I look down to see Eloise’s small white hand pressing against my arm. My stomach surges, and I snatch my arm away before the bile reaches my throat.

“Are you okay?” Sylph asks, but I’m already moving—striding past citizens, crushing apple blossom petals beneath my boots, and pretending I can leave the ghost of Melkin behind as easily as I can leave his wife.

Chapter Nine

LOGAN

I spend the evening monitoring the machine’s progress, helping maneuver the wagons down the slick basement steps, which are barely wide enough to accommodate them, and pressuring Jeremiah to hurry up and finish drawing a map of the northern territory.

I also spend it straining to hear any change in the constant rhythm of the battering ram. Any indication that our narrow window of opportunity is gone.

Through it all, I answer innumerable questions—How will we get the animals through the tunnel? Blindfold them and lead them. Are you really going to let girls carry weapons and help guard the camp? Absolutely. Shouldn’t we leave now? Too dangerous. What if the tunnel collapses? What if the Commander finds us? What if the Cursed One attacks?

What if?

I can’t assure them enough. I can’t explain my plans, argue my points, or reason with panic-stricken people. Not if I also want to make sure the camp is locked down, the wagons are ready, the map is completed, and the tunnel reaches the surface in the right place. My patience feels like a stripped wire ready to snap.

When I find myself tempted to pull a page out of the Commander’s rule book and tell a woman that if she doesn’t like my methods she can stay behind in the dungeon, I ask Drake to keep everyone but the tunnel crew away from me, and I hide in the tunnel’s depths, calculating distances, replacing batteries, and reconfiguring trajectories while the rest of the camp goes to sleep.

The battering ram is still pounding at the gate in regular intervals when I make my way up the basement stairs again. The majority of our people have settled down on bedrolls in the main banquet hall. Most of my inner circle are already sleeping, taking the opportunity to get some rest now in case they’re called upon to handle a crisis later. Even Rachel is sleeping, her bedroll snugged up beside Sylph’s. Their hands are clasped tightly, and I hope it’s enough to keep Rachel’s nightmares away.

Quinn has a pair of guards stationed by the compound’s front door and another pair in the watchtower that rises above the kitchen like a castle’s turret. All of them have one duty: to listen for the battering ram to fall silent.

I pace through the compound checking locks, supplies, wagons, and animals. Making sure the last of the Commander’s explosives are mounted in the right places throughout the basement. Thinking through every possible scenario and doing my best to come up with a solution for each.

The pile of weapons resting against the basement wall catches my eye. Every piece is lined up and ready for one of the survivors to grab it on the way into the tunnel tomorrow. Long swords for the men. Short swords, daggers, and knives for everyone else. Even a few walking sticks for those who need the help. Rachel is proof that a walking stick in the right hands can be a formidable weapon.

At the end of the row, a walking stick in black ebony nearly blends into the dark wall behind it.

Melkin’s staff.

The one he was given when he was on a mission to another city-state.

The one that can call the Cursed One.

I’m willing to bet Melkin was in Rowansmark when he received his gift. Did he know what he had? Or was James Rowan just hoping to get lucky and have Melkin accidentally call the beast to destroy Baalboden?

The metal is smooth and cold beneath my fingers. I should leave the staff. Shove it into a shadowy corner of the basement where it will be overlooked and then bury it when I bring down the ceiling.

But what if in burying it, I activate the sonic pulse that calls the Cursed One? My people would be in the tunnel. Even with the completed power booster attached to the tech I carry, I can’t risk it. Besides, if the staff is capable of calling the monster, maybe it’s capable of other things as well. You never know when something like that could come in handy.

Laying the staff in the back of the supply wagon, behind my extra jars of glycerin and acid and my bags of tech supplies and scrap parts, I return to the tunnel and consider the one scenario I don’t have a solution for.

Every guard in Baalboden carried a tracking device and an Identidisc capable of scanning the unique ridges of our wristmarks and listing which citizens were in a seventy-yard radius. I’d be a fool not to consider that the Commander may have already used an Identidisc to scan our wristmarks to see who survived the fires and stayed behind with me. Once he has a list of our wristmark signals, he can use a tracking device to find us unless we’re out of range.

We’d have to be at least five hundred yards away to be out of range. We don’t have time to tunnel that far. I just have to hope the Commander doesn’t realize we’ve left until it’s too late to track us down.

I nod a silent greeting to the nighttime tunnel crew again and set about toggling the levers that control the machine’s trajectory. A few minutes later, the machine is chewing through the dirt at a three percent incline, and I’m back to pacing the tunnel while I worry over every other worst case scenario that presents itself to me.

What if the machine breaks before it reaches the surface?

What if the device doesn’t keep the Cursed One at bay when one hundred fifty-four pairs of boots are stomping through its domain?

What if the Commander is already tracking us?