I stopped two long strides away from her, my body tensed to run. She made no aggressive move toward me, but I could not relax my muscles. This was not like meeting the Seeker on the highway-I didn’t have the usual sensation of safety that I felt around the gentle others of my kind. Again, the strange conviction that she would live long after I was gone swept through me.

Don’t be ridiculous. Ask her your questions. Have you come up with any?

“So, what do you want? Did you request permission to kill me personally, Melanie?” the Seeker hissed.

“They call me Wanda here,” I said.

She flinched slightly when I opened my lips to speak, as if expecting me to shout. My low, even voice seemed to upset her more than the scream she anticipated.

I examined her face while she glared at me with her bulging eyes. It was dirty, stained with purple dust and dried sweat. Other than that, there wasn’t a mark on it. Again, this gave me an odd ache.

“Wanda,” she repeated in a flat voice. “Well, what are you waiting for? Didn’t they give you the okay? Were you planning to use your bare hands or my gun?”

“I’m not here to kill you.”

She smiled sourly. “To interrogate me, then? Where are your instruments of torture, human?”

I cringed. “I won’t hurt you.”

Insecurity flickered across her face and then vanished behind her sneer. “What are they keeping me for, then? Do they think I can be tamed, like your pet soul?”

“No. They just… they didn’t want to kill you until they had… consulted me. In case I wanted to talk to you first.”

Her lids lowered, narrowing her protruding eyes. “Do you have something to say?”

I swallowed. “I was wondering…” I only had the same question I’d been unable to answer for myself. “Why? Why couldn’t you let me be dead, like the rest of them? Why were you so determined to hunt me down? I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I just wanted… to go my own way.”

She leaped up onto her toes, shoving her face toward mine. Someone moved behind me, but I couldn’t hear more than that-she was shouting in my face.

“Because I was right!” she shrieked. “More than right! Look at them all! A vile nest of killers, lurking in wait! Just like I thought, only so much worse! I knew you were out here with them! One of them! I told them there was danger! I told them!”

She stopped, panting, and took a step back from me, staring over my shoulder. I didn’t look away to see what had made her retreat. I assumed it had something to do with what Jeb had just told me-once the guns come up, she backs right down. I analyzed her expression for a moment as her heavy breathing slowed.

“But they didn’t listen to you. So you came for us alone.”

The Seeker didn’t answer. She took another step back from me, doubt twisting her expression. She looked oddly vulnerable for a second, as if my words had stripped away the shield she’d been hiding behind.

“They’ll look for you, but in the end, they never believed you at all, did they?” I said, watching as each word was confirmed in her desperate eyes. It made me very sure. “So they won’t take the search further than that. When they don’t find you, their interest will fade. We’ll be careful, as usual. They won’t find us.”

Now I could see true fear in her eyes for the first time. The terrible-to her-knowledge that I was right. And I felt better for my nest of humans, my little family. I was right. They would be safe. Yet, incongruously, I didn’t feel any better for myself.

I had no more questions for the Seeker. When I walked away, she would die. Would they wait until I was far enough not to hear the shot? Was there anywhere in the caves that was far enough for that?

I stared at her angry, fearful face, and I knew how deeply I hated her. How much I never wanted to see that face again for the rest of my lives.

The hate that made it impossible for me to allow her to die.

“I don’t know how to save you,” I whispered, too low for the humans to hear. Why did that sound like a lie in my ears? “I can’t think of a way.”

“Why would you want to? You’re one of them!” But a spasm of hope sparked in her eyes. Jeb was right. All the bluster, all the threats… She wanted very much to stay alive.

I nodded at her accusation, a little absently because I was thinking hard and fast. “But still me,” I murmured. “I don’t want… I don’t want…”

How to finish that sentence? I didn’t want… the Seeker to die? No. That wasn’t true.

I didn’t want… to hate the Seeker? To hate her so much that I wanted her to die. To have her die while I hated her. Almost as if she died because of my hate.

If I truly did not want her death, would I be able to think of a way to save her? Was it my hate that was blocking an answer? Would I be responsible if she died?

Are you insane? Melanie protested.

She’d killed my friend, shot him dead in the desert, broken Lily’s heart. She’d put my family in danger. As long as she lived, she was a danger to them. To Ian, to Jamie, to Jared. She would do everything in her power to see them all dead.

That’s more like it. Melanie approved of this train of thought.

But if she dies, and I could have saved her if I’d wanted to… who am I then?

You have to be practical, Wanda. This is a war. Whose side are you on?

You know the answer to that.

I do. And that’s who you are, Wanda.

But… but what if I could do both? What if I could save her life and keep everyone here safe at the same time?

A heavy wave of nausea rolled in my stomach as I saw the answer I’d been trying to believe didn’t exist.

The only wall I’d ever built between Melanie and me crumbled to dust.

No! Mel gasped. And then screamed, NO!

The answer I must have known I would find. The answer that explained my strange premonition.

Because I could save the Seeker. Of course I could. But it would cost me. A trade. What had Kyle said? A life for a life.

The Seeker stared at me, her dark eyes full of venom.

CHAPTER 50.Sacrificed

The Seeker scrutinized my face while Mel and I fought.

No, Wanda, no!

Don’t be stupid, Mel. You of all people should see the potential of this choice. Isn’t this what you want?

But even as I tried to look at the happy ending, I couldn’t escape the horror of this choice. This was the secret I should die to protect. The information I’d been desperate to keep safe no matter what hideous torture I was put through.

This was not the kind of torture I’d expected: a personal crisis of conscience, confused and complicated by love for my human family. Very painful, nevertheless.

I could not claim to be an expatriate if I did this. No, I would be purely a traitor.

Not for her, Wanda! Not for her! Mel howled.

Should I wait? Wait until they catch another soul? An innocent soul whom I have no reason to hate? I’ll have to make the decision sometime.

Not now! Wait! Think about this!

My stomach rolled again, and I had to hunch my body forward and take a deep breath. I just managed not to gag.

“Wanda?” Jeb called in concern.

I could do it, Mel. I could justify letting her die if she was one of those innocent souls. I could let them kill her then. I could trust myself to make an objective decision.

But she’s horrible, Wanda! We hate her!

Exactly. And I can’t trust myself. Look at how I almost didn’t see the answer…

“Wanda, you all right?”

The Seeker glared past me, toward Jeb’s voice.

“Fine, Jeb,” I gasped. My voice was breathy, strained. I was surprised at how bad it sounded.

The Seeker’s dark eyes flickered between us, unsure. Then she recoiled from me, cringing into the wall. I recognized the pose-remembered exactly how it felt to hold it.