. We do things my way.”

The man’s eyes are open, staring at the silver-studded sky without blinking. I know I’ll see him in my sleep, another face joining all the others that haunt me.

Dragging my eyes from the man, I look at Dad. “Either way, he’s dead. But this way, maybe we keep a little piece of our integrity.”

Dad’s face grows ugly with rage. “You think protecting the village costs us our integrity?” His fist plows into me again. “We’re warriors! We’re respected because everyone knows what will happen to them if they don’t give us the honor we deserve.”

“Dad, don’t!” Willow tries to come between us, but he shoves her to the ground.

The dam of restraint I’ve built up over the years cracks as she sprawls at our feet, and I clench my fists. “What’s honorable about taking joy in killing? What’s honorable about torturing injured men to death just because they’re at our mercy?”

“We don’t show mercy!” He’s screaming.

I block his next punch, and catch his other fist as it swings toward my face. Crushing his hand in mine, I push him until his back is against the nearest tree. The air leaves his chest in a painful gasp as I slam him against the bark.

For a moment, he’s afraid. His eyes slide past me, looking for options, and for one terrible second, I imagine ending it. Breaking his neck. Freeing us from the disease that flows in our veins because of him.

“Quinn?” Willow is beside me, her hand on my arm, her voice worried.

My fury slowly seeps back behind the dam within me, and I shake away the thought of leaving my father dead on the forest floor.

He stares me down.

“I don’t know when you got to be so thick-skulled, boy. Lord knows I’ve tried to teach you. Lesson number one: Kill or be killed. Lesson number two: We. Do. Not. Show. Mercy,” he says, biting off each word to spit it in my face.

Meeting his eyes, I say with quiet clarity, “I do.”

I release him and step back. He shakes the hand I crushed, and glares at me. “You’re a coward and a fool. Now, clean up this mess. You no longer deserve our help.”

Wrapping his arm around Willow’s shoulders, he pulls her toward the village, leaving me with nothing but the echo of his words and the ghosts of those I’ve killed.

Chapter Four

Something hard lands on my chest, jerking me out of a fitful sleep. Instantly, I lunge out of bed, landing in a crouch, fists clenched while I whip my head around to find the threat.

“If you take a swing at me, I’ll knock out your teeth.” Willow stands a few yards from my bed, her dark hair lit from behind by the morning sunlight that forces its way through the cracks in my wooden shutters.

“That’s harsh. My teeth are my one good feature.”

Willow cocks her head to study me. “You have a good feature?”

“Do you have to be so insulting this early in the morning?” I ask, forcing myself to relax, even though my heart still pounds a frantic tempo against my chest.

“I see we’re using the word ‘insulting’ when really we mean ‘incredibly smart.’” Willow smirks, but there’s a shadow behind her gaze. A shadow I know I’ll see in my own eyes when I look in the ancient, cracked mirror that hangs from the back of my door.

It’s the residue of death. Of scrubbing blood from your fingers and guilt from your soul.

A few days of peace will banish the shadow from Willow’s eyes. How long until a few days becomes a few hours? How long until, like our father, killing doesn’t bother her at all?

“You’ve got that look again,” Willow says quietly as I turn away from her and bend to pick up the object she threw against my chest.

“What look?” It’s a book—leather worn shiny and thin, spine cracked with age. I open it slowly and read the title page: The Collected Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson.

“The look that says you’re thinking things that are only going to get you into trouble.”

Ignoring her words, I thumb past a few pages. The paper feels slippery and frail. “This is poetry.”

Willow snorts. “You have a stunning grasp of the obvious. I figured it was something you’d like. Just don’t tell Dad. He said you didn’t deserve anything.”

“Where did this come from?” I look up from the book in time to catch the worry in her eyes before she blinks it away.

“From the loot we recovered last night.”

“The things we took from the highwaymen we killed,” I say, because I want her to remember that everything we gained had a price.

She nudges one bare toe against the braided rug that rests on my floor. “They were threatening the village, Quinn.”

“They were.” I hold her gaze. “But once they were injured and disarmed, they weren’t a threat anymore. Don’t you ever consider the possibility that we go too far? That Dad forces us to go too far?”

She shakes her head, a quick movement designed to cut me off before I say too much. “Stop it. If you keep questioning Dad, he’s going to hurt you.” Her throat seems to close over the words, and she glares at me like it’s my fault she’s having trouble speaking.

“It’s not me I’m worried about.” I run my fingers over the book’s spine, feeling the jagged ridges in the well-used leather as they catch under my skin. “It’s you. He asks more of you every day.”

“I can handle it.”

“He pushes you—”

“I said I can handle it.” Her voice snaps, a quick flash of anger that isn’t really aimed at me. “I’m doing what I have to do to survive.”

I step closer to her. “So am I.”

The worry doesn’t leave her eyes. “What you’re doing is going to get you killed.”

“I can handle it.”

“Not if I’m the one Dad orders to do the killing.” Her voice is as hard as the wooden floor beneath us, but the death-shadow on her face darkens.

I close the distance between us and bump her shoulder with mine. “Do you trust me?”

Her dark eyes meet mine, and a long look—a look full of shared horrors and years’ worth of scars—passes between us. “You know you’re the only one that I trust.”

I nod my head, willing her to believe me. “We’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. I just need a little time to think things through and figure out how to handle Dad.”

“No one handles Dad.”

“I will. I promise.”

Hope flares briefly in my sister’s eyes and then fades as the sound of our father’s angry voice cuts through the house, his tirade punctuated by drunken sobs from our mother.

“I won’t hold you to that,” Willow says as she slips over to my window, pulls the shutters away from the opening, and climbs out of my room and into the spacious oak that serves as the main pillar for our tree house.

The shutters fall against the window as she disappears, leaving me with poetry in my hands, a promise on my lips, and my father’s fury ringing in my ears.

Chapter Five

“Look who finally decided to grace us with his presence.” Dad’s voice is full of mean as I leave my room and walk down a short set of stairs to our home’s main room, which is built around the trunk of the oak tree. I push my shoulder-length black hair away from my face and skirt the edge of the trunk, heading toward the cooking stove in the corner where a pot of Mom’s stewed apples bubbles over a low fire.

