Siena

SIENA

" Don't be afraid. "

Maybe she was already dead, and this was the last of her neurons firing.

The masked man loomed over her, lowering his lamp and blinding her with white light.

"Get up," he said.

Her thick tongue filled most of her mouth, and she couldn't speak long enough to tell him she was too weak. She tried lifting her head from the trunk she was slumped against, but her neck couldn't handle the weight, and she fell forward.

His hand landed on her shoulder and slipped beneath her arm, yanking her to her feet. The muscles in her legs convulsed.

The moment he released her, pain shot up her spine and darkness tunneled her vision. The man didn't stop the momentum of her fall. The sounds of the woods dwindled to a muffled hum as she collapsed. She blinked, but the haze of darkness remained, her body unbearably heavy.

The man muttered something. He grabbed her arm again and rolled her to her back, then tugged her into a sitting position by her wrists.

She couldn't remember what happened after that.

Time was funny in her head, in this forest. It played by its own rules, and for a while it turned into smoke and slipped right through her fingers. But now she was time, a pendulum swaying back and forth. Beneath her, the ground crunched and splashed, the noises sometimes faint, sometimes sharp.

He carried her.

She couldn't remember, but by the way her body ached, his shoulders had been carrying the burden of her for miles. As she grew more lucid, she faintly recalled him stopping several times to rest as she slumped against a tree or stump or slimy boulder. Not some "god" like The Shadow. Not the grim reaper. Only a man who groaned and swore every time he picked her up to continue.

What did he want with her?

There were many possible horrifying answers. She attempted to ask him during her brief moments of lucidity as they traveled, her voice mostly leaving her in unintelligible grunts, which he ignored. She was too tired to fight or run, and even if she could get away, he'd catch up to her. He moved too easily through the darkness, and she'd spent a long enough time in these woods to know how unforgiving the thicket was.

She had nowhere to go. Death by the forest or death at the hands of this man— didn't have enough information to know which was worse.

She drifted in and out of consciousness, and woke again to the creak of wood and echo of dripping water. The lantern was off, gone, or she'd lost her eyesight.

The masked man groaned as he sat her down, this time on a bench or a chair—she couldn't control her own muscles to feel around, nor could she stay sitting without his hand supporting her.

They were in a dark, dank enclosure. A hut of some sort. After a squeak of metal, the sound of rushing water filled her ears .

The man spoke over the noise. "I'm sorry." His tone carried no inflection. He then said something about trust and time , his voice oddly gentle. He made quick work of undressing her, the stagnant air and his touch against her skin so distant until his grip strengthened, and she was dragged into the shock of cold water.

thrashed, pummeling his arms with her fists. His hold tightened, and he pushed her down until her back hit something hard and flat.

He was drowning her.

Figure a way out of this.

Her brain spurted back nothing helpful other than that drowning was a better way to go than what had happened to Emmett.

When her lungs burned, his fingers dug beneath the base of her skull, and he lifted her by her neck until she surfaced. coughed and sputtered, then drew a deep breath to scream, and he dunked her again.

Her pulse hammered an alarm throughout her body. Not enough oxygen.

This time was shorter, and when she surfaced, she coughed out acrid water.

"Please—"

"Breathe!" he barked.

She gasped and gasped until he threw her beneath the surface again, but it wasn't enough time.

The rush of blood filled her ears, then nothing.

came to with a leather strap between her teeth.

She lay on her stomach somewhere hard. A floor, maybe. Or a table. She was dry, something she'd never thought she'd feel again.

The relief was short-lived. When she tried to move, straps bit into her wrists. She opened her eyes to the glow of flame and a closer silhouette, though as much as she blinked, she couldn't focus.

A hand pressed to the small of her back.

"What... do you want?" The words dragged like sandpaper across her throat. She had nothing but her body, which she wouldn't give up willingly, not even strapped down.

"I'm sorry," he said again. But she knew he wasn't, not really. Men were never sorry for the animalistic things they did.

heard the hiss and smelled her own flesh before she felt the hot iron against her side. She screamed until blood flooded her mouth, red pulsing behind her eyelids.

The shock of hell-bright pain died. Flesh gone, nerves dead.

"Twice more," he said.

