The Last City (Wattpad Books Edition)

TWO-ARA

The velvet sounds of the night whispered all around us. Somewhere an owl called. A carpet of pine needles and fallen leaves lay beneath us, the sky an ebony blanket.

Kaden rolled over to face me, the moonlight shining on his long golden curls. His lips were soft against mine. Fall's first breath was here, but I was warm with him beside me.

Then the dream changed—no longer comforting. It tilted sideways, blurring.

A crack sounded in the forest. Kaden sat up in his sleeping bag. I wanted to reach out to him, but I couldn't move. Couldn't speak. The dark forest stretched out all around, the shadows growing monstrous.

"Who's there?" Kaden called out.

Then he stood, his warmth gone. The shadows in the trees had turned into men. I was frozen, trapped, unable to move as they came closer.

"Run, Ara. Run."

~

"Ara. Ara, wake up."

I jolted awake, breathing hard. Reality hit me like a slap as cold as the wind. Kaden was gone, and I sat inside a barred cart pulled by horses, the ruins of a city passing outside. Izzie's head lay cradled on my lap, the only point of warmth on my body. She stared up at me with wide, innocent eyes that seemed too big on her small face. She'd clung to me ever since that first terrifying night when Kaden and I had been ambushed. After three years of the plague and meeting only one other female survivor, being captured, separated from Kaden, and then thrown into a wagon of women had been shocking—and astonishing.

"You were talking in your sleep again," Izzie said. "You said Kaden. Were you dreaming about him?"

"Yeah, I was," I said. Every time I closed my eyes I relived the terrifying memory. "I'm worried about him."

Kaden and I had spent the spring and summer traveling north, following my father's map to The Last City, always avoiding people as we went. Even as the nights grew colder, the leaves turning, we had been happy, cocooned in our own perfect world. Until that night. We were ambushed by men who offered us a bargain: if I would join them and their wagon of women heading to The Last City, they would leave Kaden alive—tied to a tree, with only a small knife to cut his way free, but alive. The alternative was they killed Kaden and took me anyway. Kaden's final words were that he'd find me in The Last City. It had been three weeks since I'd seen him. Three weeks of life inside this jail cell of a cart.

"Maybe he's already in The Last City," Izzie said, a tentative smile breaking over her face. At eleven, she was the youngest and most hopeful of us. "Maybe he's waiting for you."

I tugged her hat closer around her head—her honey-colored hair had been shaved short, offering little protection against the ever-present cold. "Of course he is." I didn't voice my true fear: that we would come to The Last City and Kaden wouldn't be there. That something horrible would have happened to him and I would be trapped in some new place, unable to help him.

Kaden can take care of himself. He'll be there. Just focus on getting yourself there in one piece.

I took in the area surrounding us, surprised at how much it had changed in a few hours. When I'd gone to sleep we'd traveled down little more than a muddy, pitted trench through a northern forest. Now dilapidated houses and businesses with long-since-faded signs crept up against the road. Stretching out as far as the eye could see lay the ruins of a city.

My heart suddenly beat faster, and I pressed against the chain-link to look farther into the ruins. "Izzie . . . is this . . . ?"

"The Last City?" She sat up straight, her voice tinged with excitement. "Yeah, I think we're almost there."