The chill of the winter morning seeps in through the cracks in the walls. The scattered rag rugs, faded from years of use, do little to block the cold. I pull my leather coat tight, the book of poems securely tucked in an inner pocket far from my father’s prying eyes. Mom hovers near the stove, her eyes on her husband, her hands already shaking with the need for her next drink.

“Guess you were tired after having to do the cleanup all by yourself last night,” Dad says.

I grab a chipped porcelain bowl from the rack above the stove and scoop apples into it.

“Hope you used that time alone to do some hard thinking, boy, because I’m not putting up with you questioning my authority again.”

I dip a spoon into the apples and take a bite. The stew is tangy, verging on sour. Either Mom forgot to add sugar, or we’re out of it again.

“Look at that, Cora.” Dad’s voice is menacing as he circles the trunk and comes closer to the stove. “Your son thinks he can ignore me.”

Mom’s hands flutter toward her neck and latch onto the frayed edges of her knitted shawl. “Answer your father,” she says in a weary voice. When I take too long to finish chewing and swallowing, she whips her head toward me, desperate anger flaring in her bloodshot eyes. “Now, Quinn. Answer him!”

“Yes.” I carefully set the bowl into the sink beside our ancient water pump, the sour tang of the apples still ripe in my mouth. “Yes, I did some hard thinking.”

“Better make sure you came to the right conclusion.” Dad strides forward and grabs the front of my coat. I hold my arms tightly to the sides to keep the book from sliding out of its pocket while he gives me a hard shake. “Who’s in charge of our missions?”

“You are.” The words are easy. The effort to stop myself from arguing that we should approach the village’s protection differently is not.

“You forget that again, boy, and I’ll have to teach you a lesson.” The threat of violence lies heavy in his voice. I nod but don’t look at him. He lets go of my coat slowly and straightens. “You’ll do the scouting run today.”

My eyes snap to his as panic sears me. If I’m scouting for potential threats during the day, I’ll be kept at home tonight. There will be no one to stand between Willow and my father’s desire to mold her into another version of himself. And I won’t be there to absorb the violence he turns against us when things don’t go his way.

“I’m not a scout.” I keep my voice calm and expressionless. “The elders gave Sorra and Matthias that job. If I take their place—”

He slaps me. I see it coming. I could’ve dodged the blow, but it’s better to take the first hit than risk provoking him into the kind of beating that will leave me hobbling for days.

Leaning close enough that his breath fans the stinging handprint on my cheek, he says, “You’ll scout if I tell you to. And you’ll keep scouting until you’ve learned to hold your tongue and do as you’re told. I had hopes for you, Quinn. Thought you’d follow in your old man’s footsteps and make me proud. But now I’m thinking maybe your sister is the true warrior in this family.”

His dark eyes flash with challenge, and my stomach lurches as I realize he knows I’m trying to protect Willow. He knows I’m willing to do anything I have to do to keep her from becoming like him. He knows, and he’s recovered from his shock at my defiance last night and is ready to answer me with the kind of violence that has kept Willow and me doing his bidding without question our entire lives.

Mom picks up a glass jar filled with pale-yellow corn liquor and walks out of the room without looking at us. I do the one thing that will pacify my father and put me on the road to being in his good graces again, where I can watch out for Willow.

“If you want me to scout, I’ll do it.” My voice is calm and controlled—at odds with the frantic pounding of my heart and the fury that blazes through me with almost unbearable ferocity.

For one moment, I imagine striking him back—using the skills he’s taught me to hurt him, disable him, and then hurt him some more. Watching his face as he realizes that the monster he’s created has turned against its master.

Then I take a slow breath, ignore the anger that pounds through me, and walk out the door. The morning sky is winter gray as I climb onto the walkway that circles our home and stretches tree to tree, connecting our home to the buildings around us. The village occupies five hundred yards in the center of the southern forest. Every home, council, and community building is built high up in the trees, centered around thick trunks and then branching out with the use of walkways, rope stairs, and support beams.

Below us, a thin crust of snow remains on the forest floor, though spots of dark earth are peeking through in places. Snow never lasts long in the southern forest. I don’t know which direction Sorra and Matthias went this morning, and I’m not going to hunt down the elder in charge of scouting to ask.

Not when it means trying to explain why my father is displeased with me. And why I’m struggling to obey him.

I head south, running silently along the walkways, past the council building, the butcher shop, and the schoolhouse until I come to the edge of the village. A thick forest of oak, cypress, and elm surrounds us. Most of the people who enter our borders are either highwaymen traveling to pillage or trade or couriers from other city-states looking for a shortcut to Rowansmark, a three-day’s journey south.

None of the strangers who enter our borders uninvited make it out alive.

Grabbing a sturdy elm branch, I swing off the walkway that borders the village and into the forest beyond. Moving lightly along that branch, I scan the surrounding trees, pick another branch that can hold me, and leap from one tree to the next only to do it all over again. In moments, I’ve left the quiet noises of the village behind and am embraced by the occasional call of the birds above me, the creak of the branches below me, and the reverent hush that holds the woods captive.

When I’m far enough away that I feel comfortable stopping, I climb into the cradle of a cypress and pull out the book.

The last book I found was a collection of short stories full of magic and make-believe—so different from the life that I knew—and they fed my soul in a way that nothing ever had. I’d read them to Willow in the quiet early morning hours after a hunt when Dad was already asleep. The words felt like a treasure. Something that was untouched by anyone but us.

But one day I wasn’t careful enough, and Dad overheard me reading. Furious that I’d kept the book out of a night’s haul, he’d confiscated it.

We never saw it again.

Now, I hold the book of poems carefully and slide a finger over the thin, yellowed pages while I read. The words are lyrical, like the river’s steady cadence as it rushes over the rocks in spring. I read poems about battles, beautiful streams, and the loss of a girl named Claribel. Images of noble soldiers, lonely journeys, and love that is strong enough to endure every separation fill my mind. I feel a sense of peace for the first time in years.

Then I turn a page and read a poem whose last lines stop me cold. Drawing in a breath of chilly air, I speak the words aloud while my heart picks up speed.

Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow for ever and for ever.

My throat closes as the memory of slashing the unarmed highwayman’s throat fills me. What are my echoes? What mark am I leaving on this world to roll soul to soul, growing forever?

The questions, the doubts that I’ve struggled with snap into focus with one clear thought: I will not become the man my father wants me to be. I will choose my own path. My own echoes.

And if I have anything to say about the matter, Willow will get to choose her echoes too.

Chapter Six

“Where have you been?” I whisper as Willow glides into her room just minutes before dawn on what will be my fourth day in a row of scout duty.

She shoots me a quick glare and whispers back, “Get out of here before Dad hears you.” With deft movements, she shrugs her bow and quiver off her back and then reaches for the knife strapped to her waist.

“He won’t hear anything if we keep our voices down.” I step closer as I see the dark gleam of blood on the serrated edge of her knife. “Your knife is bloody.”

“That’s what happens when you stick it in somebody.” Her voice is as quietly controlled as mine, but her fingers grip the hilt with white-knuckled ferocity. She grabs a rawhide cloth from her dresser and carefully wipes the blade clean, while I cross my arms and stare her down.

I’ve spent my days scouting, and all has been quiet. No highwaymen. No lone thieves prowling for an easy victim. No travelers looking for a shortcut to Rowansmark.

When I haven’t been scouting, I’ve used my time to read poetry and think about how to change the course I’m on and rescue Willow at the same time.

I haven’t come up with any answers, and the longer we’ve gone without threats to put down, the harder it’s been to dodge the restless violence that simmers in our father like a cauldron about to boil over. When he took Willow with him to “check the perimeter” twelve hours ago, a knot of worry blossomed in my gut. As I look at Willow now, that knot turns into a stone.

“What happened?” I ask.

“The usual. Killing people. Hunting things. The family business.” She avoids my gaze and sets her weapons against the wall beside her bed.

“Willow, this isn’t the usual. There were no reported threats. And when there are threats, we deal with them just outside the village borders. You should’ve been gone three, maybe four hours.” I glance at the graying light seeping in past her curtains. “You’ve been gone for twelve. What happened?”

She sits on the side of the bed and concentrates on unlacing her boots. “We found a threat.”

I frown. “Where? There were no reports—”

Her gaze snaps to mine, and the darkness in her eyes is an accusation I don’t know how to answer. “Dad needed a threat, so we found one. Took us hours of moving through the Wasteland looking for travelers, but we found some. And we made an example out of them.” Her voice shakes, and she presses her lips closed. A shaft of light leaks past the shutters and illuminates a bruise swelling along her cheekbone.

“Did a tracker give you that?” I gesture toward her face.

She shrugs and refuses to look at me. My heart thuds heavily in my chest. A tracker didn’t do that to her. Dad did. Without me there as Dad’s favorite target, he took out his rage on her instead.

“Willow.” I breathe her name while rage pushes against the dam I’ve built to contain it. “I’m sorry. I should’ve—”

“Come with us?” Her tone is hard, but the fierceness in her face is a mirror of the protectiveness I feel toward her. “You can’t do it, Quinn. We both know that. This life is destroying you.”

“It’s destroying us both.” I sink to my knees beside her bed and meet her gaze. “Every time we hurt someone who doesn’t deserve it, we lose something we can’t get back.”

“The men tonight were bounty hunters searching for a Baalboden courier who stole something from Rowansmark. They want the price that’s been put on the courier’s head. You know bounty hunters will cut through anyone who stands between them and their prize. I’d hardly call them innocent.”

“Were they a threat to the village?”

Her eyes drift away from mine. “No.”

No, they weren’t, but it hadn’t mattered because Dad was more interested in killing than he was in protecting our borders.

“I’ve been thinking—”

“I was afraid of that.” She rolls her eyes.

I nudge her knee with my shoulder. “Just listen. I’ve been reading the book you gave me.”

She flops backward onto her bed. “If you’re about to give me advice based on a poem written by some dead guy, you can forget it.”

“Not advice.” I lean my elbows against the frayed quilt that covers her bed and then hold my breath when I hear footsteps on the stairs that lead from the main room to our bedrooms. Seconds later, I breathe again when I hear the unmistakable shuffle-scrape of our mother’s steps heading past our rooms and toward the cupboard where she keeps the corn liquor hidden behind a set of fancy sheets we once took from a dead highwayman.

“I’m tired, Quinn. I want to go to sleep, not listen to poetry.” Willow keeps her voice down as we hear Mom fall to her knees in front of the cabinet.

“No poetry. Just . . . you’re right. This life is destroying us. And now you’re taking the brunt of Dad’s sickness instead of me and—”

“And you’re afraid I’m going to end up just like him.” She barely whispers the words, but they seem to grow larger, filling up the room and taking on a life of their own. I clench my fists and remember the Willow of my childhood—the sister who laughed and loved with wild abandon until she killed her first highwayman and earned the black feather she still wears dangling from her ear cuff.

I can’t tell her she’s right. I can’t put into words the fear that haunts me when I see how easily she obeys Dad. How quickly she shakes off the things she’s done in the name of protection. Instead, I say, “We have to stop this. We have to stop him.”

“How?” Raw desperation is on her face.

“Maybe the elders can help. If we show them that Dad is more interested in torture than in obeying them, they might—”

“Try to lock him up and get killed for their trouble?” Willow sits up again and looks at me. “There’s only one way to stop Dad, and we both know it.”

I swallow hard as we stare at each other. Killing Dad is a fantasy that lurks at the edges of my thoughts on the really bad days, but it isn’t something I can truly stand to look in the eye. Not if I want to stop being the murderer he’s raised me to be. Not if I want to choose a different path for myself. Before Willow tells me she can handle the task herself, I say, “If we’re there to protect the elders, Dad will be outnumbered. They’ll see him for what he really is. They can lock him up, and all of this will stop.”

Slowly, Willow nods. “That could work. One problem, though. How are you going to force Dad into revealing his true self in front of the elders? It’s not like they’re going to agree to come on a hunt with us. And if they did, Dad would just be on extra-good behavior and then punish us—punish you—afterward.”

