My thumb stops, resting at a green pin. “Vista,” I read aloud. My sister’s town by the sea. Where Catcher grew up, became infected. Where he survived, broken. There’s a thick black line etched along the map just to the west of Vista leading up the coast, and beyond the line there’s nothing, but I know it represents the Forest.

And somewhere in that void is the village where I was born, and raised for a few years. I press my hand over it, the scope of the Forest extending past my fingers.

“It’s not there anymore,” a deep voice says behind me. “Your village.”

I cringe, already knowing it’s Ox, and reach for the machete at my hip. He doesn’t make a move to stop me or even flinch when I pull it from my belt and hold the long blade between us.

“What do you mean, my village?” I ask, cold inside. “How do you know anything about where I’m from?”

Ox leans against the wall by the door, arms crossed casually over his chest. Other than his bulk he appears nonthreatening. But I know better.

He shrugs as if he’s not talking about a village. About people. About my father and neighbors. “It’s gone.”

My eyes go wide, the machete trembling between us. It shouldn’t matter, I think. Elias and I had tried to find the village before and we’d failed. We’d given up on it a long time ago. But I’d always preserved that tiny bit of hope that maybe someday we’d make our way back. Everyone we’d left behind would be there with arms outstretched to meet us.

Ox has to see the despair on my face. He has to see how unsettled I am, but he just stays where he is, breathing slowly in and out, face showing no emotion.

“Maybe there was something left of it—the fences were still up and a few buildings looked like they were being maintained. But your friends took care of all that—tearing down the fences to slow Conall and his men.” He shrugs again and I want to slap him. “Didn’t work,” he adds. “And of course they regretted it when they had to fight their way back through to get to Vista.”

He squats, riffling around on the floor until he finds a black pin. He stands, knees creaking a little, and walks past me to the map, shoving the pin into it.

I’m staring at the very tip of the machete shaking in the air in front of me. What would it feel like to swing it around, slice it through Ox’s neck? I’ve decapitated enough Unconsecrated by now to know how much force it takes—what it’s like trying to saw through the muscle and cartilage and bone.