The joyous malice in Conall’s voice is unmistakable when he says, “Ox is the one who ordered this.”

Chapter XXVII

Moans drift through the air as Conall drags me to the cable-car platform and hands me a shovel with a sharpened end, the same tool the Soulers carried last night. My stomach twists with foreboding but I keep my face placid.

Ox stands by the rope ladder leading to the shore on the unprotected side of the wall circling the Sanctuary. Unconsecrated stumble at the bottom, reaching up for us, swiping at the bitterly cold air. Their knuckles—those who still have any—look red and raw, their faces scraped by ice.

The river’s a riot of slush with frozen water cracking and shifting around the edges. I can just see the shadow of the Recruiter’s body in the shallows, his skin already distorted and swollen.

A few boats stuffed with refugees from the Dark City float beyond range of the Recruiter crossbows. They no longer shout for help or beg to be let ashore; now they just watch us with desperate eyes. It’s impossible to tell how long it will be before the Unconsecrated swell from the Dark City and fill the river until they overwhelm the Sanctuary as well.

Elias races onto the platform, his steps reverberating across the old wood. “What’s going on?” he shouts, his face purple with rage. “You can’t do this!”

Ox turns to him, a blank expression on his face. He points at the decapitated Recruiter below. “She killed one of my men and there will be consequences.”

Elias stops, breath coming out in fast pants that cloud the air in front of his face in the cold morning. His lips are blue. “What? Annah couldn’t kill anyone!”

Everyone stares at me. There’s no use lying—it’s clear they know the truth. I raise my chin defiantly. “He was attacking me,” I spit at Ox. “I was defending myself.”

My confession is enough for Ox and he pushes me toward the ladder, but I turn on him. “It’s not my fault you can’t control your men. He practically ripped my hair out—he deserved it.”

Ox hesitates and Elias jumps forward, trying to yank me back, so I’m in the middle of a tug-of-war between the two men.

“You can’t hurt her,” Elias argues. “What about Catcher?”

Below us the Unconsecrated reach and moan, pushing against the wall. A few more wash ashore, bloated bodies almost frozen. They lie there, still and silent. Eventually, they’ll struggle to their feet as well, hungering for the living.

I scowl as Elias and Ox argue. I know what the result will be—Ox has already proven more than once that he’s not one to show mercy.

“She’s not going to be killed,” Ox reassures Elias and I snort even as my insides relax with relief. “She’s going to be put to work.” He swings his hand down to the shore. “We need someone to sweep during the day anyway.”

I swallow again and again as fear reaches deep inside me. But I refuse to let anyone know I’m afraid.

Elias starts to protest but Ox shifts forward, leaning his huge bulk against Elias’s leaner body. “For what she did to my man it shouldn’t even be a question,” he growls. “I’d kill her myself if I could. Do you want to argue that she shouldn’t be punished? You know me better than that.”

Over Elias’s shouts of protest Conall drags me toward the rope ladder. I kick at his shins and he pushes me over the edge of the platform until I have no choice but to grab the ladder or fall to the ground below. He holds the shovel out at me and when I reach for it he lets it drop, slipping through my grip and falling where the plague rats trample it.

Unconsecrated fingers brush my ankle, their desperation fevered with me so near. I don’t allow myself to scream as I grip the rungs of the ladder, no weapon to defend myself.

Elias leaps forward, shoving Conall out of the way and kneeling on the dock, reaching for me. Before I can warn him, Conall’s recovered and kicks Elias in the ribs and there’s nothing I can do.

With a grunt and a whoosh of air, Elias’s face crumples in pain and he falls to his side, clutching his stomach. He scrapes a hand against the platform, trying to push himself back up, but Conall steps on his fingers, grinding his heel into the wood.

“You questioning a direct order?” Conall asks, bending low so his face is flush with Elias’s. I can hear Elias groaning with the pain.

“Catcher won’t let this happen,” Elias mutters.

