The Grim (Ravens #3)

xxxiii. a new nightmare

A/n: I'm updating again because I want to and I had time. Read it whenever you feel like it. Also meet Gavin! Remember Gavin! I totally didn't mention Gavin on a recent update of the planning book (whaaaaaaa?)

 Ezra ran. Not because he wanted to get away, but because he knew that if he slowed he would turn right back around. And Emma was right, he knew that. He couldn't stop her, and he couldn't help her once she was back inside the city's walls. Rachel, he could help.

He knew the rendezvous spot well of course, hell, he had even helped to choose it. A three hour walk from his old camp. These were his woods, his trees, his home. But for once, the ground was not familiar to him. He knew it, yes, but it had changed. Or maybe he was the one who changed. He couldn't quite tell the difference.

He ran for as long as he could, adrenaline pushing him onward for perhaps an hour of a gradual uphill climb, but eventually he slowed down to catch his breath. Jogging at least had cut off some time, but as he neared the cabins where he used to live his heart began to race. His friends, the others besides his sister, were they still there? Were they still together?

Did they blame him?

By the time he reached the cabins he could hear the blood pulsing throughout his body and a visceral feeling in his stomach urged him to halt. It was quiet, so quiet. All he heard were the few birds chirping in the trees and the scuttling of squirrels, but no sign of human life. He needed human life. He had come all this way to find his sister alive, he had left Emma so that he could find his sister alive, he needed to find his sister alive but the camp was silent and his heart was pounding and he couldn't dare investigate the cabins because what he saw could have the power to confirm his greatest fears.

It took him twenty minutes to gather the courage to enter the camp. Twenty minutes to find a stable footing on the uneven ground. In the midst of a clearing stood four small cabins, surrounded by a makeshift fence that had never succeeded in keeping strangers out. There was once a time that this was a rest-stop for vagabond hikers, but for three years had belonged to the kids exiled to the woods. The Horsemen, they had called themselves. The enemies of the Knights.

There was once a time when these four cabins were home to fifteen wild kids. Now they were empty. Standing in this ghost town, Ezra felt the world slow down around him, his breath getting caught in his throat as he walked in a slow circle. It was almost as though they were never there, that they had never existed. He could hear all of their voices, whispers shooting up from the ground and spinning around him, screaming at him, blaming him.

Traitor, they whispered. All your fault.

You should have been here.

You should have protected her.

It's all your fault she's gone.

All your fault.

He dropped to his knees, wheezing as he tried to shake the voices from his head. The boy screamed to the grass, to the sky, to the never-ending blue he thought to be his last connection to the sister he was forced to leave behind when Monarchia arrived at their God-forsaken camp. And he screamed. He screamed and screamed and screamed until collapsing to the ground, his body shaking and shuddering and growing colder by the minute.

He couldn't tell how much time had passed when he heard footsteps enter the clearing and he scrambled onto his feet. "Shit," a voice said, coming from behind him. "Ezra Callahan, back from the dead."

He whipped around to see a familiar figure, a well-built Asian boy with hair already highlighted by a few streaks of silver. Gavin Ford, a Rogue of sorts. Never a member of Ezra's chosen family, but an ally. "What happened here? Where—where is everyone?"