The velvet sounds of the night whispered all around us. Somewhere an owl called. A carpet of pine needles and fallen leaves lay beneath us, the sky an ebony blanket.

Kaden rolled over to face me, the moonlight shining on his long golden curls. His lips were soft against mine. Fall's first breath was here, but I was warm with him beside me.

Then the dream changed—no longer comforting. It tilted sideways, blurring.

A crack sounded in the forest. Kaden sat up in his sleeping bag. I wanted to reach out to him, but I couldn't move. Couldn't speak. The dark forest stretched out all around, the shadows growing monstrous.

"Who's there?" Kaden called out.

Then he stood, his warmth gone. The shadows in the trees had turned into men. I was frozen, trapped, unable to move as they came closer.

"Run, Ara. Run."

~

"Ara. Ara, wake up."

I jolted awake, breathing hard. Reality hit me like a slap as cold as the wind. Kaden was gone, and I sat inside a barred cart pulled by horses, the ruins of a city passing outside. Izzie's head lay cradled on my lap, the only point of warmth on my body. She stared up at me with wide, innocent eyes that seemed too big on her small face. She'd clung to me ever since that first terrifying night when Kaden and I had been ambushed. After three years of the plague and meeting only one other female survivor, being captured, separated from Kaden, and then thrown into a wagon of women had been shocking—and astonishing.

"You were talking in your sleep again," Izzie said. "You said Kaden. Were you dreaming about him?"

"Yeah, I was," I said. Every time I closed my eyes I relived the terrifying memory. "I'm worried about him."

Kaden and I had spent the spring and summer traveling north, following my father's map to The Last City, always avoiding people as we went. Even as the nights grew colder, the leaves turning, we had been happy, cocooned in our own perfect world. Until that night. We were ambushed by men who offered us a bargain: if I would join them and their wagon of women heading to The Last City, they would leave Kaden alive—tied to a tree, with only a small knife to cut his way free, but alive. The alternative was they killed Kaden and took me anyway. Kaden's final words were that he'd find me in The Last City. It had been three weeks since I'd seen him. Three weeks of life inside this jail cell of a cart.

"Maybe he's already in The Last City," Izzie said, a tentative smile breaking over her face. At eleven, she was the youngest and most hopeful of us. "Maybe he's waiting for you."

I tugged her hat closer around her head—her honey-colored hair had been shaved short, offering little protection against the ever-present cold. "Of course he is." I didn't voice my true fear: that we would come to The Last City and Kaden wouldn't be there. That something horrible would have happened to him and I would be trapped in some new place, unable to help him.

Kaden can take care of himself. He'll be there. Just focus on getting yourself there in one piece.

I took in the area surrounding us, surprised at how much it had changed in a few hours. When I'd gone to sleep we'd traveled down little more than a muddy, pitted trench through a northern forest. Now dilapidated houses and businesses with long-since-faded signs crept up against the road. Stretching out as far as the eye could see lay the ruins of a city.

My heart suddenly beat faster, and I pressed against the chain-link to look farther into the ruins. "Izzie . . . is this . . . ?"

"The Last City?" She sat up straight, her voice tinged with excitement. "Yeah, I think we're almost there."

Longing pulled in my chest as I watched birds wheeling through the clear, cold sky. Kaden and I had journeyed for months—through mountains, through ruins, over rivers, facing desperate men and infected animals—and now I was nearly there. Now we would find each other again. I'd already heard the guards talking. They said the surviving population lived in the far corner of the city, behind some sort of wall. They'd also claimed that all the women brought to the city were protected and kept safe.

Here's hoping Kaden is already there, waiting for me with Father and Emma. It felt like a bit too much to hope for.

The cart I sat in—little more than a wooden bottom with chain-link sides and top—was pulled by four horses and currently housed eight women. Judging by the smell, the cart had once been used for livestock and had been repurposed to bring female prisoners to The Last City—just as my father had warned me. From what I'd heard from the other women in the wagon, the men who drove the wagon hunted women, making a meandering journey through cities and towns, searching for female survivors to bring back to The Last City. To my surprise, most of the women in the cart had come willingly. They believed the stories of The Last City offering sanctuary to women—and dismissed the warnings in my father's letter.

