Page 343 of Shadowblood Souls
Jacob is standing between the trees just a few steps from the waterfall. Watching us with eyes so stormy I can make out the turmoil in them despite the darkness.
Griffin releases me from his embrace as we get up. He offers his brother a lopsided smile.
“I’m not trying to get between you—any of you—and Riva. If she had to choose right now, she wouldn’t pick me anyway.”
He’s probably right about that, but the comments Jake’s made in the past—about knowing he had to stand back so his brother could be happy with me, about believing that I’d rather he’d died instead of Griffin—form a lump in my gut.
“Jake,” I start, not sure exactly what I’m going to say. We found a peace with each other in the past few weeks, but it suddenly feels so tenuous.
Jacob breaks in before I can get any farther. “It’s fine. I only came to make sure you’re okay. I’m going to take one of the first watches. Everyone who’s going to sleep should stick together.”
I nod. “We’ll head right back.”
Griffin strides ahead of me through the trees on our way back to the campsite, not touching me at all, but Jacob’s gaze trails after us with a prickling sensation down my spine.
Twenty-One
Jacob
Ithought the island we were stuck on was fucking hot, but somehow the jungle we’ve crashed into is even worse.
The interlacing branches overhead, heavy with leaves, block out most of the direct sunlight, but humidity saturates the air underneath. Trudging along feels more like wading than walking.
Bugs buzz past, some of them stopping to nip at us. I guess the island breezes kept the worst of them away back by the facility.
Our group skirts a patch of huge ferns, the edges of the fronds tickling over my arm. I swipe at the sweat collecting on the back of my neck and scan our surroundings.
I used to like the occasional opportunities the guardians gave us to explore the forest beyond the facility where we grew up. Gazing up at the leaves and breathing in the wild scents loosened something inside me, like a trace of freedom.
I’m not sure I’m ever going to feel the same way about the jungle. Between our training on the island and this trek, I can’t help associating the dense vegetation and heavy warmth with restrictions and perils rather than peace.
We’ve been walking since sun-up, other than a short snack break partway through the morning and a slightly longer break for lunch a couple of hours ago. The younger kids appear to be drooping with the sticky heat, but the older teens are carrying themselves pretty well, I have to admit.
Well, they’ve been through the same brutal training as the rest of us. At seventeen, they’re practically adults, not kids at all.
We were around that age the first time we made a run for it.
The thought brings my gaze veering back to my friends.
Andreas is loping along as quickly as the dense underbrush allows, no sign of sickness from the jungle water he drank last night. We filled up two emptied juice jugs at the waterfall before we moved on from our campsite.
He’s got a cord he picked up somewhere wrapped around one hand. On the easier stretches of terrain, he’s fallen into a rhythm of twisting it into knots and loosening them again, like he used to do sometimes back at the old facility. Maybe it helps him focus.
Zian pushes ahead at the front of the group, snapping branches and crumpling shrubs to allow easier passage for all of us behind. And probably terrifying any wildlife that might notice us into giving us a wide berth.
Well, other than the damned bugs.
Dominic has stuck to the middle of the group, his head swiveling periodically as he conducts a similar scan to mine. Any time one of the younger shadowbloods so much as stubs their toe, he’s there, siphoning life out of a twig or a wildflower to set them right again.
His short ponytail clings damply to his neck. I hope he’s keepinghishealth in mind just as much as everyone else’s.
Riva prefers to stick to the rear of the group where she can monitor the whole bunch more easily, so I’ve hung back too. It means I’m close by if the brush happens to trip her up, although she’s scrambling through it perfectly fine so far even with her tiny frame.
And it means I can keep an eye on my brother wherever he happens to drift through the group.
Griffin does drift quite a bit. One hour he’ll be at the left of the pack, the next at the right. Sometimes he presses forward until he’s just behind Zian and other times he slows until he falls into stride with Riva.
When that’s happened, she’s reached out and taken his hand. Nothing spoken, not much more than a brief glance exchanged, but something in his expression softens just a tad when her fingers curl around his.
