C. Redwine - Deception

And I need to find a way to accept the fact that the heartbreaking loss and destruction we’ve suffered over the last six weeks is truly because of who I am and what I’ve done. I don’t know how to wrap my mind around that without it crushing me, but I must.

But first, I need Rachel. With the foundation I’ve always depended on suddenly cracking beneath my feet, I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be than by her side. She might not be able to make any more sense of this than I can, but her blunt honesty and absolute love for me will go a long way toward leading me to solid ground again.

“I need those maps,” I say. “Tonight.”

Turning on my heel, I leave the room before either of them can say a word.

Ipress the fingernails of my left hand against my right forearm. Thin white crescents on blackened crimson. Somewhere beneath this wound—beneath my skin—redemption flows. I just have to dig deep enough to find it.

My hands shake. My fingertips are colorless and cold.

Guilty.

Alone.

Broken.

I strain to feel it. The weight of my crimes. My heartbreak. I want to reverse my choice—take back the part of me that made me human—but I’ve pushed the grief so far away from me, I no longer know how to find it. All that’s left inside of me is silence, dense and absolute. A poison that promised peace but delivered hell. It fills all my secret spaces and pushes at my skin until something, somewhere, has to give.

Gripping the wound with shaking fingers, I slowly slide my nails against the jagged seam of broken flesh. A thin line of crimson wells up. The pain hits a second later, sharp and stinging, and I’m grateful .

Finally.

Something real. A tiny piece of the hurt I should be feeling. A small slice of the punishment I know I deserve.

The blood beads together, swells, and plummets down my arm and off my fingertips in shining red drops.

A harsh sob tears through me, choking me with its ferocity, and I slash another line of crimson into the wound.

The pain crawls up my arm, and my tears slide off my face to mingle with my blood on the soft white blanket covering me.

I can feel this. Why can I stand to feel this —this small, petty thing—but I can’t stand to feel the loss of Dad and Oliver? The horror of killing Melkin? The still-gaping wound of Sylph’s death?

I scratch at my arm, and pain is a fire-breathing monster underneath my skin, but it isn’t enough. Not even close. The hurt is too small. The blood offered isn’t nearly what I owe.

The killer was wrong. Pain hasn’t made me feel alive. It’s proven that nothing I do will ever be enough to unbreak all the shattered pieces of the girl I once thought I’d be. I bleed and bleed, but still the blood of those I’ve lost is stronger.

And already the first scratch is congealing. Hardening.

Healing.

How dare my arm heal when I can’t? I scratch at it again, opening it wider. Digging deeper. The sobs racking my chest are heaving, desperate things tangled up with words—meaningless half sounds that flay the air but fail to give voice to the awful, consuming silence that refuses to let me go.

“Oh, Rachel.” Quinn climbs out of his bed on unsteady legs, moves to my side, and swiftly wraps his arms around me.

I reach for my wounded arm again.

“Stop.” Quinn’s voice is firm. “Rachel, stop.”

But I can’t stop. If I do, the hurt will subside. The skin will knit itself back together. And I’ll be a prisoner to the silence again.

Quinn’s fingers grip my left elbow and squeeze. There’s a sharp pain as a nerve is pinched, and then a buzzing, like a swarm of mosquitos trapped beneath my skin, races down my arm.

My suddenly numb fingers fall to the bloody blanket. Useless.

I turn on him, my right fist covered in blood, and punch his chest, his stomach, anything I can reach. My blows are weak; the burned muscle refuses to lend me any strength. He absorbs it without complaint while I pant and sob and push words at him as if by hurting him I will somehow feel better.

“Let go. Let. Me. Go .” I choke on my tears, and try to twist away from him.

“If you stop hurting yourself.”

“I can’t. Don’t you see that? It’s all I have left.” My chest aches as I gulp down air only to have it tear its way to freedom in a wail of anguish.

“No, it isn’t.” His voice is quiet as he reaches past me to grab a tin of salve. “You have Logan. Us. And most importantly, you have yourself.”

I sob quietly as he smears the clear aloe over my wound. It turns pink where it mixes with my blood. The pain throbs, but the sharp spikes are already fading.

Soon, I’ll be left with nothing but silence again.

“I don’t have myself,” I whisper, too desperate to let shame seal the words inside of me. “Not anymore. I’m lost. I’m broken, and I can’t fix it.”

He remains quiet while he carefully bandages my arm, and I realize his fingers are shaking, his breathing is harsh, and he looks pale. He inhaled too much smoke saving my life to be out of bed fighting to save it again.

“You may have lost your way, but you ”—he points to my heart—“aren’t lost. You’re still in there. And you have everything you need to heal. You just have to find the courage to do it.”

“Sit down, Quinn, before you fall down.”

I pull my knees up to my chest, and he eases himself onto the middle of my cot and sits cross-legged, facing me.

“I don’t like to tell my story,” he says. The words are full of pain. The kind of pain I know runs deep beneath my silence. “But I think you need to hear it. Will you listen?”

He waits for my answer, his dark eyes watching me with a strange mix of dread and compassion. I nod.

Leaning his forearms on his knees, he splays his large hands over the white blanket, careful to avoid the blood I left behind. “My village is different from other Tree Villages. When we were formed in the aftermath of the Cursed Ones, the founders had to decide on a system of government. They chose to assign duties to each family based on that family’s skill set. So someone who was good at baking would then become the baker, and someone who was good at farming would be in charge of growing the wheat. Make sense?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever job your family was assigned, that was your family’s job for the duration of your life in the village. If you were a schoolteacher, then you trained your children to be schoolteachers. If you were a leader, then you trained your children to be leaders. No one was allowed to switch jobs. Our leaders decided this would help our society run without conflict. From birth, every child knew his place and had no aspirations for anything different. And only those specifically trained to be experts in a field would be doing that job.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

He looks at his hands as though he can see something I can’t. “Our family was in charge of protecting the village from outside threats.”

“That makes sense, too.”

His hair slides along his cheek as he raises his face to look at me. “Why?”

“Because you and Willow are scary good at fighting, weapons, and basic survival.”

He laughs, but it sounds like it hurts him. “Scary good. Yes, we are that. My father was a boy when the previous civilization was destroyed. He was only fifteen when he joined the village. He couldn’t farm, couldn’t build, and couldn’t fix things. He was good at only one thing: killing people.”

I don’t know what to say to this. Quinn’s long fingers clench handfuls of blanket.