“How long are we supposed to stay here?” I asked. Mom hadn’t told me anything besides for now; I hoped she’d given Leon clearer instructions. I shook the quilt free of insects and settled myself on the bed with my bag. I’d been too agitated to pay attention to my packing, and now I discovered I had three pairs of underwear and maybe one bra, and the only shorts I’d brought were the ones I was wearing.

“I don’t know,” Leon said.

“So, indefinitely?”

“Until the danger passes. Look, I don’t like this any more than you do.”

“And what if the danger doesn’t pass? Are we just supposed to live here?”

His gaze slid from mine.

I sat up straight, letting my bag fall to the floor. “Mom told you something.”

“No. It’s a contingency plan the Kin have always had in place. If one Circle is compromised, the survivors take refuge at another.”

“Has that ever happened before?”

“Not that there are any records of. My grandfather told me he thought it might have come about because of the attacks that occurred before the Kin were organized. The first Harrowings.”

I nodded. Esther had mentioned that to me, briefly—how the Kin had been scattered once, roaming the earth instead of staying close to the Circles. Without Guardians watching to contain the Harrowers that had broken free from Beneath, the Kin had been easy prey.

But if our Circle was compromised, if the Beneath broke through, it wouldn’t stop there. I knew that much. It would target the next Circle, and the next. Until there was no refuge. Until Harrowers could slip through anywhere, everywhere, hunt down the Kin to the far edges of the earth.

Unless Mom and the other Guardians could stop it. And they didn’t even have a plan.

Iris’s voice whispered into me. You have to do it. You’re the only one who can.

And Daniel’s voice echoing. The Remnant was never the one who decides it. You are.

I slumped onto the bed. I couldn’t do anything this far from the Circle—kill Gideon or cut the connection or whatever other solution I still hadn’t found—even if I’d known what to do.

Leon was clearly still angry with me. He crawled up onto the bed and turned to his side, facing away from me. He was wearing his boxers and undershirt, resting on top of the quilt rather than under it, even though I’d rid the sheets of anything, living or dead, that might have occupied them. I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling. I felt all knotted up inside. Like I wanted to kick something, or just run around outside and scream. I hated being up here, in the stillness of the warm July night, where I couldn’t do anything but wait and worry. I hated that Leon wouldn’t talk to me.

I turned to look at him. He was as close to the edge as he could get without toppling over. Part of me wanted to just give him a shove and listen to him crash to the floor. The other part of me wanted to grab him and pull him to me. I did neither. Instead, I closed my eyes and rolled away from him.

I wasn’t certain how I managed to sleep. For a while I drifted in a strange, half-conscious state, imagining that shapes in the darkness were creeping toward me. Sometimes they were shadows, peeling off the walls and leaving thick black footprints wherever they stepped. I watched them move about the room, rearranging themselves and standing frozen against the furniture whenever I looked directly at them, like some ghostly game of Red Light/Green Light. But when I turned on my phone, beaming light about the room, I found everything in its proper place. No shadows shuffling along the floor, no twisting shapes. Once, I reached over to touch Leon’s shoulder, to make certain he hadn’t somehow disappeared. He was asleep, his breathing even, rising and falling beneath my hand. I considered turning and curling against him, but I knew he didn’t want me there. Eventually, my eyes closed and stayed closed, and when I woke again I was alone in the bed, and sunlight was streaming into the cabin. I grabbed my phone and checked my messages. Mom had texted two hours earlier to say she was fine, but not to come home yet.

“What are we even supposed to do here?” I asked, roaming restlessly about the cabin, which made the toad in the bathroom croak in alarm. “We shouldn’t have left. We should be fighting.”

Sitting at the table, Leon shot me a sour look. “Why are you yelling at me? You think it was my idea to run and hide?”

“You agreed to it.”

“You’ll notice I’m not here alone.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“Neither did I. Lucy said she was sending you away from the Circle. You’re my charge. I go where you go.”

And then he got up and left the cabin, because apparently going where I went didn’t involve remaining in my direct vicinity.

The rest of the day was miserable. The weather was beautiful—the air warm but not sweltering, the sun undisturbed by even the smallest wisps of clouds. Down at the lake, the water shimmered so bright it was blinding, and even though I’d forgotten bug spray, most of the mosquitoes left me alone. But I was in turmoil. The world was falling apart all around me, the ground giving way with each step. I shouldn’t be there.

Something was happening in the Cities, even now—I felt it, in that quiet, hidden space at the rim of my senses, that slight tingle that made goose bumps rise along my arms. There was a charge in the air all around me, waiting, like an indrawn breath. Almost-Knowings, Gram had called them—those moments when the universe begins to shift. I’d felt it before, the day we had met Drew, the day he’d told us of Val’s visions. I felt it now. Something unseen had slipped into my thoughts as we left the Cities. It had been with us on the road, in each bend of the highway, with every mile that fell away behind us. It had followed us here. It whispered that this was not where I needed to be. It urged me to go back.

And then there was Leon. After driving into town that afternoon to pick up more supplies, he spent the rest of the day wandering about outside the cabin and brooding. I tried to explain to him why I couldn’t tell him about Gideon, why I couldn’t tell anyone, but whenever I brought up the subject, he just got that closed-off look in his eyes, and told me we had other things to worry about.

“Can we please talk about this for a minute?” I asked, standing just outside the cabin while the last of the sunset flared on the horizon. He’d been heading inside, but I stepped in front of him, closing the door before he could escape me. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m really sorry.”

He folded his arms in front of him. “You’re not, though. If you had to do it again, you’d do the same damn thing.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m not sorry.”

“That’s exactly what it means.”

“Then what else do you want me to say? How are we supposed to get past this?” As soon as the words left my mouth, a horrible thought struck me—maybe he didn’t want to get past this. Maybe that was the entire point. He’d basically said that already. He was only there with me because I was his charge. Because he had to be. My chest tightened. I sucked in breaths, but somehow I couldn’t get enough oxygen. “I need you to forgive me,” I said.

“Audrey…”

“I need you to forgive me. I can’t stand this. I can’t have you hating me.” I didn’t even care that I was begging. My entire body had gone cold; I couldn’t stop shivering. I just stood there staring up at him, clutching my arms against me.

His gaze flicked away. “I don’t hate you.”

“Thanks,” I choked out.

“Look,” he said, retreating a step and running a hand through his hair. “Me being pissed at you doesn’t mean I don’t love you, it just means that I’m pissed.”

My heart came to a stop. I knew he’d spoken other words. I’d seen his mouth moving, but all I heard was—“You love me?”

He scowled. I had no idea how he could say something like that while looking as irritated as he did. “You know how I feel about you.”