The hot breath of Kurstyn always seemed to find its way back down my neck. Katherine's icy hands always seemed to find their way back onto my arms when she was frightened of the gunshots. Willy's whole body always seemed to grow heavier in my arms when it mattered most for me to carry him. James's hazel-eyed stare always seemed to find a way back to my eyes as we walked.
Oh, for how long we walked, I could have counted ten million steps. With Willy's sick body in my arms, there was nothing more that I could do, but walk. We needed to get away...we needed to get to safety. Across the ocean and back to the mainland, but there was no possible way that we could. We were being held captive. Only James and I knew we were being tricked into the endless maze of Audenshire. There was no way out. Only up. And frankly, we couldn't climb up the slick, flat walls the soldiers had made to keep Portshire out. But Portshire got in. So we couldn't get out.
We'd been walking, and walking, and walking. For days now, without food. Without water. Without any consultation from any other humans. Everyone else had either been killed, were being killed, or had somehow escaped.
The crunch under my feet were not of the Autumn leaves, but of the bones that were only days old...the bones that were once Audenshire citizens. We were approaching death itself, and I couldn't help but wonder what her clawed hands would do to me. Of course, it was a different kind of death we were facing. The Woman Who Knew. She could see everything; life, death, poverty, obedience...and when one person fell out of step...her tightrope-thin patience snapped and the trapeze act was over. They'd fall to their death...fall into the clawed hands of death herself. Or, as we called her, Empress Queen.
The Woman Who Knew.
