Her hand slips from my face. I can hear as she resettles the boy in her lap, hear him groan and then fall back into dreamless sleep. The rain barely dribbles now. Another Unconsecrated has joined the first at the fence next to us, summoned by the moans. It's too dark to see anything but I can hear them scrabbling against the metal. Hear their desperation.

I wonder who those hands belonged to. Which of those hands once stroked the head of a sick child, once touched the lips of a loved one, once clasped together in prayer. I wonder if any of those hands belong to my mother.

“Going down that path would kill us all, Mary,” Cass says. “You're selfish to want to sacrifice all of us for your own whims.”

Her words echo, crashing through my body. For a moment I imagine going back to the village to help beat back the breach. Of returning to the cottage with Harry and continuing our lives, finishing the ceremony, bearing his children instead of Travis's.

Trying to be content.

“Cass,” I whisper. Water slips down my face and into my mouth. “We're already dead. We're surrounded by it every day. And we shuffle along in our lives just like they shuffle along in theirs. It's inevitable that it invade our lives someday the way it invaded our village this morning. We aren't part of any cycle of life, Cass.”

She doesn't respond. Once I would have told Cass everything about Gabrielle. I would have shared my fears that the Sisters brought this destruction down on us all. I would have told Cass that I had proof of a world beyond the Forest.

But instead I stay silent. I peer out into the darkness, down the path that leads away from the village. Where Gabrielle came from. I place my hand against the damp ground, wondering if maybe Gabrielle paused here before entering the village. I wonder what made her choose to come down the path and if she started out alone or whether she had companions that died or left her along the way.

I want to tell Cass about Gabrielle so that she can feel the same hope I do. But I'm afraid that Cass will only speak aloud the dark fears that seep through my thoughts: that Gabrielle's story is not one of hope and that none of us can expect a happy ending.

I tug at the knots of the Binding rope on my wrist, twisting them, fraying the ends, trying to loosen them. But they hold tight.