Page 30 of Entangled

And it will always be empty.

Endless.

Nothing.

And I will still be alone.

A hand grasps mine over the blanket. It’s cold, like mine, but strong. Madison’s long, slender fingers press between mine, and it’s only then that I realize I’m crying.

Hot, silent tears squeeze out from between my pressed lids, and my shoulders shake and shake as I try to suck in air. Madison doesn’t say anything, but just like that first day, she keeps meherelike an anchor in a depthless harbor.

And I’m notquitealone.

I don’t know how long I cry for, or how long she holds me, but by the time I finish, I’m exhausted.

Her thumb brushes soothingly over my hand, the way I imagine the right kind of mother’s might.

Or a sister’s.

“Tell me about them,” she whispers. “What were they like with you? What were they like... before.”

And her words are like breaking a spell. Suddenly, the sounds and smells of the camp feel real, and not like some chasmal nightmare.

“They were...” I take a trembling breath, the past tense sitting on my tongue like bad medicine. “They were home.”

It doesn’t make sense, but Madison’s hand tightens on mine anyway.

“Tell me,” she says.

And, in the broken silence, I do.

I tell her about stealing the bazooka and Dom chasing me. I tell her about working with Jaykob in his barn and reading with Jasper by firelight. I tell her about all the colors in Beau’s eyes and the way I soaked in every second of being there.

And when I talk, shelistens... and it’s like she feels it too. There’s a wet shine to her eyes that she tries to hide, but the slow-sliding evidence of her empathy only makes me clutch her hand tighter.

Then she tells me things too, about Tommy. About how he was always the first to listen to her, and always had her back. And how he liked to wake her up by licking her cheek, and she used to rage about how she hated it. She didn’t. She tells me about how he helped her track down civilians, all the women and children and elderly that needed someone to fight for them.

She tells me how she taught them to hide in caverns and shadows, how they learned to make their own rock slings and arrows and traps. And she tells me how impossible the responsibility was, how it would have crushed her—except that Tommy would never let her be crushed. Every time she slipped, he picked her back up, and every time she broke, he helped glue her back together.

We talk for hours and hours, our whispers like ripples that keep back the shadows. And by the time I fall asleep, in the very early hours of the morning, it’s with Madison beside me, and dreams of my brutes playing behind my eyes.

Chapter10

Dominic

Survival tip #237

He might have a big sword,

but if he doesn’t know how to use it, he’s no threat.

(And if he does, just shoot him.)

We travel at an even, ground-eating pace. Not fast enough to be careless about sound, but not wasting time. I don’t know what miserable hour it is anymore, but it’s dark except for the bright streaks of moonlight piercing the trees. Urgency bites at my heels.

We’re so, so close to having her back.

About forty minutes after finding the abandoned campsite, I hear the low mutter of voices, though it’s too far to make out what they’re saying. Calm steals over me—the focus that always comes with an impending fight.

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