Ox laughs and pushes Conall out of the way before dragging Elias to his feet. Elias’s body is crooked as he tries to curl around the spot where he was kicked, cradling his injured hand to his chest.

When Ox speaks his voice is deadly calm and serious. “Catcher doesn’t control the Sanctuary, I do. We need only one of you to keep him coming back to us—you should remember that next time you want to forget the rules.”

Wind swirls around us, flinging snow in my eyes and chapping my fingers that are already numb from gripping the rope ladder so tightly. Long-dead fingernails scrape along the bottom of my leg, trying to pull me down, and I lash out, kicking them away, but they stumble back to continue groping for me.

Elias pants, his arm pressed into his side and his face pale with pain. “Don’t do this, Ox,” he pleads.

My breath catches in my throat at the agony in Elias’s expression. I glance down at the Unconsecrated huddled beneath me. There are only a handful, more slowly making their way down the shore toward us.

If I jump I might be able to get clear of them, but it would be a stupid and risky move. If I twist my ankle or break my leg I’ll be useless, unable to get away fast enough. I press my head against my arms, trying to figure out what to do next.

There’s a commotion on the platform above me, and as I look up I see my sister elbowing a Recruiter in the gut and pulling the crossbow from him. Before anyone can react she grabs a sling of bolts and skids to her knees just above me.

Closing one eye, she aims at the nearest Unconsecrated clawing at my feet. “I’m not the best shot, so you might want to keep still,” she says, and I cringe as she exhales. There’s a sharp twang of string and the thunk of an arrowhead penetrating the plague rat’s skull, his body crumpling limply to the ground.

She’s aiming for the next one when Ox roars up behind her. “You want to join your sister? Fine!” he shouts, jamming his foot into her back just as she pulls the trigger. The bolt goes wide, burying itself in the shallow frozen water along the shore.

My sister teeters on the edge of the platform and I grab her just as she falls, pulling her against me with one arm, gripping the ladder tight with the other. Her feet kick at the empty air, the Unconsecrated below us an utter frenzy.

“No!” Elias screams, jolting toward us. Conall grabs one of his arms and another Recruiter the other. With a jerk of his foot Conall kicks at the back of Elias’s knees, forcing him down onto the platform. His face falls a few inches from mine.

His eyes strain with terror and panic. “It’ll be okay,” I tell him, trying to sound more sure of myself than I am. “We’ll take care of each other. I know how to survive.”

Next to me my sister’s wrapped an arm through the ladder and points the crossbow at the head of the nearest plague rat. Without any emotion or hesitation she pulls the trigger and it collapses, eyes falling slowly shut.

“Get him out of here,” Ox grunts.

It takes four men to drag a screaming and fighting Elias away. Through it all Ox stands above us, blocking the cable-car platform. My sister doesn’t bother looking at him. Instead she shoots another plague rat, clearing a path for us below.

I wait for Ox to pronounce some sort of sentence but instead he just stares at me, his hands buried in the pockets of his thick coat as if trying to figure out what it will take to break me. I smile at him, cold and mean, thinking, Nothing. I will never break for you.

Ox narrows his eyes and nods his head before turning to the few Recruiters left standing guard by the cable car. “You can let them up at sunset,” he says. “Not before.”

I have no idea what any of this means, but it can’t be good, because one of the Recruiter’s eyes go wide and he glances at me, looking concerned. “There’s a snowstorm coming in over the horizon. Should be here by the afternoon. We weren’t even going to put the other Sweepers out tonight.”

Ox shrugs. “Maybe it will get cold enough to slow the rotters down.” And with that he walks off, leaving my sister and me clinging to the ladder.

The Recruiter, a slightly older man with gray at his temples, looks at us with a deep furrow between his eyebrows. He stares at my bare hands—I didn’t have time to find any gloves. He checks over his shoulder, and when he’s sure no one’s paying attention he unwinds his thick scarf and drops it to us, saying “Good luck” before turning away.

My sister responds by shooting a bolt into the forehead of the last Unconsecrated reaching for us on the shore. We slip to the ground, a thin sheen of ice crunching under our feet.

I loop the scarf around my sister’s neck. “You shouldn’t have done that,” I tell her, picking up the shovel and testing its weight.

She tugs the scarf tight and pulls a stray bolt from where it lodged in the ground. “I don’t particularly like killing them, but if we were going to get off that ladder they had to go.”

I try to force a smile—I know that’s what she wants. “I mean you shouldn’t have helped at all. You should’ve stayed on the platform where it’s safe.”

She shrugs but her lips tremble, her hands unsteady as they fit the bolt onto the string. “I’m your sister,” she says and her voice is uneven as she clarifies, “Your older sister. And it’s my job to take care of you.”

I want to tell her that I don’t need taking care of, that I’ve done just fine on my own. But that would clearly be a lie. I’d have likely died or gotten infected if she hadn’t stepped in.

The enormity of what she’s done—what she’s sacrificed for me—is overwhelming, and I have to turn away so that she doesn’t see my face.

I left her alone in the Forest. She had every right to abandon me as well, and she chose not to. That she didn’t means that maybe I can allow myself to rely on her. To actually believe she’ll be there for me when I need her.

This thought terrifies me. I’m not used to depending on someone.

That’s not true—I used to rely on Elias, but when he left me I promised I’d never trust again.

My sister places a hand on my shoulder, the tips of her fingers pressing lightly on my collarbone in reassurance. Beyond us, down the shore, the Unconsecrated shuffle toward us, slow and inevitable.

With a sigh she drops her hand and stands over the dead plague rats, bracing a foot against each one’s head so that she can tug at the bolts lodged in each skull. Her muscles strain until the arrows slide free with a loud shlurk of a sound.

We both cringe. I watch the way her tangled hair falls over her face and she absently brushes it away. I think how long it took me to learn not to brush my own hair back from my cheeks, to use it instead as a shield to hide my face.

I reach up to my neck, feeling the absence of my hair. Wind blows off the river and I shiver, wrapping the scarf I took last night tighter around my head.

“Do you think we’ll make it through this?” I ask her, the rush from the scuffle on the platform draining out of me.

She doesn’t even look up, just says yes as she jerks free another bolt with a grunt. I hear the resolve in her voice. An unshakeable determination to stay alive. I wish I had her absolute belief in survival. I wish I didn’t know how hard it is to do—to struggle through each day only to wake up to a deeper struggle the next. I feel like falling asleep and letting it all consume me. Just letting the Unconsecrated take over.

They’re bound to anyway.

“I killed someone.” My sister’s confession shocks me out of my thoughts.

I jerk around to face her. She’s standing right where the ice clings to the shore, clutching the recovered bolts in her hands.

“What?” I choke out. Of all the things I expect her to say this isn’t it.

She squats and presses the points of the bolts to the thin frozen water, cracking it. I can’t see her face and so I walk over and kneel next to her, the icy shore seeping through my clothes, numbing my knees.

“In Vista. I killed someone. His name was Daniel and he was …” She swallows, her lips quivering. “He was going to blackmail me. He was going to make me be with him—marry him—or else he was going to get me in trouble and I panicked. He had me shoved up against the Barrier and I couldn’t breathe and I didn’t know what to do and …” She’s almost hyperventilating, the words stumbling over one another.

In the distance the Unconsecrated moan, their steps crunching as they slowly wend their way along the wall toward us. I wrap my arm around her and pull her to me, tucking her face into my shoulder and resting my chin on her head. She squeezes me so hard that it hurts to breathe. “It’s okay,” I tell her but she shakes her head. I can feel her tears on my skin.

“It’s not.” Her voice is muffled, hard to understand. “It’s not okay. His blood was all over me and he was looking at me as he was dying. I just left him there. If I’d told someone … If I hadn’t let him see me in the first place … There are so many ways I could have done something so that he didn’t have to die.”

She draws in a shuddering breath. “I’m not a horrible person, Annah, I promise I’m not. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know what else to do.”