"How long till we make it to The Last City?" I called out to the nearest guard. I didn't trust them, wasn't convinced we'd be safe, city or no city. My father had taught me too well for that. In the back of my mind hummed my purpose: find my father, find the truth, find Kaden.

"We get there when we get there," he said gruffly, drawing away from the cart before I could ask more.

Izzie leaned into my warmth and squeezed my hands. Together we watched as the ruins of the city grew thicker around us—like walking deeper into the wilds of a forest made of metal and concrete and brick. There were buildings with collapsed roofs, houses scorched black, and the ever-present red X: the mark of the infected. Fall was in full effect, trees of deep gold, red, and purple adding color to the otherwise dull gray monotony. In Boise it wasn't nearly so cold in the fall, but here a piercing breeze wove through the buildings and dark clouds, blotting out the sun. Snow clung to the deepest shadows and recesses, which meant the first snow had already fallen. Every now and then we passed the remains of a bonfire, some with birds perched atop the charred remains, watching our cart pass with beady, wanting eyes.

"Do you see that?" I leaned forward and curled my fingers through the cold chain-link. There, on the wall of a house facing the highway was a mark I'd seen just once before—at the beginning of summer. Painted on the door of my house.

A black spiral. Despite the numbing cold, my blood beat hot and fast.

"What is it?" Izzie flinched back from the fencing.

I moved down the bench, not taking my eyes off the mark as we rolled by. "That black spiral. On the house. Have you ever seen that before? Anyone?"

She shook her head no. No one else replied.

"Hey, what does that mark on the house mean?" I called out to the guard again. He ignored me, my voice swallowed by the sounds of the horses' hooves on pavement and the low moan of the wind through the ruins.

"Anything out there?" Rosia called from the back of the cart, where she and the other five women huddled for warmth. With only one eye, and a shaved head, Rosia looked frightening at first—but she cared for the other women like they were her own family.

"A black spiral painted on a wall. Know what that means?" I tried again. My fahter's letter mentioned it was the mark of the city—so why was it out here in the ruins, and why had it been on our door? The cart rolled on, the mark gone now. Something in me desperately wanted to go back. My father trained me to always be alert, to search for the small details that others overlooked. It was the mark of a good hunter and a true survivor. And something about the spiral felt important . . . and maybe dangerous.

Rosia shrugged. "I've only seen the red X."

A flash of movement came from high above in one of the windows and I twisted my head to follow, but it was gone.

"I'll keep a lookout for it," Izzie said, distracting me. Already I wondered if I'd just imagined the movement—life in this moving prison could do that. "Maybe we'll see it again."

"Thanks." I pulled her close, shivering into her warmth, not missing the way she lit up when I did so. "Did I miss anything else interesting while I was asleep?"

"A couple of dragons fighting a unicorn. A few alien spaceships. A fountain of youth and a time machine offering free rides back to before the plague. The usual."

The older sister in me saw straight through her teasing. She was afraid and trying to hide it. Most of the other women in the cart were old enough to be my mother, but Izzie was little more than a child.

"How about I tell you a story," I said, deciding to distract her.

"Yes! One about Emma."

For a moment words failed me. It was hard to talk about my little sister—not just because Izzie reminded me of her, but because Father and I had left her when she was infected. Only because I'd found a note from my father, hidden in my childhood home, did I hope that she might still be alive. In that note, now tucked against my chest, my father had warned me how dangerous The Last City would be—and that Emma might be there. And the black spiral on our door in Boise is the same mark as the one here. Maybe it means she really is there. My heart soared at the thought, and finally I found words to say, "What kind of story about Emma?"

"A warm one." She snuggled closer into me.

"One summer day, a long time ago," I began, "Emma and I decided to build a go-cart and—"

"You told me this one already. Tell me a new story." Her voice was petulant, demanding, so much like Emma it hurt. "One you've never told anyone. A secret." The others in the cart didn't turn, but I could sense they were listening now.