“We don’t need a hunt,” I say as the plan that’s been taking shape inside my head for the past three days clicks into place. “All we need is for one threat to make it past our borders and be imprisoned instead of killed. Dad won’t be able to leave that alone.”

“Dad won’t let a threat get past our borders.”

“No, but I will.”

Before she can argue, I head out for the day’s scouting mission with one goal in mind: find someone worth taking as a prisoner. Someone Dad won’t be able to resist trying to kill no matter who’s watching.

Chapter Seven

Two days later, I get my wish. Once again, I’ve spent my day scouting to the south of the village. The afternoon sun softens the chill in the air, though my fingers still ache with cold as I sit in an enormous white cypress holding the book of poems in my hands while I eat the chunk of bread I packed for my lunch. I’m engrossed in a poem about a dreamlike land filled with lotuses when the woods suddenly fall silent around me.

Someone else is here.

Quietly, I lay the book aside and pull my legs beneath me so that I’m crouching high up in the center of the tree, looking down on the forest below. A whisper of sound drifts from my right, and as I turn my head I catch movement. Instantly, I run the length of a thick, twisted branch, my footsteps landing silently out of long practice, and then leap onto the back of a tall, broad-shouldered man as he passes beneath me.

He doesn’t drop to the ground as most threats do when I land on them from above. Instead, he slams a boot into the dirt for balance and twists his upper body, trying to use my own momentum against me.

I let him.

When he flings me around to face him, my knife is already at his throat, the blade catching against his skin until a thin red welt forms.

He goes still.

I look him over. Red hair, pale, freckled skin, and gray eyes watching me with steady confidence that belies the fact that I’ve got him at a disadvantage. This isn’t a highwayman who will attack with frantic force, lacking strategy and finesse. This isn’t an innocent traveler terrified to encounter someone who seems intent on robbing him at the very least.

This is a man who knows how to take care of himself and who understands that panic is his enemy.

“If I’ve blundered into somewhere I shouldn’t be, I’ll leave quietly and never come back,” he says calmly, raising his hands, palms out, to show me he means no harm.

Or to distract me from his next defensive move.

“I don’t want to kill you.” The words surprise me as much as they seem to surprise him.

His brow rises. “I don’t want you to kill me either.”

“But I can’t just let you leave.”

His cloak opens as he raises his arms farther, and I see the golden talon patch on his left shoulder. He’s a courier. From the city-state of Baalboden, several weeks’ journey to the northeast. He follows the direction of my gaze, and the lines around his eyes tighten.

“Are you the courier everyone is looking for?” I ask, my muscles tensing in case he decides to attack or flee.

He studies me in silence for a moment, and then says, “You don’t look like a bounty hunter.”

“I’m not. I’m part of the protection team for my village.”

“I’m not a threat to your village.” His gaze is open.

My laugh is sharp and bitter. “Everyone who has the misfortune of wandering too near our borders is considered a threat. And if there’s a threat, I handle it.”

“By killing them?” the man asks, his voice still calm and steady.

My voice is just as calm. “Not if I don’t have to.”

His eyes meet mine, and I feel as if he’s taking my measure. Dad does the same thing when he thinks I’m in danger of not following his orders, and I always end up feeling that I’ve been found wanting. Somehow this man’s scrutiny makes me feel as if he’s decided to treat me like his equal. I’ve never been treated like an equal. It’s both gratifying and somewhat unsettling to see something other than fear or contempt on another man’s face.

“My name is Jared Adams. I mean no harm to your village.” His gaze stays locked on mine. “I usually travel to and from Rowansmark much farther east than this. I didn’t realize I was trespassing, and I’m happy to turn around and disappear from your woods forever.”

“Why are you so far from your usual path?”

He hesitates, but I get the sense that it’s because he’s figuring out how to explain something to me, not because he’s searching for a lie. “There’s been a misunderstanding. I need to fix it without being caught by Rowansmark, and they’ll be looking for me on my usual route.”

“You’re accused of being a thief.”

His speaks with absolute conviction. “I didn’t steal anything. I have a daughter in Baalboden. Rachel. It’s just the two of us. She needs my protection. She needs me to come home. I would never do anything to jeopardize her. I’m being accused of something I didn’t do, and I’m trying to figure out how to make it right so that I can go home again. I’m not a threat to you, I promise.”

I believe him. But I also believe that the courier who is wanted by Rowansmark and whose capture would result in immense wealth is exactly the kind of prisoner my father wouldn’t be able to resist. His fury that a courier made it past our borders—a wanted courier, at that—and his greed for either the reward or whatever Jared supposedly stole from Rowansmark would overcome him.

“I can’t let you go,” I say. “Yet. I can’t let you go yet. We’ve already had issues with bounty hunters in the area.” If a six-hour journey away can be called in the area. “The village elders need to question you.”

A muscle in his jaw bunches. “I won’t give them the item Rowansmark says I stole. If that’s your plan, then you and I are going to have to fight this out right here.”

His hands are still raised, but something changes in his stance, and an answering thrum of adrenaline races through me.

“I don’t want to fight you,” I say. “I don’t want to take another life, but—”

“Son, I’ve been fighting for my life longer than you’ve been alive. If we fight—”

“If we fight, you’ll die.” My voice is weary. “I’ll see your moves before you make them. I’ll counter them before you’ve figured out your own mistakes. I’ll move faster than you think I can. I’ll strike with precision and force, and you’ll be on your knees, already dying by the time you realize you should beg for the mercy I’m not allowed to show.”

A frown digs in between his brows. “You’re very sure of yourself.”

The fury I keep pent up inside of me heats my words. “Torture and bloodshed are an instinct that’s been honed in me since I could walk. I’m sure of my abilities. I’m also sure that you don’t have to die. You can go home to your daughter. You simply have to come to the village as my prisoner and meet with the elders.”

“And if they decide not to let me go?”

I hold his gaze and will him to hear the sincerity in my voice. “Then I’ll release you myself. I’ll protect you, and I’ll get you out.”