She pled quietly with herself to fall unconscious, except this time she stayed lucid and unable to fight as he held her down and pressed scalding hot metal into her side again, and again.

When it was all over, he removed the bite strap and wiped the snot and tears from her face.

She inhaled the char of cooked flesh and hungered for meat.

She woke again, still on her stomach but against a softer surface. Her mouth tasted like blood and bile, and she tried swallowing but couldn't. Pain arose like it had been hibernating in her bones. She groaned loudly enough to rouse the dead.

"Don't move."

quietly sobbed, the only thing she had enough energy for. The past several years of her life flicked through her head like some demented flipbook. She'd done something to deserve this. Not stood up for herself enough. Spent too much time at work. Let her relationship with her father fall apart. Maybe those Christian fanatics were right, and this was eternal damnation, a punishment for her atheism and torrid love affair with science .

All her schooling, all her published papers that detailed the current state of the world and not a way to fix them. All the effort and stress, the time she'd spent not enjoying food or sex or the fucking sunshine. The months pathetically wallowing after she split with Emmett instead of convincing herself she deserved better. The years feeling guilty for not being by her mother's side when she died.

The pain forced her to be more present in this moment, even more so than all those cathartic trips to the woods that she'd taken by herself to lick her wounds. Both a slow death, and a reminder of everything she'd missed.

His shadow passed back and forth in front of her. She shifted her body just to spite him. To her surprise, she was no longer tethered down.

His hand returned to the small of her back. "I said, don't move."

There was something between his skin and hers—a blanket. She rested on a cot, or a bed. This new information confused her. She blinked again, eyes focusing on a fireplace beyond the man, flame crackling softly.

His hand fell away. "You took a beating out in the dark."

Bits and threads filtered back to her from the past—days? Weeks? Months? A claustrophobic fever dream filled with the unending midnight woods. And then the torture she'd endured from this man.

"The next couple of weeks will be rough," he said. "The blight entered your bloodstream, which means the burn hasn't fully stopped the spread."

Blight . He meant the rash on her back. The night she'd woken in her bivy to the bloody, broken pustules along her flank.

He hadn't burned her for the sake of torturing her. He'd burned her to kill the growth crawling across her skin.

"You should have told me that—" The first few words left her in an incoherent mess, so she licked her lips and tried again. "You should... have told me that was... why... "

"Why I was burning you?" he finished. "I did. I couldn't tell when you were conscious, and I didn't have time to wait."

She had so many questions, but even breathing was difficult.

His fingers slipped beneath her chin and lifted it enough so she could drink water from a flask. Her throat and chest throbbed as she swallowed, and before she could recover enough to ask who he was, she was asleep again.

The next time she woke, her vision had sharpened enough to make out more of her surroundings, though from her angle, it was difficult to see much. Her arms burned and ached upon stretching them, and she struggled to flip to her back beneath the itchy wool blanket. Her whole body spasmed in pain.

Everything hurt , like she'd been mowed over by farming equipment. Shredded up and pieced back together. This must be how Frankenstein's monster had felt when it came to life. She hurt like an abomination.

But instead of burning through all her energy and falling unconscious once more, she gained enough mobility to run her hands along her body. She was naked except for the cloth bandage wrapped around her torso.

Other than the crackle of the fire, the room was silent. She cleared her throat and waited for the shift or approach of the masked man, but neither came.

After tucking the blanket beneath her armpits, it took several tries to prop herself in a sitting position against the wall near her bed. looked around. The room was bigger than the other outposts she and Emmett had found, but smaller than the cabin on Agnes. Across from her, a cooking grate sat within a small clay fireplace. Threadbare blankets lay twisted on the floor between her bed and the fire. The man had been sleeping there, though he was nowhere to be seen.

To the right of the fire stood a table covered in junk—an old radio, a pry bar, a pair of leather gloves, and an iron that was likely the culprit of her burn.

Above the table was a—window ?

Faint light a green between emerald and pond scum glowed through clear plastic. It was too dark to see much of anything. Either it was night, or she was still in the primeval forest.

A counter lined the back of the cabin, cluttered shelves covering the wall. She spotted utensils, a cluster of mugs, and a stack of books.