I settled back, and sighed, thinking hard. A secret . . . I don't have many secrets anymore. Over the long summer Kaden and I had spent journeying through the mountains, I had told him everything—how I missed my father, how I wished I would have said goodbye to my mother, how I feared I could never atone for leaving my sister.

In turn, Kaden had told me his own secrets and regrets. How he felt it was his fault his brother Sam and father figure Issac had died. How, if he had taken over the clan from Gabriel, maybe none of it would have happened. Maybe the only thing I'd kept from him was my fear that he would blame me for everything he'd lost. He never faltered, not once, even when I began to doubt The Last City existed. He knew me in a way no one ever had . . .

. . . except for Emma.

Which was when I realized there was one story I'd never told him. One story I hadn't wanted to. The cold wind brought scents of decay, sending a shiver down my spine. Izzie squeezed my hand—just like Emma had a day long ago.

"Once, a long time ago," I said, "Emma and I went up into the foothills. We weren't supposed to go alone, but we did anyway." I fell deeply into the memory of the girl I'd once been—one who thought she knew everything. "It was only a few weeks before the plague. Back then, I was only starting to realize that Emma was special."

"Special how?" Izzie interrupted.

"She was . . . different." I wasn't sure how else to explain it. "All her life my father told me to protect her. Not to let others see her difference: her strength and her calculating intelligence. That was why she didn't go to school and why we didn't celebrate her birthday like other kids. We were playing in the foothills, by a deep ravine, when Emma called out in the distance, and I ran to her, terrified. But what I found . . . I think that was the first moment I realized just how far I would go to protect her."

Emma's hand wrapped around mine with a strength that belied her small frame. Together we stared down at the broken body at the bottom of the ravine. My heart floundered in my chest.

"He was trying to make me go with him," Emma said, turning to me—I couldn't look away from the man. "He was going to hurt me."

Fear reached cold fingers down my throat. "Is he . . . ?" I couldn't say the word, even though I knew. His limbs sprawled at odd angles, and a dark stain spread behind his back. Instead, I whispered, "What happened?"

"He found me in the woods and said I needed to come with him. He said he knew what I was. He grabbed my arm and tried to drag me away. I ran but he chased me so I jumped the ravine—"

"You jumped the ravine?" Anger replaced fear. The ravine was narrow, only several feet wide in places, but deep. If you missed the jump, and fell in, you were dead. Which was clearly what had just happened. Emma had jumped the ravine, and the man had tried to follow her across and fallen in. I refused to consider any other explanation.

"I was just trying to get away," she said, as if she could read my thoughts. "What do we do, Ara?"

My name in her mouth snapped me back to reality. Father told me to protect her. I pulled her from the ledge and lifted her chin. I made my voice one of steel—just like Father's. "Nothing. He was a bad man. He deserved it. You did nothing wrong. We don't speak of it again and nothing bad will happen. I promise."

My words trailed off, and I realized why I'd never wanted to tell that story. It was the first moment I'd realized how Emma was different, and how terrified that difference made me feel. There had been no horror in her eyes. She hadn't been afraid, or sorry the man was dead. I never asked her to explain how the man fell into the ravine, or if it really was an accident. I didn't want to know. I only wanted to see her as my perfect little sister, afraid of nothing . . . until the day her eyes bled and we left her.

Izzie stared at me, but I couldn't meet her gaze. Only two weeks after I'd made that promise to my sister, a plague had swept over the world, taking what I thought was every woman but me, and most of the men. When the plague had come for Emma, my father and I abandoned her. I was worse than the corpse lying at the bottom of the ravine.

"Sounds to me like he deserved it," Rosia drawled out, and Izzie and I both turned to her. "He was probably a pervert. Who talks to a little girl out in the woods? Perverts, that's who."

"Did she die of the plague?" Izzie whispered.