He studies me in silence for a long moment while above us, bright-red cardinals flit from branch to branch, chirruping in the wintry air. Finally, he says, “Why are you really taking me as your prisoner? You could let me go, and the elders would never even know I was here. Or you could ask me questions yourself without risking that the elders will want to keep me indefinitely, or worse, turn me over to Rowansmark.”

I find myself wanting to give him the truth. Maybe because, unlike my father, he looks at me with respect. Maybe because any violence within him is so tightly controlled, even I can’t find it. Or maybe because I’m about to use what I think is a good man as bait to take down a monster, and it feels disrespectful to keep him completely in the dark.

“I need a prisoner worthy of the elders’ attention,” I say. “Just for tonight. I have to prove to them that there’s a better way to protect our village than mindlessly slaughtering any strangers who come near.”

He holds my gaze as I slowly remove the knife from his throat. “What’s your name?”

“Quinn Runningbrook.”

“Well, Quinn Runningbrook, it seems I can either fight to the death in the middle of this forest or choose to trust that you are a boy who keeps his word.” He lowers his arms and then extends one hand toward me. “Because you could’ve killed me when you first dropped from that tree, and because I believe that you’re honestly trying to do the right thing, I’m going to trust you.”

Gingerly I take his hand and shake it, bracing for any sudden moves on his part. His trust feels like an unexpected gift, and it makes me uneasy. What if I’m wrong about the elders? About Dad?

Feeling like the freedom I want to gain for Willow and myself is balanced on the edge of a precipice, I hold my knife loosely in my hand and walk Jared toward the village.

We’re nearly to the border when Dad drops from a tree and snarls, “What do you think you’re doing?”

His eyes are locked on Jared, and his knife is already in his hands. We’re too far from the village to hope for an audience, and even if there were a few people on the outer walkway who could see us, only the elders have the power to stop my father. My plan is falling to pieces around me.

“I’m bringing in a prisoner—”

“We don’t take prisoners.” Dad tenses.

“He’s the courier Rowansmark is searching for. The elders need to decide—”

“Kill him.” Dad barks the command without looking at me and rolls to the balls of his feet as if ready to do the job himself if I hesitate.

I don’t hesitate. Lunging toward my father, I slam my elbow into his temple. He staggers and drops to his knees. His eyes roll to the back of his head, and he falls unconscious to the ground. It’s a temporary reprieve, and I don’t waste it. Snatching Jared’s arm, I propel him away from Dad, though my knees feel suddenly shaky.

I hit my father. The fact that I did so to protect someone else does little to calm the buzz of fear racing through me.

He’ll never forgive me. He’ll punish me, or if he can’t get to me, he’ll punish Willow. My plan has to work. If it doesn’t, the echoes of what I’ve just done will haunt me for the rest of my life.

It isn’t until I’m forcing Jared to climb up to the walkway that will lead us into the village that I realize I’ve left the book of poems lying in the cradle of the cypress.

Chapter Eight

We reach the council building just as the sun begins to fall behind the western edge of the forest. Already, we’ve attracted a crowd. Jared walks in front of me. I keep my knife aimed at his back while my mind races. The elders will hear about the stranger in our midst any moment now and will converge upon the building.

Dad won’t be far behind them once he wakes up, and he’ll be furious.

“Stop here.” I point toward the council door with its tiny windows and smooth planes of blueberry-stained maple planks. Two large barrels, as tall as my waist, stand sentry on either side of the door. In spring, summer, and fall, the barrels are overflowing with flowers, but now there’s nothing but dried-up husks wilting against the dirt inside the planters.

“Keep your back to the door. You’ll want to be able to see anyone who’s coming for you.”

Jared raises a brow. “Like the man who tried to stop us on the way into the village?”

“Yes.” I study Jared for a second. He stands loose and ready with the confidence of a man who’s spent years training himself for a fight.

It won’t be enough to save him from my father, but I’ll be here. I won’t let anything happen to Jared, the man who chose to trust me. The echoes I leave behind with him won’t come back to haunt me in my nightmares.

“Quinn Runningbrook, what is this?” Elder Toilspun arrives first, his lined face folded in on itself like a piece of crumpled paper. His dark eyes are shrewd as he looks from me to Jared. Behind him, I see three more elders hurrying toward us. The crowd of village dwellers parts to let them through.

Four elders out of seven. Enough to make a decision on Jared’s fate. Enough to make a decision about Dad, too.

My palms are suddenly slick with sweat as the weight of what I’m doing hits me. If the elders don’t help me, then my entire plan will crumble, and I’ll be left trapped in a life that I can no longer stand to lead.

I wait in respectful silence for the other three elders to reach us, and then I say, “I was scouting to the south when I encountered this man. His name is Jared Adams, he’s a courier from Baalboden, and he was unintentionally trespassing too close to our village.”

The elders exchange confused glances. In all the years that our family has been in charge of the village’s protection, they’ve never once had to deal with a trespasser. At least not while that trespasser was still alive.

“But why did you bring him here?” Elder Toilspun asks.

“Because it has come to my attention that this man has been accused of stealing something from Rowansmark. My father and Willow cleared out a group of bounty hunters who were looking for him. Jared tells me he’s been wrongly accused, but that’s something for the elders to decide. If you feel he is innocent, he will need an escort out of the forest to stay safe from the bounty hunters. If he is found guilty, we can take him back to Rowansmark and claim the reward for our village.”

Beside me, Jared stiffens, and I wonder if he’s questioning his decision not to fight me for his freedom.

All I can do is pray that my plan works. That Dad, furious at my disobedience and eager to benefit from what Jared Adams took from Rowansmark, will forget to fake respect for the council’s wishes. That the council, faced with the truth of Dad’s violent rage toward a prisoner, in direct violation of the council’s wishes, will be forced to put him in the jail cell instead of Jared.

That Willow and I will finally be free.

“This is a very unusual situation,” Elder Saintcrow says. Her white hair flows freely, and the red beads she ties throughout her locks clatter together in the wind.

“We need to meet as a full council to discuss our options, and of course we’ll need to interview the man to hear his side of the story,” Elder Toilspun says.

I take a deep breath and force myself to sound like the answer doesn’t mean anything to me as I ask, “What should I do with the prisoner?”

