The Deadly Nightshade (25 page)

A shocked murmur breaks out. My heart sinks. Connor’s hand squeezes mine. This can’t be real. This can’t be happening.

“Fighting with these people would only result in casualties, and I am not prepared to put lives at risk if there is an alternative. Nightshade and Connor, however much we have become acquainted with them over the past weeks, are outsiders. We do not know for sure what they have done to anger this gang, but it is their battle to fight, not ours, which is why I am ordering them to be taken and held in my house under surveillance until dawn.”

The Sweetbriarans break out into whoops and cheers. I stare at Reina in disbelief. She can’t do this. She can’t sentence us to death.

“No, this is bullshit!” I yell, advancing toward her. Nate quickly grabs me by the waist to restrain me, but I kick and squirm against him. “You’re gonna give us up and let us die after all that crap you said about how you couldn’t let us leave with a clear conscience because you would feel ‘personally responsible’ if we got killed?”

“Once we hand you over to them, you are their responsibility, not mine. I do not know for sure what will happen to you, and therefore I can continue on with my life guilt-free,” she says icily.

“Continue on with your life?” I scoff. “You really think Roman is going to just let you all live? You think he didn’t take one look at this place and decide to stake his own claim? You think he’ll just leave peacefully and never come back? I have news for you, all of you—Roman and his people have been looking for a new camp for months now, and if you think he didn’t take one look at these walls and that gate and decide he was going to take this place, you’re completely deluded. That man is the reason why Connor and I came to Sweetbriar in the first place—it was him and his people who crippled Connor’s leg. And yes, I did kill his brother, but it was in my own self-defense. If you turn us over to him, he will
butcher us.
”

Upon hearing my words, the crowd begins their frenzy again. Panic creeps into Reina’s brown eyes, and she bangs on the wooden lectern again to calm them. Turning to Nate, she orders him and the others in my hunting group to restrain us.

Nate turns to me, then back to Reina, his despair evident in his pained expression. She has forced him to make a choice: the life of the girl he supposedly loves or his loyalty to his beloved leader and town. After a moment, he looks back to Reina and shakes his head firmly.

“No,” he says.

“What did you say?” she hisses, that menacing look returning to her face.

“I said I refuse. It’s not right, Reina, and you know it.”

The leader’s eyes narrow to slits. “Are you really going to disobey me, Nate? For two outsiders, nonetheless?”

“They aren’t outsiders, but yes, I am.”

She laughs once, but there is no amusement in it. Without warning, she advances toward Nate and grabs him by the throat with both hands. Although his own hands fly to her wrists, he makes no effort to remove them or defend himself. The entire town watches in horror as their ruler mercilessly throttles her most trusted friend before their eyes. I reach to draw my katanas, but Sophia draws her bow and points it straight at my chest.

“Don’t, Nightshade. This is their fight,” she whispers.

Nate begins to wheeze desperately as Reina crushes his windpipe. The veins on the leader’s brown hands bulge and her long nails dig into his skin as her grip tightens around his neck, but the lieutenant still refuses to fight back—he could never raise a hand to her, not even when faced with the threat of death. She pulls him close to her and raises her mouth to his ear, whispering something I can’t hear over the guttural noises emanating from his throat. Finally, she releases him and he crashes to the floor, gasping for air.

After a moment, Reina crouches down beside him and whispers, “Where does your loyalty lie now, Nate?”

The lieutenant looks up at her, the fear in his eyes visible. After another minute of wheezing, he croaks, “With you.”

She takes his arm and helps him up, then the two of them turn to Connor and me. I stare at Nate, shaking my head, silently pleading with him, but his eyes drop to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” he mouths.

In the corner of my eye, I notice Sheppard leap down from the platform with a look of bitter indignation, refusing to be a part of our capture but knowing there is nothing he can do to stop it from occurring. Reina watches him go but does nothing to stop him. The preacher is greeted with a barrage of insults from the audience as he makes his way to the door. Just as he is about to exit, he turns, locks eyes with me, makes the sign of the cross in the air, and leaves.

As Nate begins to advance toward us, I go into survival mode, looking for some way out of this. But Sophia still stands with her bow pointed at me, ready to fire upon my resistance. If it was Sheppard or Nate holding that bow, or maybe even Claire, I wouldn’t hesitate to call the bluff, but not Sophia. No, this woman has a young nephew she needs to protect, and I’m sure she is thinking of him and only him right now. Besides, say I did fight back, say I did attack the people who an hour ago were my friends, say I managed to get Connor and I out of here—where would we go? If we ran to the gate Roman’s group would be there waiting for us, and if we tried to climb over the wall surely someone would stop us before we could get halfway over. We are completely, utterly screwed.

