Keira's Fire

Chapter 8

I endured angry looks and furious tirades from everyone for a solid week after my failed attempt at going rogue.

I couldn't blame them. Our entire group could have been killed and it would have been all my fault. After running for almost a mile, we lay hidden in our secret underground shelter, reserved for such an occasion, for hours until we could be sure the soldiers had gone. During which, Jeremy and Aaron, along with everyone else, stared angrily at me, not stupid enough to risk speaking so soon and leading the soldiers right to us.

Beyond putting my family in more danger, I had a hard time really caring about any of it. The rest of us could be killed on a daily basis. It was a risk of living the way we did. But since the captain got a good look at me and would most likely make my family his top priority for his next visit, James and Michael now stayed with us full time as a precaution. Jeremy made a special visit to get our mother to agree to let them stay. It was so rare that Jeremy even left the woods, she couldn't deny the urgency in what he said.

He tried to persuade her to join us as well, but she refused, insisting she had no reason to hide. Part of me wondered if she wasn't hoping to be killed to end her suffering. Like the rest of us, she never fully got over losing our father, but it was so much worse for her than it was for us. Especially considering that she had to allow Miles the rights of a husband.

I was now banned from going on any more raids until further notice, and for the first time since I was a child, my gender seemed to be an issue for the men. They assumed that my femininity caused me to be unreasonable and endanger everyone. And they weren't about to let me forget it any time soon.

Again I couldn't seem to care. I just kept replaying what happened in my mind, wishing it would have ended differently. Having blown my chance to kill the captain, I lost the desire to go on more raids for a while anyway. Each man I could kill would only serve to remind me of my failure and how I would never get another opportunity like that.

As I'd done a lot in the past week, I sat outside of the main area of camp, hugging my knees and wishing everyone would just leave me alone.

William had taken to sitting with me for hours as I stared into space, visualizing how things should have gone. I think he was trying to make sure that no one actually did anything to hurt me, since I was apparently too apathetic to fight back, but it was unnecessary. No one approached me except my brothers now. The others chose to show their disapproval from a distance.

I hadn't decided if I was furious with William or not. He was the one who caused me to miss, but I still mostly blamed myself. I shouldn't have gotten distracted and given him the chance to interfere. Either way, I didn't really care if he wanted to sit by me.

"Here."

I shook my head and blinked, focusing on the bowl Jeremy had shoved in my face.

"You need to eat." He pushed the bowl into my hands as he glowered down at me.

Eating was something else I didn't care to do right now.

He stood, watching me for a minute, growing angry when I didn't comply and start eating.

"Would you stop this already? You put the rest of us in danger. You have no cause to mourn this way!"

I stared at the clumps of potato and vegetables in the bowl, waiting for him to finish yelling at me. Again.

"You ignored my order, for what? What you did was stupid and selfish and dangerous and-"

"Jeremy!" William shouted, making him stop. "She knows." His own restrained anger was hard to miss. "You don't have to keep harping on it. You're not helping."