“We’ll have to put him in the cell—”

“Give him to me.” Dad’s voice rings out, and my knees weaken even as my body tenses, ready for a fight.

We turn to see my father—muscled and scarred—push through the crowd toward us. Villagers scramble to get out of his way. His dark eyes are locked on mine, and the rage inside of me shivers at the expression on his face.

I’ve done it. I’ve defied his direct orders. I’ve attacked him. I’ve pushed him past his breaking point. Now Willow and I just have to survive the consequences.

Elder Saintcrow sounds wary. “This is an unusual circumstance—”

“Anyone who trespasses near the village border is my responsibility.” Dad’s gaze never leaves mine. A red lump rises from his temple. “The council doesn’t need to discuss it any further. Give him to me, and I’ll do what my sad excuse for a son should’ve done in the first place.”

Jared draws in a small breath as if surprised to learn that the man who ordered me to kill him is my father.

“You mean you’ll kill him,” I say quietly. Instantly a hush falls across the crowd as people wait for Dad’s response.

Dad’s shoulders bunch as he steps closer to me. “We don’t take prisoners.”

“That isn’t a council rule,” Elder Toilspun says. Of the four assembled elders, he’s the only one who hasn’t edged away from Dad.

“It’s my rule. A rule my son understands, don’t you, boy?” Dad crosses the remaining yards between us, his leather boots making quiet shush-shush sounds against the walkway.

“Jared Adams doesn’t deserve to die.” I keep my voice expressionless out of habit, but I look Dad in the face, daring him to argue.

His voice is lethal. “You think you’re in charge now? You think you’ve got a better method of running things than I do?”

“Samuel.” Elder Toilspun puts a withered hand on Dad’s arm.

Dad shakes him off without once looking away from me.

“Quinn said the trespassing was unintentional,” Elder Toilspun says. “And this man is wanted by Rowansmark. The council must meet to decide what should be done.”

“I decide what is to be done with trespassers—”

“Are you above the council?” There’s flint in Elder Toilspun’s voice now, and it seems to get through to my father. “Let’s take the prisoner inside and get to the bottom of this.”

“Do you need help?” Jared asks me quietly as the elders motion for Matthias and Sorra, two regular scouts, to bring Jared to the jail cell and stand guard. I follow Jared’s gaze to my father’s face and feel an unfamiliar sense of gratitude swamp me. The elders, confronted with Dad’s disregard for their authority, are doing nothing but running away from him. A quick glance around shows that the rest of the villagers are following suit. Only Jared Adams, a man I barely know, is willing to stand beside me to protect me from my father’s wrath.

“I’ll be okay.” It’s a lie. I needed to push Dad into becoming truly violent in front of the council. Nothing less would force them to act against him. I failed, and now I have no idea how to break my father’s authority over Willow and me.

Dad watches in furious silence while the elders take Jared inside the council house. As soon as the council door closes, Dad lunges forward and drives his fist into my stomach. I double over, and he wraps an arm around my back and leans down until his face is next to mine.

“That’s just a taste of what’s coming for you. You know better than to defy my orders. To lay your hands on me. You’ve made us a laughingstock.”

My stomach aches, and my lungs refuse to drag enough air into my chest, but still I find the strength to wheeze, “He doesn’t deserve to die. Especially at your hands.”

The arm across my back becomes a vise, and I barely have time to blink before Dad’s fist slams into my face. My instinct is to absorb the blow, keep my eyes down, and act as though submitting to his will is my only priority.

But another instinct, a combination of the skill that helps me win every fight and my newfound desperate bid for freedom, begs me to pivot and take him out at the knees. Crush his larynx as he lands so he can no longer spew his hatred. Break his arms so he can no longer hurt another person.

Something hot boils through my chest, and I clench my fists and drive them into him with all the speed and force I possess. I stare in shock as he stumbles briefly and then rights himself, his face flushed with anger.

I can’t believe I’ve hit my father twice in the last hour.

I want to do it again. The need to finish what I’ve started is a physical ache pounding through me, but I hold myself back. Not giving in to the violence inside of me is the thin thread that separates me from becoming just like him.

“Think you can take me, boy?” he asks, a dark promise in his voice.

I meet his gaze. “We both know I can.”

“Let’s see you prove it.”

The walkway is nearly empty now as people, terrified to be so close to my father when he’s this angry, have fled into the surrounding buildings. I wipe blood from a cut on my cheek and realize that maybe I don’t need the council’s help. Maybe all it takes is finding the courage to speak my own truth and stand by it. “I’m done proving things to you.”

“Is that a fact?” His voice grows ugly with the kind of viciousness he only aims at those he plans to kill.

I straighten my shoulders and look him in the eye. “Yes. I’m finished doing the wrong thing because I’m too afraid of you to say no. Jared Adams is a good man. He doesn’t deserve to die, and I’m going to make sure he lives. If you want to kill him, you’re going to have to go through me to do it.”

Dad smiles, long and slow. “You’re going to be begging to take back those words before this night is over, boy.” He glances at the council house, where Elder Saintcrow watches us from a window and then turns on his heel and walks away.

I stay at the council building, just outside the door, for hours. Waiting. Someone brings food for the elders. Someone else brings water. Voices drift out of the building, but I can’t make out the words. The sky is a deep, dark blue lit by the scattered stars and the moon that shines directly overhead.

I haven’t seen Willow. I hope she isn’t paying for my choices. I haven’t seen Dad, either, but I will. He’ll be coming for Jared, and for me.

I’m going to stop him.

Pulling my jacket close to ward off the frigid night air, I consider my options. I can incapacitate him briefly and give me time to get Willow and Jared out of the village, but I don’t know if Willow wants to leave, and if the council isn’t finished with Jared, that won’t work. I can get the elders’ attention and hope they make the decision to put Dad in jail instead of Jared.

Or I can kill him.

He deserves it. I know he does. But so do I. I’ve done terrible things in the name of obeying my father. I told myself it was my duty. That I had no choice.

Now I realize that I’ve had a choice for a while. Ever since I was strong enough to overcome Dad in a fight. I can’t change the past, but I can take control of my future.

I won’t kill him, but I will stop him.

