Page 53 of The Last One
“What is it?” Olivia asks.
“It’s just—” The redhead looks flustered as her eyes bounce between Olivia and me. “Just now, on the road outside of Pethorp, we saw Helman. He said that there’s a woman and two men on the road, and that they looked peculiar, like no one he’s ever seen. He says they’re wearing fancy clothes and that there are bright-red cardinals flitting around their heads.”
Cardinals?Yesterday afternoon, I saw two red birds in the woods.
“He said a bandit tried to rob these travelers,” Philia continues, “but one of the strange men lifted the bandit right off his feet, held him high into the sky, and then slung him into a tree, and every bone in the bandit’s body broke into a million little pieces!”
Olivia frowns, her eyes big.“What?”
Philia nods. “Helman says that they’re on their way to Mafordright now. They’re coming here.” Wide-eyed, she turns to me. “And Kai, they said they’re looking foryou.”
14
Philia sneaks back out the pantry door.
“Be careful,” Olivia whispers. Even after Philia disappears into the night, Olivia stays at the door, watching until Copperhair’s long gone.
The air in the cottage has turned hot and muggy. Or maybe it’s just me.
When she returns, Olivia glares with hard, slitted eyes. “Who are those travelers? And why are they looking for you?”
My heart pounds wildly in my chest. My stomach churns with nausea. “Open a window.”
Olivia lifts the sash of the parlor window.
My mouth waters, and a flush creeps over my skin and swirls beneath my amulet. As cooler air drifts into the room, I pace in front of the fireplace.
Olivia runs her fingers through her short hair. “What did you dobefore coming to Maford, Kai? Tell me.”
“Will you shut up?” I shout at her. “I’m trying to think.”
“I don’t believe you,” she accuses.
“That I’m trying to think?”
“You nearly choked me to death just two days ago,” Olivia says. “Maybe you strangled somebody else the day before. You certainly know how to kill—you made that obvious last night.”
I clutch my stomach. “To protectyourtown, not mine.” I glare at her, my nerves sizzling and popping. “I may not remember my origin story, and right now, I wish that I could. But I don’t hang out with people who hurl other people through the air. I am not that person.”
Make amends.
Failure.
They destroy us.
You let them.
Sybel’s words and the Otaan giant’s accusations race around my mind as my underarms prickle with sweat and my pacing quickens. “And as far as me strangling you?Youstole from me.Am I not supposed to respond? Am I supposed to ignore that?”
“Why can’t you remember?” she demands. “Are you willfully forgetting? What’s your family name? Where did you live before coming here? Where were you going two days ago before you arrived in our forest? Tell me that, and I’ll tell you how you should respond.”
My mouth pops open, then closes. I square my shoulders, then say, “I don’t have to tell youanything. And what I was doing, where I was going? That’s also none of your—”
“People of Maford,” a woman’s voice calls outside, chilly yet commanding.
Her voice raises the hairs on my neck.
Olivia stumbles over to the window. “Something’s happening at the chapel.” Olivia looks back at me with wide eyes. “I think it’s the lady Philia told us about.”
