“Of course you didn’t. Because you’re so wrapped up in missing Jared, you refuse to look at anything else.” I regret the words as soon as I say them. I hadn’t realized we were being followed either, and as her Protector, it was my responsibility to see it.

I press my palm to the small of her back and guide her to the opposite side of the street. The heat from her skin seeps into mine and feels like comfort.

Which is proof my ability to think logically seems to be compromised. I’m beginning to worry being responsible for Rachel has somehow thrown me permanently off-kilter.

She steps away from my hand. “At least one of us is caught up in missing him.”

“Who says I don’t miss him?” A shadow moves out of a doorway behind us. A man. Taller than me by about two inches, but I have him by a good twenty pounds. Plus, he’s limping. Still, I wrap my hand around her arm again and pull her through someone’s backyard, over a small fence, and onto the street running parallel to the one we were just on.

He doesn’t follow us.

“Are you listening?” she asks, and I realize she’s been talking the entire time.

“I am now.”

“Typical. I was asking how you can say you miss him. All you do is sit around day after day, drawing pictures—”

“Pictures! They’re intricately scaled plans for an invention—”

She waves her knife through the air as if she can slice through my words and draw blood instead. “Drawing pictures, piecing together your little toys—”

That takes it. “You didn’t think so poorly of my little toys tonight when you planned to use my handgrips to sneak over the Wall, did you?” My voice is rising. My little toys are about to give us a way to find Jared and get off the Commander’s radar.

Of course, I haven’t actually shared that with her. I thought I was protecting her, but maybe if I’d trusted her in the first place, we wouldn’t be in our current situation.

She raises a fist like she wants to punch me. “All the toys and plans and books in the world won’t get us one step closer to rescuing Dad, and you just sit there like we aren’t running out of time!” Her voice breaks, and I reach out to haul her close to me and out of the path of a mule-drawn wagon clip-clopping along the street.

“We are almost out of time. I can feel it. Can’t you feel it?” Her voice is unsteady, and I’m shocked to see tears sliding down her face, chasing a trail of heat between the icy pellets of rain still plummeting from the heavens.

I’ve never seen her cry before. Not when she was a young girl training with a man’s weapons, getting injured more often than not. Not when she was a budding woman facing me across her back porch and spilling her heart only to have me hand it back to her. Not even when it became clear Jared wasn’t coming back. The fury in me sinks beneath a sudden, sharp ache, and I wish I knew how to have a civilized conversation with her.

We take the corner marking the line between South Edge and Country Low. I want to have the perfect words to comfort her, but I don’t, so I walk in silence as the ramshackle houses become cozy little cottages, and the patches of dirty grass between them expand into gardens, farm fields, and small orchards. Though no street torches exist, the darkness is now friendly.

My house comes into view, and she pushes ahead of me to stalk up the stone walkway, reaching the iron-hinged wooden door first. Hanging her damp cloak on a hook beside the door, she enters the main part of the cottage while I light the pair of lanterns hanging in the entryway.

She’s rummaging through the kitchen, her movements jerky with either anger or grief. Probably both. I make my way across the living room until I’m less than three yards from her.

“I know we’re running out of time. But you have to trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

She jumps at the sound of my voice so close behind her, and shoots a glare over her shoulder before moving toward the wooden box of a pantry resting in the corner. “I know what you’re doing, too. You’re going into the Wasteland with me. I’m sorry about that, by the way.” She opens the pantry and rummages through it.

Sorry for what? Having to take me with her? Does she really despise me that much? The hurt that follows this thought is a slow, dull ache that takes me by surprise. My voice is sharp as I follow her and ask, “Are you really sorry?”

This time, she bangs her head when she jumps. Turning, she shoves a sack of mutton jerky into my arms and snaps, “Stop sneaking up on me.”

I grab the sack before it falls, and frown. “Why are you removing food from my pantry?” I toss the jerky onto the table behind me as she pulls two dusty jars of fig paste from the back of the pantry, knocking over a bag of potatoes in the process.

“Packing, of course.”

“Wait a minute.”

She shoves the paste at me and rolls her eyes. “Fine. I’ll finish apologizing. I didn’t want you involved. I should’ve made it over the side before they caught you. Then this whole thing wouldn’t be an issue.”

I slam the paste onto the wooden table beside the jerky. “How can you say that?”

She fists her hands on her hips and ignores the potatoes rolling across her feet. “I would’ve been gone, Logan. Deep into the Wasteland. And if you’d kept quiet about your reasons for being at the Wall, nothing would have changed for you.”

“Nothing …” My stomach drops as I realize how little she thinks of me.