Still, every cell in my body urges me to fight my way out, to stay alive. My muscles tense and I fall into a defensive stance, my knees bent and my hands balled into fists, ready to strike anyone who comes near me and grab my katanas at any second. But Connor places a hand on my arm, a look of resignation on his face.

“Don’t fight, Nightshade,” he whispers. “You won’t win.” He turns away from me and locks eyes with Sophia, placing his hands in the air in surrender.

Realizing he is right, I reluctantly allow Nate to restrain me while Claire and Sophia do the same to him. The lieutenant removes all of my weapons and hands them over to Reina. The girls take Connor’s knife and place it on the lectern. They pat us down again to be sure they haven’t missed anything, then Nate draws his hunting knife and presses it to my throat. He grips me tightly by the back of my neck and commands me to walk. As they escort us off the platform and down onto the main level, the Sweetbriarans break out into applause, slinging curses at us as we go by. I try to turn my head to look at Connor, but Nate snaps it forward again, his hold tightening with every slight movement I make.

As they lead us out of the assembly hall, I begin to think of a plan of action. There are still hours before daybreak, which means Connor and I have plenty of time to figure out a way out of here. If there is one thing I know for sure, it’s that I am not going to die here, not by Roman’s hands. No, I am a survivor, and if there is one thing I know how to do, it is survive.             

Chapter 45

Another man and woman join our party—evidence of Reina’s distrust toward my hunting group—and Connor and I are brought to the leader’s mansion. They usher us down a flight of stairs and through an obscure hallway to a large metal door, then order us inside. I attempt to plead with Nate one last time, but he shoves me into the dimly lit room and, after Connor is inside, slams the door behind us. The lock clicks as it falls into place, but I try to open the door regardless, twisting and turning the knob to no avail. Frustrated, I pound on the door with both fists ten, twenty, thirty times until an unfamiliar man’s voice tells me to quit it. Reina has stationed guards just like she promised, and ones she knows will remain loyal to her. Ignoring him, I continue banging.

“Nightshade, stop,” says Connor. “You’re wasting your energy.”

Realizing he is right, I let out a long sigh and slide down the wall into a sitting position. Connor does the same. We sit next to each other, both of us surveying the stuffy, dark, empty room. The walls and floors are made of concrete—impossible for us to break through—and there are no windows to shatter or climb out of. From what I can see, there are no vents or ducts we could climb through, either, and considering the door is made of steel and only seems to lock from the outside that isn’t an option either. Only one small lightbulb hangs from the ceiling, shedding just enough light for me to see Connor’s face, and even in the near-darkness I can tell he is as disconcerted as I am. As we sit in our cell, I wonder if anyone else has been a prisoner to these walls and, if so, what became of them.

“What do we do now?” he murmurs.

“We have to come up with
something,
” I say. “Any ideas?”

He shakes his head. We sit there for an hour or so, ruminating on some way out of this mess, but my hope begins to grow thinner with each passing minute. Every plan I begin to formulate ends with a disastrous problem, and it seems as if there isn’t a single definite way to get us out of Sweetbriar without either of us getting killed in the meantime. Still, we bounce ideas off each other. Connor suggests I try to play on Nate’s alleged love for me, but I fear that card has already been removed from the deck. We consider fighting, trickery, bargaining, pleading, but there are so many factors to consider and so many risks.

As I am explaining the strategy we should use if we do decide to fight back against our jailers, Connor interrupts me. With wet eyes, he says, “I’m so sorry, Nightshade. If I hadn’t wanted to stay—if I hadn’t been so selfish—we would’ve left days ago and Roman never would’ve found this place. I knew you were right when you said they were coming, but I didn’t want to believe it . . . Just the thought of leaving Sweetbriar, of leaving her . . . I wish I had listened to you, but I fucked up. I fucked up so bad, Nightshade.”

He places his head in his hands, his dark mop of hair falling over his eyes, and lets out a shaky sigh. I watch as his body begins to shudder and soon realize he is crying. For a second, I reflect upon the slight pang of guilt I felt when I couldn’t reciprocate Nate’s feelings toward me. The weight of that emotion had sat like a pit in my stomach, practically consuming my every thought, my every action. That guilt was nothing compared to what Connor must be feeling now. As he sobs, the urge to comfort him is overwhelming.

Knowing there is a very good chance I will die tomorrow, I whisper one word: “Violet.”

“What?” he sniffles, wiping the tears from his face and peering up at me with a look of confusion.

“You asked me what my real name was back when we first met. It’s Violet.”

“Violet,” he repeats, grinning as he contemplates the sound of it. After a moment, he turns to me with a playful look in his eyes and says, “You know, I think I like Nightshade better.”

