Wander (Terres book 4)

Chapter Seven: Gone

Rannok picked at a fingernail. Hours had passed since the guards had left them, and the sun had stretched low and begun to pour in streams through the windows. Sasha still wasn't speaking to him. The cold space between them had grown uncomfortable to the point of unbearable.

He glanced in her direction, but she didn't turn to face him. Instead she stared straight ahead at the wall with her arms crossed over her stomach and a blank look on her face. Ringlets of red hair fell in a curtain over her eyes from where she hadn't had a chance to brush them or tie them back. She didn't look angry anymore, she looked exhausted.

The rock in his stomach settled. He'd put there himself by bringing up the prospect of leaving. It made the hair on his neck rise and goosebumps flash across his shoulders and up his wings. Alone. The taste of that word was sour on his tongue without him even having to say it out loud. He should have just stooped to begging before this happened, even if it ended with his teeth getting kicked in like it usually did in Agatine.

"How are we going to get out of here?" he asked, looking toward the window, which was too small for him to fit through even if it wasn't barred. There was a noise that meant that Sasha shrugged but she didn't say anything to follow it up.

"I really am sorry for what I did," he said. "I never meant for this to happen."

"I didn't either," Sasha responded, her voice breaking a little. "I never wanted to be out in these mountains in the first place. Sometimes--" She heaved in a shuddering breath. "Sometimes I wish I'd just stayed in Horizon like I was meant to."

Rannok shrugged. "I didn't ask you to come with us or anything. You did that by yourself." He looked over at her again. There was wetness gathering below her eyes, and she'd drawn her lip into her mouth. Her arms drew tighter around her stomach. 

"I know," she said. "I just thought you were better."

He squirmed a bit, like the words stung, then nodded. He remembered the snapping by the fire, that one night she'd pushed a little too hard, the night they'd taken off running into the caves to escape her father. The night they'd escaped Horizon for good, at least he thought so.

"I thought I was too."

  More silence, the kind that made his temples hurt. Erean would have been disappointed. So would his mother, for that matter. Wasn't this the same kind of nonsense that had led to losing Wren, the kind of nonsense where he didn't think through what he was doing? Except this time it was hard to breathe, and he didn't know why.  

 There was nothing in this room to distract from it, nothing to even look at despite the rickety little table with a bucket on top of it, or the ants that crawled about among the leaves on the floor. They stayed like that for a long time, until the light coming in the windows had vanished completely, plunging them into darkness.

Rannok had nearly nodded off when there was a rattling at the door. He jumped awake and got to his feet, just in time for someone to open it and shove a light through the opening into his face.

"You," a voice said. Rannok squinted in an attempt to see his assailant's face, or what he might be pointing at, but the light was so bright it blinded him. He held a hand over his eyes and tried to get them to focus.

"Me?"

Sasha's voice punctuated the dark. She stood against the back wall, a bewildered expression on her face, like a mouse caught in the flickering flame of a campfire. She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

"Sa araba," the man said. He stepped into the shack and his face came into view. Rannok recognized the man's face. He remembered those eyes leering at Sasha, questioning how much Ascaran she actually spoke, and his hands balled into fists as he grabbed at her shirt. "Sa feir ka fe desari." 

Rannok lunged with both hands at the man. A brief shout of Rannok, no! reached his ears before a second came from nowhere and grabbed him, pinning his hands across his back. He fought against his captor for a few moments before someone smacked him hard on the side of the head with something heavy and metallic.

"Stop," the voice said. "You come with us. She goes."

"Sasha, what's going on?" he asked. Outside he could hear more rapid-fire ascaran coming through the windows, in bursts he could barely tease out, let alone understand. Sasha's eyes were wide with fear as the men pushed him through the opening of the shack and out onto the dirt road in front of it.

Rannok's heart hammered so hard he could feel the pulses of it in his neck. He searched for Sasha among the shadows moving through the street, but he couldn't see her. Instead he just saw the same police cart as before, drawn by the same team of horses.

"Sasha!"

"Let him go! Rannok!" He whipped his head around. Off in the periphery, a man held both their horses. Rannok's heart dropped as another hoisted Sasha into the saddle and handed her the reins.

"She leaves town now," the man behind him said, voice thick and rolling with the sound of the mountains, darker and less bubbling than the ascaran he'd grown accustomed to. This was deeper, more foreboding, not just because he was in trouble. "You come with us,  for stealing."

"No," he said, the air constricting in his lungs as he watched the man give Chestnut a hearty slap across the rear. The horse took off into the woods with Sasha on its back, the other trailing a few feet behind, until all too soon they'd disappeared into the inky blackness of the brush. "No! Sasha!"

His own scream felt hoarse in his throat. He struggled desperately against his captor, who took one of his wings and twisted it hard behind is back. Rannok let out a groan of pain as another man grabbed his head and gave him a hard shove. His head made contact with the wall as he stumbled inside the back of the police cart as the door slammed shut.

Rannok bolted upright again, head throbbing, and stared out the windows, but Sasha was nowhere to be found, just quiet streets and more shouting, this time in the mountain language, as the cart rolled forward.

His breath caught. She was gone.