Siena

SIENA

Beneath their hung tarp, and Emmett slept next to each other in their separate bivies. couldn't see Emmett, but he was quiet. If he were asleep, he'd be snoring.

She'd waited a year to tell him he could never earn her forgiveness, which she regretted, clinging to hope that one day she could learn to trust again. Even after Feyrer's betrayal, and Cam's.

Cam . 's fury couldn't mask her worry for Cam, mostly because she didn't know how long it would take for Cam to give up on her search for Avery Mathis. Giving up and hiking out of the Briardark or dying in her search were Cam's only two options, because Avery was dead.

Inconclusive.

Inconclusivity led to hope. Hope led to trust.

Trust could kill.

The rain fell through the night. At some point she woke to a deep groan in the forest. She unzipped her bivy and pointed her flashlight into the brush beyond their clearing.

Nothing.

The sense of being watched prickled the back of her skull. The Shadow didn't always announce himself. He could be there, right beyond the tarp: an onyx tear in the world, floating and speaking in silence.

After that, the rest of the night was fitful. She choked down an energy bar when morning came. Emmett looked a little better than the night before, the bags beneath his eyes less purple. He changed his bandage without her help, and she was relieved that he seemed to be on the mend, albeit slowly.

As they packed up, Emmett said nothing about their conversation from the night before. And that was okay, too. He needed time to process, and they had enough of it as they traveled.

If they even could travel.

It was like the ecosystem had flagged them as an infection. Branches clawed at them as they passed, 's feet tangling in ground vines every time she took a step. She shielded her face with her forearms to protect her eyes.

Emmett fell behind her, so she faced the brunt of the attack, which was unlike him. Even yesterday he took the lead. But she didn't question it, not even when he refused to stop for a water break, instead drinking from his bottle as they moved.

The rain didn't let up. Her boots hadn't been dry since before the swamp, her heels hot and rubbing uncomfortably through two layers of socks. The sole on her left shoe kept peeling away from the toe, and she had no real way of repairing it.

The forest floor before them tilted downward and deeper into the valley. With the foliage so thick, she didn't know how much more of this they could safely take. And that wasn't even considering how much time they were losing.

"Sen," Emmett muttered.

stomped down an oversized fern to clear the path before them.

" Sen ."

She spun.

Emmett stood still a few yards behind her, his expression hidden by the bandanna across his face for protection.

"What is it?" she asked .

He swayed, reaching out to grasp the nearest tree before he stumbled and collapsed.

A wildfire of panic swept through her.

"Emmett!" dropped to her knees and rolled his limp body until he faced upward. Holding his hand, she shoved his sleeve up.

Black. The whole bandage, pitch black like tar.

Rain pelted them both, and once she'd dragged Emmett beneath the shelter of a spruce and out of the storm, she hastily brushed wet strands of hair from her face.

He was still out cold. The color in his lips was all but gone. Her hands trembled as she reached out for his pulse point, but when she touched his neck, her fingertips grazed a lump.

tugged down the collar of his shirt. Purple nodules embedded Emmett's clammy skin. Gnawing trepidation settled deep within her chest.

She needed to wake him, but didn't know how concussed he was from the fall. After fumbling around in her pocket, she retrieved her flashlight, clicked it on, and peeled open one of his eyes, crying out at the milky film veiling his cornea.

Sickness . A sickness she'd never seen before. Inflamed abscesses, cloudy eyes... If bacterial, the infection was severe.

She tentatively unwrapped the bandage around his hand. The fabric clung stubbornly, sticking to the black discharge beneath.

The wound ate away at the necrotic black flesh surrounding it. A fungal growth, feathery like kitchen mold, sprawled from the bit of bone that glinted in the center and left a whisper-thin pattern across tendon and tissue.

Her fingers trembled with unchecked fear. Not only did she lack the ability to treat him, but she didn't even know what she was treating. The illness played by rules she couldn't discern, and Emmett's shallow breaths mocked her impotence.

His eyelids fluttered open. Mostly milky and unreadable, the dark blobs of his pupils and irises darted back and forth, trying to latch on to something familiar .

"I'm here," she said. "Emmett... Emmett, can you hear me?"

His eyes swiveled in her direction, pale lips forming her nickname. " Sen ."

"Hold on," she whispered.

His face contorted. With his good hand, he reached out to grip her arm with a strength that belied his condition. "Brock. He... he told me about them. About you ." From the corners of his eyes, tears the texture of wet sand dripped down the sides of his face, leaving a gritty residue.

Why was he talking about his boss? Was he trying to apologize to her again? She couldn't have this conversation right now, not when she needed to figure out how the hell to keep him stable.