It was suddenly hard to speak. "My mother got it first; she left to try to give us a chance. When Emma got it, my father and I left." Izzie took my hand and squeezed, only sympathy in her eyes. Sympathy I didn't deserve.

"There wasn't anything you could have done," Izzie said gently. "Maybe she's already in The Last City, safe and waiting for you."

"Maybe." I stared hard-eyed out into the ruins, trying not to think about what I would do if she wasn't there.

But Izzie wouldn't accept my sadness—that was my favorite thing about her. "You'll find her again. I know it. Your dad too. And handsome Kaden."

She made a kissy face, and this finally pulled a giggle out of me. Then a laugh when she wrapped her arms around herself and started to make ridiculous kissing faces. Okay, so maybe most of my stories featured Kaden, but I couldn't help it.

"You never told me how you and your father got split up," Izzie said. "Was it as exciting as with you and Kaden?"

I'd already regaled them all with the story of how Kaden and I had separated—the men who'd surrounded us in the dead of night. The bargain we'd struck. The horror of leaving him there, and the fear that I'd never see him again. It was the dream that haunted me every time I closed my eyes.

"You may as well tell her, Cherry," Rosia said from the back of the cart, using her nickname for me that I could only assume my auburn hair had inspired. "You know she won't stop asking till you do."

Izzie grinned at this. "She's right."

"It was three years after the plague hit," I said, caving beneath Izzie's devious grin. "Father and I were up in the mountains." Just over a year ago. It felt like a lifetime. "It had been a hard winter, and someone was following us—I think they even had an airship and dogs tracking us." I paused, remembering beneath the terror, a flicker of awe hearing the sound of airships again. "My father led them away and told me to meet up with him in three days, but he never showed. So I went back to Boise and met Kaden." I waved a hand. "You know the rest."

Rosia chimed in again. "Someone was following you . . . you mean like the perv who was following your sister?"

I stared at her in surprise, the cart jolting us over a big bump and forcing me to grab hold of the cart and Izzie. I'd never considered if there was a connection between the man at the bottom of the ravine and the men who were following my father and me in the mountains. Why would there be?

"No . . ." I said slowly, wondering why that single word felt wrong. "There's no reason for them to be connected." Or at least, no reason I can see. "But who knows. Maybe I can ask them both when we get to The Last City."

"Of course you can!" Izzie smiled, and then lowered her voice, full of longing. "Read your father's note, one more time, pretty please?"

The other women in the cart groaned—after I'd shown Izzie the note and map my father had left me she'd asked me to read it a dozen times.

"If I hear that letter one more time, I'm going to throw up," Rosia whined. "Why couldn't you have saved a spicy love letter from Kaden? That's what I want to hear."

A few other women laughed, and my cheeks burned red. I might have been a little too descriptive about our journey alone through the mountains. He will come for me, I'd told them all so confidently the first night in the wagon. But it had been three weeks without him. Then, yesterday, one of the women had been taken from the cart and never returned. The other women didn't speak of it—but I had a feeling that while most of these women were bound for The Last City, a few ended up elsewhere. I couldn't let that happen to Izzie or me.

"I used to have a different man for every day of the week," Rosia said with a dramatic sigh.

Beside me Izzie giggled, turning to me. "You said Kaden's blond with curly hair? Like a prince from a fairy tale?"

I didn't have a chance to respond before another woman chimed in: "I bet The Last City is full of handsome men."

Rosia cut in. "Who cares about the men? Hot water, and cheese, that's why I let them take me. And TV. I'd give my left tit to watch a single episode of TV again. Or hell, even football." More laughter, and now a few of the other women joined in, talking about old favorite TVs shows, hot showers, cars, airships, and fast food—everything we'd lost.

"But they've got it all back in The Last City," Rosia said, her voice full of confidence. "All of it and more."

A few of the women murmured, some in agreement, some in doubt, as Izzie and I exchanged a quick look. Before we could say more, the wagon slowed, and one of the men banged on the side. The smiles and laughter disappeared.

"Everybody out!" one of the men called out, slamming the butt of his rifle against the side of the cart. The sharp thunk made Izzie cringe into my side. "You've got five minutes to piss then it's back in."

