Jed starts to laugh, the sound low and bitter. He is on me before I can move, his fingers around my throat as he pushes me back and back. My legs tangle in my skirt and I fall against the fence, feel its rusty metal links digging through my clothes. “I see, Mary. You take pleasure in this, don't you.” His black hair is wild around his face. He bares his teeth. “I get mad at you for allowing our mother to become one of them and so now you can be smug that my wife will become one as well?”

I feel Unconsecrated fingers through my hair and I buck against the fence and try to scream but Jed has cut off any sound I can make. I thrash against him, my eyes rolling back in my head as all I can smell is death and decay and I'm desperate. Suddenly, he seems to realize what he's doing, what he's done, and he drops his hands.

I push away from him, away from the fence, and stumble down the path clutching the pinched skin of my neck. My breath comes in ragged gasps, tears burn my eyes and my body shakes with rage born of the terror I just experienced.

I've taken only a few steps when I hear him. “Mary, please.” His voice has lost its wild edge.

“Please, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.” He is sobbing now, sounding like the little boy I grew up with. I stop but don't turn back.

“I cannot lose her,” he says to me. “If you had ever been in love you would understand.” I spin around. “Don't tell me about love!” I roar. “Don't ever tell me what I know and do not know about love. Your situation is not about love. You are a Guardian. Killing the Unconsecrated is what you are trained to do. You've put us all in danger by keeping her alive.

You know the rules.”

He rubs a hand over his face. He's sitting in the middle of the path, his knees bent, one arm wrapped around his legs.

“Love is not something our village has ever cared about,” he says, looking out into the Forest.

“It's always been about the bloodlines, about preserving ourselves and taking care not to intermarry.” He tosses his hand at the Unconsecrated scraping at the fence. “It has always been about surviving them.”

I think about Harry and the Sisterhood's edict that I marry him and I cross my arms over my chest.

“The Sisterhood has it wrong,” he says. “It's not about surviving. It should be about love.

When you know love … that's what makes this life worth it. When you live with it every day.