I thought my foot might fall off my leg with all the walking. It hung heavy after my ankle, burning with pain each step I took. Nadia did her best to help, but I still put as much weight as I could on my own legs, trying to spare her. When a wooden shack came into view on the edge of the road, I breathed out in relief.

"What is it?" Nadia asked, following my gaze to the flat board roof and the muddy floor.

"A bus stop," I replied.

I steered us across the road and to the open side of the shack. Inside, a plank fastened to the walls served as a bench, and she lowered me down. I grimaced and finally checked on the ankle. It was the one I had landed hard on when we were leaving Rumonin, and it was at least sprained— if not broken. At the least the bitter cold took care of some swelling, but it still damn hurt.

Nadia stood by the front of the shack, looking out toward the hazy outline of the very tops of the homes that marked the outskirts of Ètrevay. We were only a few minutes drive away from the city, which made my skin go clammy.

"Do you think they're still running the bus routes?" she asked, staring down the pocked road that looked dishearteningly abandoned.

"Why wouldn't they?"

She twisted a hand around one of the thin supports keeping the roof up. "With everything going on in Rumonin, they might not want ways for rebels to get into their cities." She glanced back at me. "They blocked off the trains to the Triplet Cities."

"It doesn't come that close to Rumonin. The other end of the bus line ends at the Flauns border," I said. "Besides, even if they thought that was too close to Rumonin and the others, they wouldn't have it shut down this far inland. What would the workers do who live out in the country?"

"Move to Ètrevay?"

"Well, I'm sure they don't want their capital city suddenly flooding with people. Keeping the bus routes open is easier to manage."

She sighed, but didn't argue anymore. I wanted her to. She'd done enough silent agreeing back with that devil in Rumonin. If she wanted to tell me I was an idiot, she should. But, I couldn't bring myself to tell her. Even that felt like scolding, and she didn't deserve it.

We waited a few hours in the shack, watching as the sun rose high in the gray sky and thawed the frozen mud. I leaned my head against the wall, watching Nadia wrap a hand under the scarf around her hair and tugging it loose. Her dark brown hair spilled over her shoulders, frizzy with humidity and clumped with dirt and grime. But I still wanted to run my hands through it, marvelling at how long it was. She glanced back at me and I held out my hand. Crossing into the shadows, she locked her fingers around mine and curled onto the bench, tucking her feet under her skirt.

It had been so long with nothing on the roads but a few scattered birds, that I doubted myself about the buses. But finally, the sound of an engine rumbled through the air and the shine of sun on a glass windscreen flashed over a hill toward Ètrevay. I pivoted up by leaning onto my food leg and limped out of the shack and to the edge of the road. The mud sucked at my boots and a chill wind made me squint. As I watched the green bus draw closer, Nadia pressed up beside me.

The driver spotted us and slowed his vehicle down. The brakes groaned, and I took a step back to allow him to pull close to us. I felt a small pit of panic flutter in my stomach, wondering if we could trust the portly man with his large mustache and dirty hands. He glared at us and my mind leaped to images of him grabbing a gun from his jacket and levelling it at us. It felt so real, the glint of gun-metal and the sneer of his face as he pulled the trigger, that I had to blink rapidly to get my mind to see that he was merely sitting there, empty-handed and staring. There was no gun. He was not sneering. My heart slammed against my ribs and sweat beaded along my upper lip.

The man pushed open his door with his heavy boot and jerked his chin at us.

"Loen au pierou?" he asked.

Where are you going?

Old Flaunsian lessons resurfaced, jerking me out of my paralyzed state. I quickly ran through the few rules I remembered, trying to formulate an answer for him.

"Ah... Roen au perour Ètrevay." It was horrendous Flaunsian. I was not sure I had properly conjugated any of it, and my accent was unmistakably Rumoni. But perhaps it was what convinced the driver to take pity on us.