On the ground, shuffling silently forward, the group of women was quieter, subdued, in a way that made me sad. A grizzled guard with a deep voice pointed to an alleyway between two tall brick buildings. "You've got five minutes in the alleyway. The back is blocked so don't try anything." The group of women shuffled forward silently, but when I passed he reached out and yanked me back. "Not you. You can piss here."

For a half second, I thought about reaching for the gun in his holster—my father had taught me how to disarm an opponent.

He was a bad man. That's what I'd told Emma of the man in the ravine. Maybe there were no good men or bad men in this world—maybe there were only the living and the dead.

But then Izzie turned back in line, her wide eyes meeting mine. Shame bloomed in my chest. My father had taught me to defend myself—not shoot a man in cold blood. "Go," I called to her. "I'll be fine. I'll go here." And piss on the guard's shoes while I'm at it.

Rosia grabbed Izzie's hand, giving me a worried look before she pulled her away with the rest of the group. A man with a sad attempt of a mustache came to stand beside the older guard who'd stopped me. "Why'd you keep the pretty one back?"

I stiffened at being called the "pretty one" but the older man only watched me with cruel, assessing eyes. "She's the one who talks the most," he said to the mustached guard. I suddenly wondered if my many stories had been a bad idea—I'd never imagined the guards had been listening.

"So? They all talk."

"She's different," the older one said. "Look at her, glaring at us. She's not broken."

I forced my eyes to the ground—difficult to do when the gun at the hip of the older guard practically screamed my name. I could shoot both of them before they even knew what happened. They took me captive—it would be self-defense. But there were too many to fight all on my own, and I couldn't leave Izzie.

"There's always one in every group," the older guard went on. "One who riles them up, makes them think they'd be better on their own, instead of being grateful we're risking our lives to protect them. Women like that are dangerous—like some kind of infection. You gotta be careful it doesn't get to the others. We shoulda sold her off like the other one."

Sold her off. So they had been selling off women—the words made me cold, but only more determined to get to the city with Izzie. From there I would find a way for us to be safe. I just had to make sure neither of us was sold before then. The younger man laughed at the other man's words. "You worry too much—some men like 'em fiery. Look at that hair, they want—"

But I never heard what they wanted.

Twenty feet to the left of us, a window exploded.

In a split second, chaos erupted. Gunfire shattered the day.

On the other side of the wagon, one of the guards turned to look directly at me—then spat up blood. Bullets hit the ground and walls, dirt and snow exploding all around. The guards were shouting, screaming at each other, but it didn't matter. The street we stood on was surrounded by tall buildings—we were stuck in a metal canyon with nowhere to hide. Men leaned out of the windows of the buildings above, the glint of guns flashing as they fired on our group below. The horses screamed and bolted, the cart careening down the road.

Izzie. Find Izzie.

There wasn't fear, only cold purpose. I sprinted for the alleyway where the women had disappeared. Snow and dirt exploded all around me as bullets rained down. I spun around the corner. Women huddled behind dumpsters and debris coated in ice and snow. Rosia alone kicked at a door set into the side of the building, trying unsuccessfully to force her way in. "Take cover!" I screamed at her, "Get behind something!"

"Izzie?" I called out, terrified she hadn't made it here. Maybe she was gone? But then Izzie stepped out from behind a rusted car, her eyes connecting with me, her lips forming my name. "Stay down!" I screamed.

A bullet tore into her small chest.

I watched her fall the same way I'd seen my sister die in my dreams: a thousand times over. Slow and painful and horrible.

White noise buzzed in my ears.

The gunshots, the screaming, everything faded.

There was only the vision of her wide eyes staring down at her chest. I ran to her, each step seeming to take an eternity. When I lifted her head back into my lap, just the way it had been in the wagon, her eyes stared up at mine, glassy. Unknowing.

"Izzie? Izzie? It's going to be fine. You're going to be fine." I stroked her head, the hat gone, her hair soft and fine like a dandelion's. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," I whispered.

Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Her silence said more than words ever could. Sorry isn't enough. Sorry won't bring me back. Sorry didn't save Sam, or Issac, or Emma. Sorry isn't going to save you.

I held her like that for some time—until the sounds of the battle had gone quiet and the sun slanted sideways through the ruins. The fact that I had somehow survived again felt like a curse instead of a consolation.

"Ara?"

I would have known his voice in any life. For a moment I wondered if that was what had happened: if the strange, ringing silence was the stillness of death.

Kaden crossed to my side. Only then did I look up. He found me. Just like he said he would. And yet, my heart broke yet again.

The cart and the horses were back, but the guards were gone.

No. Not gone. The snow, far too early for the season, had already half covered several lumps that hadn't been there before. Whatever guards hadn't run were dead now. Once I would have been caught up in questions of whether they deserved it, but I was too tired for those kinds of questions.

The only questions I had didn't matter anymore.

Why couldn't they have waited for us to get to the city? Why did I call out her name?

Kaden knelt in the bloody snow beside me, the two of us staring down at Izzie. I remembered one of the stories he'd told me this summer about his little sister, Kia, who had died in his arms, her final request to set the horses free. I wondered what he saw when he looked down at Izzie. Did he also see another soul he'd failed to save?

Over the long summer Kaden's hair had grown long, bleached nearly white from the sun. In the dying light of the day, it spilled around the sharp angles of his face and made him look nearly angelic—the exact opposite of the gun in his hands and the dead lying all around. But Kaden was like that—able to hold on to the good through the bad. Even here, in the midst of death, his goodness was all that kept me from tilting my head back and screaming.

"Who was she?" he said softly.

"Izzie. My friend."

"Are you hurt?"

I shook my head no, reaching out with trembling fingers to close Izzie's eyes. It didn't seem right that she'd survived a plague that killed all women, only to die just before we reached The Last City. Then I reached out and took Kaden's hand in my own, holding on to him like a tether to this world.

If you're up there, Issac, take better care of her than I did.

"We need to move, Ara," Kaden said, gently. "Some of the guards got away. They might come back. We need to take the women and get them to The Last City."

I didn't get up. There was no joy at the realization that we'd nearly made it—only anger. Anger that we'd been so close. Anger that I'd failed yet again. I barely recognized my own voice. "Why did you stop us?"

"I've been tracking you for the last week. The men lied to us. They were selling women to other buyers along the way—they weren't actually intending to bring you into The Last City. I ran into another group that was looking to set an ambush and stop them before they could sell any more women." His voice sounded heavy and sad. "None of the women were supposed to get hurt."

I couldn't look away from Izzie. In life she was small. In death, she seemed barely more than a child.

"Kaden!" Someone called. Kaden reluctantly stood, leaving me beside Izzie with the strange, sudden ache to ask them all to leave.

"This Ara?"

My name drew my eyes up against my will. A slender man stepped out into the alleyway—a rifle slung across his back, two pistols at his hips. He walked with a fluid, swaying grace I didn't see often in men. And then he pulled down a mouth scarf and head covering, and I saw why. It wasn't a man. A young woman with thick black hair, warm brown skin, and full lips stared straight at me.

I remembered what I felt the first time I met Gabriel's little sister, Addison—the wonder that came with realizing I wasn't alone in the world. It was the same feeling as when I'd been thrown into a cart of haggard women.

It wasn't what I felt looking at her.

"You killed her," I whispered. I wasn't sure if I was talking to the beautiful dark-haired woman, to Kaden, or maybe, worst of all, to myself.

"It was an accident, Ara." Kaden reached out to me—but I pulled away. "Talia didn't—"

"She was just a child," I yelled, anger exploding out of me, not caring when the other men by the wagon turned to stare at me. Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the anger disappeared, replaced by grief.

Why did I call out to Izzie? She'd come out from hiding when I called her name—I killed her the same as whoever pulled the trigger.

