GOOD BYE LENA

He tossed the documents onto the mattress.

I looked at them without touching them. An identity that was not mine, printed in clean ink on credentials that would get me through a border I had no business crossing. The leather pouch landed beside them a second later. I pulled it open and found a silver dagger, blade no longer than my palm, handle wrapped in dark cord.

"The blade is for emergencies you might come across on the road." He said it as an afterthought. "Don't get ideas about running. Scouts will be on your trail until you cross into Red River's territory. After that you're on your own."

I turned the dagger over in my hand once, testing the weight, then slid it into the hidden pocket I had sewn into the stranger's coat three hours ago while the camp slept. The pocket sat flush against my ribs. You would not find it unless you knew where to look, and Brian had never looked at me carefully enough for that to be a concern.

"Anything else I should know about the monster?"

Brian's eyes glittered. A look crossed his face that resembled anticipation, like he was enjoying the fact that he knew what waited for me and I didn't. "When you get there, you will know." He turned toward the door, then paused with his hand on the frame. "Try not to get killed before your first report. Also," he added, without turning around, "it's best you leave quietly before my son finds out his toy is being taken away."

The door shut.

I stayed on the mattress. The knife was warm against my ribs already, picking up my body heat like it belonged there. The rage came in one clean wave. I am not going there to survive you, Brian. I am going there to end you.

I held that thought the way you hold hot coal. At the right distance.

Lena came ten minutes later.

She moved quietly, her tiny frame from malnutrition barely too space and her footsteps light as a feather. She had bread and dried meat folded into a cloth, and she pressed them into my hands without a word, curled my fingers shut around them like she was sealing a promise. Then she reached into her apron and pressed a second blade against my palm. Smaller than the dagger. Easy to hide anywhere.

I looked up at her.

Her eyes were wet. Her tears fighting to fall, she must have been holding it since she heard.

My heart ached badly at the thought of leaving her here alone with the evil monster AIpha Brain. But what could I do? I can't even save myself. I reached up and tried to wipe her tears before they fell and then my own came harder than I meant them to, and for a moment I just let them because there was no one here but her and she already knew everything about me that mattered.

We had each other's backs in this hell hole. She had hidden food for me. I had talked her through the nights that were too quiet. She had cleaned wounds I could not reach. I had lied to Brian's guards about her whereabouts on the nights she needed to disappear. Neither of us had ever named what that was. We had not needed to.

I wrapped my arms around her and held on. Who's going to have my back in Red River?

She smelled like flour and dirt and something underneath both of those things that was just her. She held me back, fiercely like she knew this was the last time and was not going to waste it being careful about it.

When she pulled back her hand moved to the bite on my shoulder, touching it gently,

"That mark doesn't own you," she said. Her voice was steady even though her eyes were not. "Neither does the one who gave it."

She left before I could answer. I stood in the middle of the room holding two blades and a cloth full of food and whispered, “thank you," at the retreating figure.

I ate the bread in four bites. Changed into the traveling dress they had left folded on the floor. Then I sat with my back against the wall and sharpened both blades until the sky outside the small gap in the ceiling turned the color of old bruises, purple going grey at the edges. Dawn was close but not here yet.

At dawn two guards came for me. They did not speak. They walked me through the back of camp to the main gate, the route that avoided the central fire, and most especially, Ben.