Travis shrugs. “I guess I never thought about it that way. I spent so much time on that tower trying to figure out how to get out there that I never considered there would be people trying to get into our village.”

I tap my fingers against the wood of the door, my hands still behind my back, as I ponder this.

“Do you think Gabrielle was trying to find us? Do you think that she knew we were there? Or do you think she was just following the path like us, taking it wherever it would lead?”

“I don't know,” he says. “She probably just escaped from this village when it was overrun, just as we escaped ours.”

I tilt my head back until it rests on the door and I am looking at the ceiling. I think back to that night when I first found Gabrielle's footprints in the snow. “Before, I always imagined that she left her village by choice, that she had the fortitude I lacked. When I was in the Cathedral and it was silent at night I used to dream of following in her steps. Of slipping through the window and drifting down the path until I found her village.”

I realize that I have tears in my eyes and I feel a little embarrassed as they run down my cheeks.

“Everyone would welcome me with open arms and I would ask them about the ocean and they would lead me to it. I would be free from the Sisterhood and the Unconsecrated and all the rules and oaths and pledges and vows.” Even now I can see it so clearly in my mind—I can feel their arms around me. I can taste the salt in the air.

“I would have escaped,” I whisper. “But then when we got here I understood.” I knock my head back against the door, the old resentment surfacing. “I realized she left because her own village was overrun. She was no hero, no explorer. She was like me—forced from her home and scared, without any options.”

I bite my lip and then add, “It makes me wonder if I would have left if the fences had never been breached. Or if I would have stayed in the village waiting for you forever.” Travis sits, watching me. I'm waiting for him to protest, to tell me I'm wrong. But then I hear an odd noise. Travis hears it too; we both turn our heads and try to pinpoint the origin.

A creak growing so high-pitched that I can no longer hear it—then a pop and a splinter. Argos begins to bark and I feel the door shudder under my hands.

Travis is at my side. He pulls me to the stairs. Argos circles us, nudging us onward. Always at our backs, protecting us. We are halfway up the stairs when there is a crash so loud that I raise my hands over my ears. I hear the sound of Argos's toe-nails as he scrabbles up the stairs.