My breath came in heaving gasps. It felt like I was a bystander, watching myself break down, unable to do anything to stop it.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Talia said, though her voice didn't sound it. She swam in and out of focus, her voice coming at a distance. "We've wasted too much time . . . early for snow . . . need to move . . . back before dark . . ."

Only when she was gone did I finally open my eyes, finally let myself take a deep, heaving gasp. To do what I needed to do: say goodbye. Again.

"Ara—" Kaden began, but I held up a hand, cutting him off. I pulled out my father's letter, a small thing that had given her so much hope, and set it on her chest. Snow already gathered on her small form. There's nothing you can do for her anymore. I stood and forced myself to walk away, imagining her eyes watching me as I went.

Kaden walked beside me as we made our way back to the wagon, the snow drifting down, already masking the violence here. Fresh blood stained Rosia's shoulder, but it didn't slow her from gathering the other women around her, crying and hugging each of them. To my shock, they all crawled back into the wagon, Talia helping them climb back up. Then Talia turned, her gaze locked on mine as she held a hand out to me.

I stiffened and drew back. No way in hell am I going back in there.

Talia's eyes narrowed, but before she could say anything, Kaden broke in. "Ara can ride with me. My horse can hold us both."

Talia didn't respond, though I could tell from her pursed lips she had more to say. Kaden pulled me away from the wagon.

As we walked, the snow began to thicken, the wind picking up as the sky darkened. It shouldn't be this cold. It shouldn't snow in the fall. My thoughts felt disjointed, detached from my body. This far north it was a harsher, colder world. Or maybe the world had stopped caring about the rules altogether. Kaden pulled off his jacket and settled it over my shoulders. I shivered into the sudden warmth. With the storm pulling us closer, I bowed into his body. His arms came around me, holding me close.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Forgive me."

I couldn't speak, crying against him as he held me. With his arms around me I felt both whole again and irreparably broken. This was what I wanted, all I thought I needed, but still my heart felt broken.

Behind us, someone cleared their throat, and we broke apart. A teenage boy with acne and blue hair stood behind us, holding the reins of a massive black horse. "Talia wants to leave. She said storms like this can get bad fast. She thinks we can make it back before the gates close." There was clear skepticism in his voice. He tossed the horse's reins to Kaden, and I caught a full look at his outfit: even more bizarre than having blue hair in the apocalypse. He wore a long leather trench coat with a sword at one hip, a pistol at the other.

"Ara, this is Harrison," Kaden said, gesturing to the teenage boy with blue hair. "He's part of Talia's team—I was going to try to free you myself before I ran into them. They probably saved my life."

Harrison grinned at me, and I saw something else odd I hadn't seen in years. He had braces on. Damn, braces in the apocalypse. That sucks. He caught me staring, and seemed to misinterpret my gaze because he drew the sword at his hip. "It's a samurai sword. Sick, huh? I named her Jessica."

I was spared answering when Talia strode by and snapped, "Put that stupid sword away."

Harrison immediately obeyed, though I heard him mutter, "Her name is Jessica," as he made his way back to his horse.

Talia's voice lifted above the storm. "Let's move out!" Her voice echoed between the buildings. At once everyone sprung to obey, even Kaden. The man who drove the wagon saluted her as she passed, nothing ironic or mocking in the gesture.

The wagon had already begun to move, at least ten men walking alongside it—most of them without horses. In one smooth motion Kaden mounted the black horse, and then held out a hand to me. I let him pull me up.

Atop the horse, even with my arms wrapped tightly around Kaden, the world felt unsteady. The snow swirled all around us, masking the ruins, so that I could almost pretend it was the remains of Boise around us, and we were riding Kaden's old horse, Red. Ahh Red, I do miss you. Part of me hated that the world we lived in now moved on so quickly—daring to love a horse, a city, or another human being was a risk in this world. You never knew how long it would last.

"What's it like?" I called over the growing snowstorm. "The Last City."

"Like nothing you've ever seen."

Then we charged after Talia, riding toward The Last City and leaving Izzie buried in the snow behind us.

I'd gotten too good at saying goodbye.