Page 110 of The Last Sanctuary
The awareness came upon her gradually and then all at once: she wasn’t sick. She wasn’t dying. She hadn’t suffered so much as a cough since Zachariah had splattered infected blood in her face.
That was three weeks ago.
There were two possible reasons she wasn’t dead.
The infected blood had missed her eyes, her mouth, her nostrils. Or it hadn’t, and she was one of the few immune. Either way, she’d gotten lucky as hell.
But she didn’t just want to survive. She wanted to live.
She understood the difference now.
Isolation wasn’t the answer. It couldn’t be. Not anymore.
She didn’t want to be her father, with his small limited life, his clenched fist of a heart.
She wanted more.
There had to be more.
Even with Shadow at her side, that deep, abiding loneliness never left her. The grief, always like an open wound. All the things she had believed she could leave behind were the things she needed most.
Gradually, as they made their way further north, the pain that haunted her every step lessened. Her swollen eye and split lip healed. The ugly yellowish-green bruises marring her ribs faded.
Dekker had beaten her badly. But she was alive, and he wasn’t. She thought of Vlad and hoped he was at peace. The tiger had saved her life, after all.
In the evening, she set her snares, searching the underbrush until she discovered a well-used trail leading to a rabbit burrow. After three days of empty snares, she finally caught dinner.
She skinned and dressed the rabbit. She built a fire the way her father had taught her. The first time, she worried she wouldn’t remember the steps correctly, but she did.
Her chest ached, that urge to weep stinging her throat as she dug two holes, each eight inches across, and a couple of feet deep. She made a tunnel between the two at the base to connect them and filled one with twigs, bark, and small sticks.
The second hole acted as a chimney to suck oxygen down to feed the fire. The fire was nearly smokeless, and the flames couldn’t be seen from afar.
There were others like the Headhunters out there. She had to remain vigilant at all times. The forest would protect her, but only if she was smart and cautious.
Raven crouched over the small ball of tinder she’d gathered, mostly dried moss and pine needles, struck the flint with the edge of the steel with a glancing motion, and gently fanned the sparks into a tiny flame.
While she waited for the rabbit to roast, and during moments of rest, she whittled. She carved little birds, wolves, bears, and a small, fierce tiger. How she loved the feel of the wood beneath her fingers, the shape of something hidden within waiting for her to bring it out into the open, fully formed.
She’d allowed her bitterness and resentment to take something precious from her. Not only her carvings, but also the good memories of her parents. Not anymore. She held onto every memory—the good and the bad. They were all she had left.
She left the wooden figures on stumps, in nooks between branches, or nestled in the hollow of a tree. Maybe someone would find them. Maybe it would make them smile, give them a tiny sliver of hope. Sometimes that was enough to keep going, to keep trying.
Perhaps one day Damien would find another one to join the wooden raven she’d given him. She thought often of Damien, wondered what he was doing, if he was thinking of her, if he would one day leave the Headhunters.
She didn’t know. It probably didn’t matter. How could he find her in this empty, ruined, perilous world? How could anyone find anything?—?
The forest echoed with a loud, eerie howl.
At first, Raven thought it was Shadow. But the black wolf lounged across the fire, not twenty feet away. The howl had not come from him.
Shadow leaped to his paws. His coat bristled, ears up. He raised his snout and sniffed the air. A warning growl started low in his throat.
Raven rose to her feet, tensing, her gaze searching the clearing, the woods.
Across the clearing, in the purple-gray of twilight, a large canine shape appeared through the tall grasses. Its muzzle was narrow, its coat a tawny mix of brown, gray, and black, with reddish fur along the creature’s ears, face, and legs. Its bushy, black-tipped tail lowered to the ground.
It was a red wolf.
