Chapter 4 Twice

Mercy POV

The letter opener is in my hand before I know I've grabbed it.

It's long and silver-handled and sharper than it needs to be. I hold it out in front of me like a knife, and I back up until my heels hit the medicine chest.

He gets up from the chair by the stove. He takes his time about it.

In the gray light coming through the canvas, I can see him properly now. Dark hair still wet from snow. A plain black sweater. And on his right hand, a heavy silver ring with a crown on it, the same crown that's pressed into the wax inside my coat.

"Put that down," he says. "You'll cut yourself."

"Come closer and find out who gets cut."

He comes closer.

One step. Two. He doesn't look at the blade at all. He looks at my face, slowly, like he's reading a page in a language he almost knows.

"Cyrus Wexley," he says. "Since you didn't ask."

I know the name. Everybody knows the name. Every pack in North America bows to it. Rogues spit after they say it.

"I know who you are."

"Then you know what happens to people who steal from me."

"They get hanged for fence wire," I say. "I heard."

That almost does something to his mouth. It doesn't last.

He takes another step, and now the point of the letter opener is touching his sweater, right over his heart. I can feel his heartbeat through the blade. It's fast. Faster than his face.

"You came back," he says quietly. "Last night I let you go, and you came back."

"I didn't come back for you."

"No. You came back for the Crown's medicine and the Crown's papers." His eyes drop to my coat, where the order is folded against my chest. "Which one did you want more?"

I pull it out and slap it against his chest so hard the letter opener scrapes the wool.

"Hollow Creek," I say. "February eleventh. Do you remember it?"

He doesn't take the paper. It falls and lands open on the rug between our boots, the black seal staring up at us.

He doesn't say no. He doesn't say it wasn't him. He doesn't say anything at all.

That's worse than a lie.

"There was a woman there," I say. My voice goes thin in the middle, like a rope that's been cut halfway through. I clear my throat and make it hold. "Dottie Hask. She wasn't hurting anybody. She was walking home."

His eyes go to the paper. They stay there a long time. When he finally looks up, something in his face has closed, like a door in a house where somebody died.

"I signed that order," he says.

"I know you did. Your seal is on it."

"I signed it after a rogue band set fire to a pack school outside Missoula. Six children were inside." He says it flat, like he's said it to himself a thousand times. "I'm not asking you to like it."

"Was Dottie one of the ones who set the fire?"

He doesn't answer.

"Was she?"

"I don't know," he says.

It's the first thing he's said that sounds like it cost him something.

I stare at him. The tent is quiet except for the stove ticking. My hand with the letter opener has dropped without me noticing. It's down by my hip now, and he's close enough that I can smell the storm on him again.

"Keep the silverbane," he says.

I blink. "What?"

"The three vials in your coat. Keep them. It's yours." He tilts his head. "For a name."

"That's the price? My name?"

"That's the price."

I should give him a fake one. I have a dozen. I've been Jenny and Kate and Sue at every gas station between here and Idaho.

I open my mouth to say Jenny.

"Mercy," I say instead. "Mercy Hask."

His jaw goes tight, like he just bit down on a bone.

"Hask," he says. "As in Wade Hask."

"How do you know Wade?"

"I read the Hollow Creek list. Every name on it." He looks at me differently now, sharper. "There was a Mercy on it. Age sixteen."

"I'm still alive. Surprise."

"Where is Wade now?"

"Dying," I say. "Silver fever. That's what the medicine is for."

He goes still. "Then let me send a healer with you. A real one. Today. Silverbane alone won't hold a bad case. He needs someone who knows the dose."

For a second the whole world shrinks down to that one sentence.

A real healer. For Wade. Today.

But a Crown healer means Crown trucks, Crown guards, and Crown eyes on our camp. It means six trailers and a school bus full of kids, and a man with this ring on his hand knowing exactly where every one of us sleeps.

The last time the Crown knew where a rogue camp was, they sent an order like the one on the rug.

"No," I say.

"Mercy."

"I said no. We take care of our own."

"Then your own is going to die."

"Then that's ours too."

He looks at me like I just slapped him. I almost wish I had. It would be simpler.

The tent flap behind him lifts. Cold air pours in, and so does a woman.

She's older, with silver hair pinned up neat, and she's holding a china teacup on a saucer like she's at a garden party instead of a war camp. She smells like flowers and something sharp, bitter orange, maybe.

"Cyrus, darling," she says. "The Redfern Beta is at the gate again. He's very insistent." Her eyes find me. They don't widen. They don't do anything. "Oh. Is this the rogue girl from the poster?"

Cyrus doesn't turn around. "What poster, Augusta?"

"The one the Redferns nailed up an hour ago. Didn't you see it?" She smiles at me. It's a lovely smile. Every tooth in it is perfect. "You're much prettier than the drawing, sweetheart."

"Aunt Augusta," Cyrus says, very calm. "Give us a minute."

"Of course." She doesn't move. She sips her tea. "Take two."

Cyrus steps sideways, putting his body between me and her, the same way he did in the woods last night. He reaches behind him and pulls the back flap of the tent open. Cold wind slices in.

"Go," he says low, only to me. "Go now. Behind the cook tent, then the trees. Don't use the gate."

I don't thank him. I don't even look at him. I go.

The snow is loud under my boots. I duck behind the cook tent, grab an armful of firewood off my own truck for cover, and walk fast toward the tree line. My heart is slamming. The silverbane clinks in my pocket.

But the trees are on the other side of the gate road. I have to cross it.

There's a wooden post by the road where they've hung the camp rules. Someone has nailed a new sheet over them. It flaps in the wind.

My own face looks back at me.

It's a pencil drawing, a good one. My eyes, my chin, even the little scar on my eyebrow from when I was nine. Underneath, in thick black letters:

ROGUE TRESPASSER. WANTED. $10,000. DEAD OR ALIVE.

And at the bottom, signed in a sharp, slanting hand: Harlan Redfern.

My father's signature. On my death.

The firewood slides out of my arms and thuds into the snow.

"Hey."

A guard at the gate, the one I lied to an hour ago, is staring at me. Then at the poster. Then back at me.

"Hey!" He drops his thermos. "That's her! Firewood girl! That's—"

I run.

I make it four steps before a hand clamps down on the back of my collar and yanks me off my feet.