I leaned toward him and tried to pitch my voice so low that Jamie wouldn’t hear me clearly. “Why prolong the inevitable? Will it get easier or harder for him?”

I thought I knew the answer to my last question. I ducked under Ian’s hand and broke into a run, sprinting for the exit.

“Wanda!” Jamie called after me.

Someone quickly shushed him. There were no footsteps behind me. They must have seen the wisdom of letting me go.

The hall was dark and deserted. If I was lucky, I’d be able to cut around the edge of the big garden plaza in the dark with no one the wiser.

In all my time here, the one thing I’d never found was the way out. It seemed as if I’d been down every tunnel time and again, and I’d never seen an opening I hadn’t eventually explored in search of one thing or another. I thought about it now as I crept through the deepest shadowed corners of the big cave. Where could the exit be? And I thought about this: if I could figure that puzzle out, would I be able to leave?

I couldn’t think of anything worth leaving for—certainly not the desert waiting outside, but also not the Seeker, not the Healer, not my Comforter, not my life before, which had left such a shallow impression on me. Everything that really mattered was with me here. Jamie. Though he would kill me, Jared. I couldn’t imagine walking away from either of them.

And Jeb. Ian. I had friends now. Doc, Trudy, Lily, Wes, Walter, Heath. Strange humans who could overlook what I was and see something they didn’t have to kill. Maybe it was just curiosity, but regardless of that, they were willing to side with me against the rest of their tight-knit family of survivors. I shook my head in wonder as I traced the rough rock with my hands.

I could hear others in the cavern, on the far side from me. I didn’t pause; they could not see me here, and I’d just found the crevice I was looking for.

After all, there was really only one place for me to go. Even if I could somehow have guessed the way to escape, I would still have gone this way. I crept into the blackest darkness imaginable and hurried along my way.

CHAPTER 27: Undecided

CHAPTER 27

Undecided

I felt my way back to my prison hole.

It had been weeks and weeks since I’d been down this particular corridor; I hadn’t been back since the morning after Jared had left and Jeb had set me free. It seemed to me that while I lived and Jared was in the caves, this must be where I belonged.