He rolled his eyes and beckoned us in with a few more words muttered in Flaunsian too quick for me to catch. They could have been comfort or curse. We piled into the bus and shuffled down the narrow aisle between the rusty seats. We joined only a handful of other passengers, but their emerald green uniforms made my shoulders tighten. Flaunsian soldiers. I swallowed and put a hand on Nadia's back, guiding her past them and to the back of the bus. We sat down and the bus lurched forward.

Nadia and I kept our eyes trained out the window. A pulsing behind my eyes only felt relief when I leaned my head against the glass, letting the cold seep through. Nadia wrapped her arm through mine, alerting me. I glanced at her, taking in the crease in her brow and her gaze fixed on the soldiers in front of us.

At first, the soldiers' interest was passing. It was probably rare for them to see anyone from Rumonin during these times, but soon their gazes sharpened and they lingered on the scabs and bruises littering my face. Then their eyes travelled up to my cropped hair and flea-bitten scalp.

They recognized another soldier.

The atmosphere grew dark in the bus, and I tried to look as uninterested as I could to try and dissuade them from trying to get a rise from either of us. What they thought of the revolutionaries wasn't hard to guess. No one with a monarchy wanted anything to do with the citizens who had killed their own. These Flaunsians had to know that I had fought for the Vigilant Men. No one else had such wretched looking soldiers.

I wanted to scream at them that I loved the monarchy as much as they. I wanted to tell them how I lay awake each night, disgusted with the lives I'd taken and the things I'd done under the Vigilant Men's orders. But I couldn't. What good would a scene do, if it would only get us kicked off the bus?

I closed my eyes, hoping that they were just as tired of fighting as I was. Maybe we all wanted one quiet bus ride among the battles we fought everywhere else.

A few more minutes passed, and the bus traveled through the outskirts of Ètrevay and into the city center. Once in the proper city, the roads clogged with traffic, mostly motorcars. Unlike in Rumonin, the owners drove their own vehicles, bundled up in furs and goggles, but still proudly driving everywhere. It also meant that few of them had properly learned to drive, and the rules of the road were more like guidelines.

The bus driver cursed many times in Flaunsian, some of the few words that I remembered with ease from my tutoring. He waved his fist at other motorists and made liberal use of his brakes. The Flaunsian soldiers grumbled at his driving as he spit out his window at a speeding motorcar. Finally, to everyone's relief, he pulled into a little inlet made for the purpose.

The bus driver kicked open his door and turned in his seat and shouted something to the soldiers. They got up, trudging past him and out the door, all too quick to get away from him. Once the bus was empty, he stared right at Nadia and myself.

"Finish stop," he boomed in shattered Rumoni. I merely blinked at him at first, trying to sort through his accent like he'd had to sort through mine earlier. "Finish stop. Finish stop." He waved his hand at the door and made exaggerated expressions as if that would make us understand any better.

"Let's get out of here before anything happens," I whispered to Nadia, taking her hand.

We walked through the aisle, past the driver, and I prayed the whole way out the door that no one would grab us, no pistols would be drawn, no one would stop us. My lungs burned as I held my breath, and Nadia's hand in mine was slick with sweat. Whether hers or mine, I couldn't tell.

The bus driver didn't even acknowledge us as we stepped out onto the frozen sidewalk. He merely closed the door, and then the bus rattled off into the traffic once again.

Our boots crunched in the snow, sending echoes crashing through my skull. The crunch underfoot of bones and ashes, the smell of burning, the boom of cannons and the flash of guns...

I clenched my head, trying to blink away the visions like I'd done with the bus driver. Nadia stood a few feet away, staring at the buildings with huge eyes and her mouth slightly opened. Though my stomach heaved, I didn't want to interrupt her marvel. It had been so long since I'd seen her so enraptured and caught in the moment. She didn't look worried or scared, only stunned by a city so different from the wreck of Rumonin.

So I stepped back, letting her enjoy her first taste of the splendor of Flauns' Sun City.