I tense as I hear a faint slide of boot against wood. He’s here. He’s come to make me pay for my disobedience. To kill Jared Adams once he’s finished making an example out of me.

I draw in a breath and roll to the balls of my feet, my limbs loose and ready for the confrontation, and then I stare in shock as Willow steps in front of me, her knife in her hands.

Chapter Nine

“Willow! You got away from Dad.” I uncurl my fists and step forward.

“Stay where you are.” Her voice is cold and clear.

I frown. “Or what, you’ll use that knife on me?”

“Just stay where you are, Quinn.” She moves toward the front door. “I have to do this.”

“Do what?” I move to block her, and she whirls to face me, her eyes flashing.

“What I came here to do.” Her eyes are fierce, and suddenly I know—Dad didn’t come to kill Jared. He sent Willow instead. What better way to punish me than to force the sister I’m trying to save to ruin the innocent man I’ve promised to protect?

“You aren’t going in there,” I say quietly.

“Yes, I am.” Her eyes are desperate.

I grab her arm before she can go past me. “Willow, stop. Jared is innocent—”

“I don’t care about Jared. I care about you.” She lifts her chin. “You made a choice between obeying Dad or sparing a man’s life. Now I get to make a choice between torturing that man to death or watching Dad take yours.” Her lips tremble in the moonlight before she thins them into a stubborn line.

“There are other choices.”

“Not when it means I could lose you.” She tries to shake my grip, but I move with her, keeping myself between her and the door.

“What if we both decided not to obey Dad anymore? What if we both just walked away from all of this?”

For a long moment, she stares at me, and I think I’ve got her, but then she whispers, “He has my bow and arrows. On the western walkway. If I don’t kill the prisoner and make it truly awful, Dad will, and then he’ll put an arrow in your gut and let you bleed out slowly while he tears your body apart. The life of a stranger isn’t worth that, Quinn. Nothing you say will convince me otherwise.”

Before I can answer her, the council door opens. Elder Toilspun leads Jared onto the walkway. For a second, Jared’s body is silhouetted by the lamplight from inside the building. I hear the faint twang of an arrow leaving its bow.

Jared is about to die.

I dive in front of him before the thought can finish forming and brace myself for the pain of an arrow tip ripping into my body. If I sacrifice myself to save another, will that erase all the harm I’ve done?

“No!” Willow leaps forward, grunts, and crumples to the walkway, an arrow sticking out of her side.

“Willow!” I drop to my knees beside her. Jared throws himself down next to me as another arrow buries itself in the door frame of the council building. Quickly, I grab one of the flower barrels beside the door and shove it in front of us to spoil Dad’s aim.

“Gently.” Jared looks at Willow, and then snaps at Elder Toilspun, “Get me clean rags, a bucket of hot water, and whatever plant you use to disinfect a wound.”

Panic races through me, and my hands shake too much to pull out the arrow without widening the wound.

“Let me,” Jared says.

“You should get inside. He might try to shoot you again,” I say.

“Focus on the girl.” Jared nods toward Willow. She’s bleeding; a puddle is forming on the walkway beneath her. My heart is pounding, and my throat is tight.

Willow is all I have. I was supposed to save her, but instead, she saved me. I have to keep her alive. Losing my sister would do the one thing Dad hasn’t yet managed to do—destroy me.

Several elders hurry out of the building, thrusting rags our way. Matthias has been sent for disinfectant and hot water, but we don’t wait. I press the rags around the arrow’s tip while Jared gently pulls it out. Willow screams once, and then clamps her jaw shut and moans in pain. Blood bubbles up, and I push the rags against the wound while I pray that the arrow didn’t hit anything vital, didn’t go too deep.

“Get out of my way!” Dad’s voice booms through the night.

I don’t turn around, but Jared lunges to his feet.

“Did you do this?” Jared doesn’t raise his voice, but there’s power inside of it. Power and anger. “Did you shoot this girl?”

“I shot at you, you worthless piece of trash. My children were stupid enough to try to save you.”

The shaking in my fingers creeps up my arms and settles in my chest.

“You shot at me while your children were in danger of being hit?” Jared’s voice rises.

“Raised them better than to risk their lives for a stranger, but the boy is a soft-spined fool, and the girl was stupid enough to protect her brother.” Dad’s voice is filled with contempt.

Something hot and feral unfurls in my stomach as Dad approaches us.

“Get away from her,” Dad says.

Keeping my hands pressed against Willow’s wound, I slowly raise my eyes to meet my father’s. “No.”

“You listen, boy, and you listen good. This is your one chance. You get away from her and you take care of the threat the way I taught you, or the next weapon I use will be on you.”

“Quinn—” Willow whispers, her hand reaching for my wrist.

“You try to use a weapon on your son, and you’ll be dealing with me,” Jared says.

Quicker than water, Dad leaps forward, across Willow, his knives in his hands as he dives for Jared’s knees.

I slam into him and send him sprawling in front of Elder Toilspun.

“Help Willow,” I say to Jared as Dad flips to his feet and turns on me with a snarl.

“Think you’re better than me? Think you could choose a stranger over your own family, and I’d stand for it?” He spins the knives into his favorite throwing position.

I drop and roll toward him as the first knife leaves his hand. It flies over me and embeds itself in the railing that lines the walkway. Before he can throw the next one, I come up swinging.

The rage bursts free of the dam within me. I can’t hear anything but the pounding of my heart and the memory of the constant litany of abuse that has spewed from my father’s lips since I was born. I can’t feel anything but the blazing heat of my anger coursing through me and the way his body gives beneath my fists. I can’t see anything but the blood he’s put on my hands and the flash of fear on his face as he realizes I’m stronger than him.

We smash into the council door and land heavily on the floor inside. In seconds, we’re both on our feet, throwing punches and pivoting to match each other’s moves. I take his blows and barely feel the pain. We have the same training, the same instincts, but I’m faster.

I’m always faster.

This time, I don’t hold back. I drive my fist into his stomach and think of every time he laid a whip to Willow’s back. I slam my elbow into his temple and remember the way the light in my mother’s eyes grew fainter and fainter until all that was left was a haze of corn liquor. I kick his knee hard enough to shatter bone and remember my screams the first time he broke my arm. Before I’d learned that screams only made the punishment worse.