She hushed him. "I need you to stay calm. Can you see anything? Emmett? Can you see me?"

He didn't answer, and his gaze never truly fixed on her, always wandering and searching. His disjointed muttering intensified. " You died, " he kept saying. " Brock tricked us. "

His fingernails dug into her coat, the sheer intensity of his fear paralyzing. All she could think to do was whisper reassurances and hollow promises. "You'll be okay. I'm here."

Emmett's ramblings and movements suddenly halted. The cold, humid air stilled as the forest took a breath.

"," he whispered, voice hoarse but strangely serene. "I love you."

Her throat constricted. She wanted to say something, anything, to break the oppressive silence. To tell him she understood, that she forgave him, that she felt the same. Perhaps those words were what he needed to hang on. To stay with her.

And then, as suddenly as the clarity had come on, Emmett's body convulsed. , caught off guard, fell back into the mud as he lunged at her, fingers clawing, milky eyes wild and frantic.

"I've killed you," he gasped, words distorted and mangled. His grasp slackened, and the limp weight of his hand fell away.

He was still once more, and she didn't know when she'd get another moment to act .

Amputation .

No matter how she tried treating him, his infection would not clear unless she stamped out the blight that fed it.

Don't think. Do it.

She lunged toward her pack and dug through it until she found her med kit and a lighter. Creating a sterile environment here was impossible. Holding down Emmett, a man nearly twice her size and delusional with fever, while she sawed through the joint of his wrist was impossible. But she refused to sit here inert and helpless. Fuck this place. Fuck the Briardark.

Fuck everything.

It took three alcohol wipes to scrub the tarp beneath his infected hand. She rolled his sleeve to his elbow and fished a tourniquet from the bottom of her med bag. The device took up a quarter of the kit's space, but she'd brought it anyway. Never had she thought she'd actually need to use it.

It took far too long to swallow her panic and remember how to place a tourniquet. Once she slid the band through the buckle two inches above Emmett's wrist, she began twisting the windlass. She didn't know how tight she was supposed to make it; the tourniquet came with instructions for stopping blood flow, not cutting off a hand.

She twisted the windlass as tight as she could before securing it. Emmett hadn't moved. Unconscious again, most likely. She just needed to sterilize her hunting knife and ready the gauze.

glanced up. Emmett had turned his head to watch her, mouth open, about to speak more nonsense. Tell her he loved her again.

A grainy tear dripped from his cheek onto the tarp.

He didn't blink, nor speak, but she kept waiting for the shock etched in his features to morph into something else.

She said his name once, quietly. Again. " Wake up. "

If she just reached out and checked his pulse, she'd know. For once in her life, she didn't want an answer. She held two of her fingers stretched out in front of her, watching them tremble and collect mist.

Two fingers. Carotid artery. Level with the larynx.

No.

She grabbed Emmett's shoulders and shook him. " WAKE UP! "

His head flopped to the other side and thudded against the ground.

She'd spent her whole life studying the way glacial melt carved paths down mountainsides, but hadn't understood gravity until now. The way it weighted her spine, harnessed her to the earth. No longer would gravity release her hand so she could press her fingers to Emmett's neck. Not that it mattered. She could no longer track the movement of blood through his body, gravity once more a victor, blood pooling in veins and capillaries, coagulating at the small of his back and beneath his ass and in the back of his knees. She knew this not from her studies of science, but from the day she was at the hospital, still on the phone with food delivery, trying to figure out where they'd left the goddamn takeout for Mom, who hadn't eaten in two days. Returning to a flatline and the chaos of doctors. Gravity had tried to teach her a lesson then, inflicting its ruthlessness as it dragged her down, dim sum spilling across the linoleum as she collapsed. But she hadn't listened.

She'd committed the same mistake with Emmett—so desperate to fix him, only to miss the moment of his departure.

The rain's alien patter bounced against her skull like a mallet. Gravity.

The forming stream of mud bubbled over the edge of the tarp. Gravity.

The flood of grief. Gravity.

The boundary between her and the wilderness blurred. Sound stretched and bent, the forest's insistent hum deepening. She stared into the woods, her eyes sliding out of focus into a kaleidoscope of green and umber. Vivid, rich, trembling. The woods embraced her with its rhythm, the strangeness repelling and beckoning her at once. Either a comfort, or a warning. She could no longer tell the difference.

She floated adrift, and time lost its hold.

She returned to suffocating darkness, the smell of her own piss, and rain thundering against the tarp above her head.

Lifting her hand, she ran it blindly up the length of Emmett's body, and pressed two fingers into the cold flesh of his neck.

She was alone.