Chapter 4

I survived those six months using my wits, the knowledge from the outside world that they lacked.

Basic first aid I' d learned in college helped their injured. My ability to read and write complex documents helped their aging leader understand some of Ethan' s proposals. I negotiated small disputes.

Slowly, I gained a sliver of grudging respect, or at least, tolerance.

Then, word came that Ethan had been "attacked" by men from this rival faction. A setup, I realized later.

He was supposedly poisoned, delirious, near death.

Risking my own life, I snuck out of the faction' s compound. The pain in my healing ankles was immense, but I pushed through.

I found him in an old, abandoned hunter' s shack, burning with fever.

I nursed him, cleaned him, forced water and herbs down his throat.

In his delirium, he was rough. He didn' t know who I was. He pawed at me, called me names, then cried for his mother.

And then... he took me. Violently. It wasn' t love. It wasn' t even recognition. Just fevered, desperate lust.

I lay there, broken, as he fell into a deep sleep.

I had to get back before I was discovered missing.

I limped back to the faction, but they knew. They' d seen my tracks.

They dragged me to their forge.

As punishment for sneaking out, for "communicating with the enemy," they branded my back with a heated mining pick.

A crude "H" for Havenwood outcast, seared into my flesh. The pain was beyond anything I' d ever known.

Yet, the information I' d gathered during my captivity, the insights into their leadership and weaknesses, I had managed to pass it on before they caught me returning.

It helped Ethan' s faction, his loyalists, to finally overcome the rivals.

Havenwood was "united" under Ethan. He was the hero.

I thought then, finally, we could leave. We could get the charter.

But Ethan was a different man when I was finally "returned" to him.

Harder. Colder. His eyes no longer held any warmth for me. Only for Daisy.

Now, back in the present, recovering from the forced miscarriage, the burning Sickness spreading across my skin, I clutched the locket.

It felt unusually warm in my hand, almost hot.

My skin was breaking out in painful, weeping sores. My hair was starting to thin.

I remembered my grandmother, a woman my parents called eccentric.

When she gave me the locket, she' d said, "This holds memories, child. And sometimes, it can show you the way back if you're truly lost, when the one who wronged you stands at their highest, and you at your lowest."

I' d dismissed it as folklore, a sentimental old woman' s fancy.

Now, it was all I had.

Ethan becoming the undisputed "High Guardian" of Havenwood. That had to be the trigger. His highest. And I, surely, was at my lowest.

"The baby... my baby..." I sobbed, the loss a fresh, gaping wound.

Ethan stormed into the cabin. He' d been "celebrating" with Daisy.

"Still whining about that?" he sneered. "It was probably for the best. An outsider' s child would have complicated things."

He saw the emerging sores on my face, the redness, the inflammation.

His face contorted in disgust. "God, you' re hideous. Just like Daisy before... before you took her sickness."

Took her sickness? He made it sound like I' d chosen this.

My mind, desperate, latched onto the one thing he couldn't deny, the one secret horror we shared.

"Three months ago, Ethan," I said, my voice hoarse, "in the old hunter' s shack... you were feverish... Don' t you remember?"

He looked uneasy for a split second. A flicker of something in his eyes.

Then Daisy glided in, a smug, possessive look on her face. Her own skin looked clearer, healthier. My Sickness was her cure.

"Oh, Sarah, still telling tales?" she said, her voice sickly sweet. "Ethan was with me that night. I nursed him back to health. You' re just trying to steal my credit for saving him."

Ethan seized on it, his relief palpable.

"You' re a pathological liar, Sarah!" he shouted, emboldened. "Trying to replace Daisy' s kindness with your filth!"

Daisy added, her eyes glinting with malice, "And that mark on your back... that 'H'. I heard that faction brands women they... use."

Her insinuation was clear. That I' d been a whore for them.

I screamed, a raw, animal sound of pure agony and fury.

Ethan slapped me again, harder this time.

"You disgusting whore! How could you betray me like that? With them?"

My last shred of hope, that some part of the old Ethan remained, that he might remember, might feel something, shattered.

The locket in my hand suddenly felt like ice.