“No more,” I pant as his shattered knee gives out, and he falls heavily to the floor. “You’re done giving orders. You’re done abusing us. And you’re done killing people.”

He spits out a mouthful of blood and teeth and glares at me. “I’m done when I say I’m done.”

I lean down, my face inches from his, and say with absolute certainty, “You. Are. Done.”

His right shoulder tightens, a nearly imperceptible movement, and his eyes flick toward my chest. He whips his remaining knife toward my heart.

I block his arm with my right palm, moving the tip of the blade to the side.

He lunges forward.

Grabbing his wrist with my left hand, I wrench the weapon around, and shove it toward him.

The blade slides into his chest.

We stare at our hands, both holding the hilt, while blood pours across his tunic. My pulse pounds against my skull, and my breathing tears through me like sobs. I feel sick. Vindicated. Horrified.

His eyes find mine, full of fear and confusion, and he opens his mouth as if to say something, but I let go of the knife and back away. I don’t want to hear his last words. I don’t want to watch him die.

As his death gurgle rattles in his throat, I turn and stumble out of the council building.

Chapter Ten

“He’s dead,” Elder Toilspun says. “You killed him.”

I walk past the elder without a word and sink down beside Willow. There’s blood on my hands, but I no longer know if it’s hers or my father’s.

I killed my father.

Something warm wraps around my shoulders, and I look up in surprise to see Jared’s cloak resting on me while he shivers in the winter air.

I’m shivering, too. My teeth are chattering, and the rage that drove me now feels like a sea of ice chilling me from the inside out.

I killed my father.

Dimly, I realize that Willow’s injury is packed with turmeric to clean the wound and that Jared is carefully wrapping a bandage around her stomach. Her eyes are open, and she’s staring at me.

I killed my father.

Killed him.

“So much violence,” Elder Saintcrow mutters. “It isn’t natural.”

“You didn’t have a problem with it as long as we kept it outside the village border,” Willow says weakly. “You turned a blind eye. Kind of hypocritical to complain now.”

“I killed my father.” I try the words on for size, shocked to hear my voice shaking.

“He was trying to kill you, son.” Jared’s voice is kind.

“You stopped him,” Willow says. Her eyes are fierce. “Nothing else would’ve worked, Quinn. You stopped him.”

Do the echoes of his violence—echoes of my own violence—die with him? If I turn away from everything he taught me to be and choose a different path, can this moment be the ashes on which I build a new life?

“Quinn—”

Willow’s hand is cold against mine. I try to wrap my fingers around hers, but all I can think of is the blood on my skin. The blood on my soul.

“We will meet to decide what must be done in the wake of these events,” Elder Saintcrow says to us before ushering the rest of the elders into the council house, where we can no longer hear what they’re saying.

“I told Dad he was done,” I say as I meet Willow’s gaze. “I’m done too.”

Her grip becomes almost painful. “What do you mean you’re done?”

“No more weapons. No more fighting. I’m not going to be a monster like him.”

“You’re not a monster,” she says.

I don’t reply. The elders debate for hours. Someone brings Jared a blanket, and he wraps it around Willow. She tries to get me to talk to her, but I have nothing left to say. I’m hollow, my rage spilled out like my father’s blood. Jared sits quietly beside us, occasionally checking Willow’s wound. I’m strangely grateful that he still looks at me with clear-eyed calm instead of the terror imprinted on the face of every villager we see.

Finally, the elders leave the council house and approach. Elder Toilspun looks at me, his weathered face solemn.

“Several village laws have been broken tonight,” he says. “The most important, of course, being the law against killing a fellow villager.”

“He was defending himself!” Willow struggles to sit up, but hisses in a gasp of pain, shoving Jared’s hands away when he tries to help her. “Our father committed the crime. Hold him responsible.”

“We do, of course.” Elder Toilspun glances behind him at the group of elders, and then says softly, “But there’s also the issue of the village’s safety. After seeing what Samuel Runningbrook was capable of when he was angry, and then seeing that Quinn is capable of the same—”

“Want to see what I’m capable of?” Willow scans the walkway. “Somebody give me a weapon.”

“I’m afraid the elders have made our decision, and it is final.” He takes a deep breath and straightens his spine. “Quinn Runningbrook, you are hereby cast out of our village.”

Willow swears viciously and latches onto Jared’s shoulder so she can haul herself to her feet. She sways precariously, and sweat beads across her forehead, but no one knows how to take pain and keep going better than my sister. “If you cast him out, then you’d better do the same to me, or I will make you wish you had.”

“What about your mother?” Elder Toilspun asks.

“I go with Quinn.” Willow presses a hand to her wound.

Jared wraps an arm around her back and keeps her steady.

Elder Toilspun nods once. “Very well. Quinn and Willow Runningbrook, you are cast out. Jared Adams, as the council has found no proof of your guilt and wants no involvement in Rowansmark’s affairs, you are free to leave.”

Whispers blanket the air as the three of us slowly move down the walkway. Willow retrieves her bow and arrows from where Dad discarded them, and we take a moment to gather a few meager possessions from our home. Once Mom heard that Dad was dead, she disappeared into her room with her jar of corn liquor, not even coming out when I told her we were leaving for good. It doesn’t take long to pack up the few things we can call our own and rejoin Jared on the walkway that leads into the forest. I can feel the villagers watching us as we leave, but their gazes don’t touch me. Their words don’t matter.

I killed my father, and now I am both free of him and forever chained to the horror of what I’ve done. Somehow, I’m going to have to find a way to live with that. Jared puts Willow over his shoulder and carefully climbs down the northeast ladder. Willow smiles at me, and I read the forgiveness on her face.

Forgiveness I hope I can offer myself one day.

When the shock wears off. When the marks of violence fade. When I’m ready to look at this clearly and figure out what part is mine to bear and what part needs to be left on my father’s grave.

As I walk into the Wasteland with the lights of the village at my back, I promise myself that I will find redemption. I will find peace. I will become the man I choose to be.

Content

Outcast
Courier's Daughter - 0.5
C. J. Redwine

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten