He was shocked awake sometime later when the doors were opened and another boy, this one even younger than he, was tossed inside. The boy cried for his father all the while, his eyes red, and his nose running freely, pathetically. “Papa, papa, papa,” the boy wailed—his cries a chorus that swelled inside the small wagon, no matter how small the boy’s voice grew. Cruze wondered if he had looked that pitiful. In the brief wash of sunlight before the doors crashed closed again, he saw the girl—she was a year or two older than him with dark, unwashed hair, haunted eyes, and a horrible purple-red mark around her throat that made the wounds on his fists look like child’s play. Their eyes met, and he knew for certain that wherever he was being taken, it was not somewhere better.

By the time they reached their destination, there were eleven other children crammed into the wagon. He and the girl ended up side by side. The stench of dirt and sweat collected around them and the trip seemed to go on forever and ever.

After a while, the girl leaned over and whispered, “What got you here?”

His brows furrowed and his lips pursed. “How should I know?”

“You don’t have to pretend. Everybody here is like us. It’s why we were all taken.”

“Like us?” Cruze asked.

She shifted in the dark, and he was not sure how, but he knew she was tracing that line on her throat. He wanted to ask how it had happened, but he could not push the words off his tongue.

“We’re all … different,” the girl whispered into the slim space between them.

Cruze thought that over for a moment. He had never been normal, that much was certain. But he’d always assumed that had far more to do with his bloodlines than anything else.

“Who are your parents?” he asked the girl.

“It does not matter.”

Then what did matter? Why had they all been taken?

He did not get an answer. Not when the wagon finally stopped what felt like hours later. Not when the children were dumped out into wild, jungle terrain and held back at sword-point when they tried to move. Two soldiers kept them controlled by fear, while two others barred the doors of the now empty wagon. Within a few breaths, the soldiers had loaded into the wagon and given the horses a hard whip that set them off at a gallop.