The door squealed open. The masked man entered carrying a shriveled rib rack from a mystery animal.

"You need to rest." His voice was muffled; he must have not been wearing the mask when he was tending to her before. Either he only wore it when he went outside, or he was trying to hide his identity from her.

She thought of Isaac returning decades older after years spent in the Briardark. Did she know this man? She didn't recognize his voice, though her brain lit up like with déjà vu.

cleared her throat. "I am resting." She sounded like a frog, but at least she could talk. "How long have I been out?"

He crossed to the back of the room. "Three days."

Three days . Coma levels of sleep.

The man set the slab of meat on the back counter. With his back to her, he unfastened two clips at his shoulders and ducked his head out of the mask, then hung it from a hook near the window. He did the same with his dark coat before pinching the gloves from his fingers and tossing them into a drawer. He got to work, pulling utensils from drawers and bottles from shelves.

His hair was dark, gray-streaked, and tied in a knot at the base of his skull. He wore a knit sweater, the fabric frayed along the bottom hem. The winter tree pattern of the fabric was far too cute and left her uneasy.

The first time she met this man had been up on Agnes, when Emmett found the tree as large as the ones in this forest. had crawled through the tree's hollow, and then a tunnel, to emerge in the Briardark. In the few moments she was there, she'd met this man.

You shouldn't be here .

There was something deeply wrong with his presence here. If she'd had any choice in the matter, she'd try fleeing now, while his back was turned. But she didn't have the strength to even stand, and hunger gripped her stomach like a vise.

"Have you been following me?" she asked.

"I needed to make sure you left." He shook powder from a jar onto the meat.

"The mountain?" she asked.

He reached up and grabbed two mugs, and then another jar of something that looked like dehydrated mushrooms. "The Briardark."

She teased apart the questions flooding her brain. "What... why..." She took a breath. "If that were true, you wouldn't have let me almost die."

"I didn't want to intervene unless I had to." He slid a kettle from a shelf, placed it in a basin and turned a squealing valve. "You were doing okay until the groping blight got you."

Water flowed from the spigot above the basin. Running water. "How..." Her teeth clacked together as she slammed her mouth shut. She needed to stay on track; asking about the water would have to wait. "I was starving and falling apart, but you let me be because you didn't want to intervene?" He sounded like a nature photographer witnessing the struggle of a dying animal. Her stomach twisted at just how long he'd been following her. "You let Emm—my partner die."

He turned toward her. Her pulse leapt as her eyes roamed his features, searching for familiarity.

The planes of his face were both strong and carried a soft kindness, his narrow eyes warm. She guessed he was in his fifties. His jaw was unshaven, tan skin weathered from the elements, but not like Isaac's. Perhaps that was the point of the mask.

His eyes flicked back and forth as he watched her, expression briefly coy.

"You're disappointed," he said.

She was. "I figured I knew who you were if you were willing to stalk me for weeks just to make sure I escaped."

He took the meat and the kettle to the fire. The rack sizzled when it slapped the grate, much like her skin had when he'd laid the iron on it.

"I'm sorry about your partner." He stoked the fire as he spoke, some of the ash fluttering onto the meat. "I lost you for a while, after the swamp. Didn't catch up again until you were in the Edge. Your partner was gone by then."

"The Edge. You mean this biome." She adjusted herself against the wall, though nothing could ease the deep ache in her shoulders and spine. Sooner than later the last of her energy would drain away, again.

"The darkness, yes." He slid the kettle atop the grate, picked up a fire poker, and prodded at some coals.

It was time to ask the obvious. "So, who are you to me? This place is desolate—am I supposed to believe that you and your cozy oasis magically appeared just to guide me home?" She was fading. If she didn't speak quickly, she'd soon lose the strength to do so. "I met you before I knew what the hell... what the hell I'd gotten myself into. You beheaded a mule just to... write a message."

The Mother Reigns . She could still see it written in blood.

He opened his mouth as if to argue, then shut it again. His jaw flexed as he stared at the coals.

"There's so much of..." She coughed, then wiped her phlegm on the blanket. "This purgatory that makes no"—she gasped—"no goddamn sense."

He finally looked at her. The flame flickered in his brown eyes. "You recover from this blight, and I'll tell you everything I know."