I laugh. “Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”

Connor laughs too, and I pull him in for a hug. We sit like that for a moment, our arms wrapped around each other, enjoying what may be our first and last real embrace. For the first time I realize my life began—really began—with Connor. Meeting each other was the first time in both of our short lives that we were able to live without fear—for him the fear of being alone, and for me the fear of being afraid. And now it is likely our lives will end together too.

I am staring at him, trying to think of something to say, some way to thank him for everything he has done for me, when I hear the
click
that indicates the lock on the steel door is being lifted. Connor and I whip our heads in the direction of the noise just as two men enter the room. At first I am unable to make out their faces in the dim light, so I jump up, ready to fight, but after a moment I recognize Nate and Sheppard’s familiar features. Bundled in the preacher’s arms are my katanas, my knife belt, Angelica’s knife, and the black machete. I stare at the two of them, unsure of what to make of this.

“Come on, we’ve got to hurry,” says Nate, his voice saturated with urgency.  “We have to go now.”

“Go where?” I demand.

“We’re getting you both out of here, but Nate’s right, we need to hurry,” says Sheppard, handing us our weapons. The preacher smiles at me, his hazel eyes tearing, and places a quick kiss on the top of my head.

I turn to Connor, who gives me a small shrug, and warily place my weapons back where they belong. The feeling of my katanas against my back again soothes me immediately. Oh, how I’ve missed them.

Nate taps his foot impatiently, gesturing for us to move it along. He ushers us out through the steel door, where I discover that the guards have disappeared from their post. As the lieutenant swiftly leads us through the halls in a direction I have never gone before, I can’t help but wonder just what the hell is going on. If Sheppard wasn’t here, I wouldn’t trust Nate in the slightest, but the preacher’s presence reassures me that this isn’t a trap and we aren’t being led to an early death.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask the lieutenant. “Won’t you get in trouble with Reina?”

“Sh! Keep your voice down,” he warns. “I’m doing it because of what I told you before, and because it’s the right thing to do. Besides,” he adds, “it was Reina who gave the order.”

“Reina?” whispers Connor from behind me.

“If you can believe it, yes,” says Sheppard. “After you were locked up and the meeting ended, she called for us and told us what the deal was. See, with everybody going crazy like that she was afraid the townspeople would riot and, well, all Hell would break loose, so she had to do something to reaffirm her authority and calm everyone down. See, they weren’t thinking sensibly, and nothing any of us said was going to change their minds. She had you taken to appease them and buy some time to plan a defense—she knows that gang is going to try to take Sweetbriar whether we hand you over or not. She ordered a mandatory curfew for the townspeople and told us to set you free as soon as night fell so no one would see you go.”

“But what happens when they expect Reina to give us up and we’re not there?” I ask.

Nate and Sheppard exchange a glance. “I have no idea,” says Nate. “To be honest, I don’t know if she does either.”

It occurs to me then that Reina is taking this one step at a time, just like me, trying to figure out the solution that will result in the least blood spill for her people. But she is a smart woman; I’m sure she will think of something. It’s not my problem anymore.

The two men usher us through a back exit and out into a moonlit courtyard, where a sentry ladder stands against the tall stone wall that borders the forest. Nate instructs us to climb to the top and use the vines on the opposite side to make our way down, but to go carefully to avoid slipping and crashing to the ground. I thank my friends for their help and the three of us exchange words of luck, saying our final goodbyes for the second time that day, though these are far more rushed. Connor stands a few feet away, his eyes lowered to the ground and his arms folded across his chest. After Sheppard gives me a quick hug, I turn to my friend and gesture for us to begin our ascent.

“I’m not going,” Connor says.

I stare at him for a moment, unable to comprehend his words. “What do you mean you’re not going?”

“I can’t just leave these people, Nightshade. You know what’s going to happen to them if we leave.”

“It’ll happen regardless of whether we’re here or not,” I whisper. “Reina knows what she’s doing, Connor. She’ll find a way out of this.” I place a hand on one of the rungs of the ladder and stare at him expectantly, but he shakes his head.

“They’re going to be massacred tomorrow because of
us.
Can you seriously live with that kind of blood on your hands?”

“I do what I have to in order to survive,” I murmur, feeling that unnatural weight returning to my stomach again.

“So do I,” he says. “Which is why I have to help. I can’t live knowing I just stood back and let Roman’s gang kill an entire community because of me, because of what I did.”

He takes a few steps back from the ladder to join Nate and Sheppard, but his eyes remain on me all the while. They burn into me, those blue eyes, full of the same raging fire as the day I met him. He’s right—many of these people will die tomorrow, maybe all of them, and we will be to blame. It was the two of us who led Roman’s gang here.
We
are responsible. But I made a promise years ago, a promise I intend to keep.

I turn away from the three men and slowly begin to make my way up the ladder. Connor doesn’t try to change my mind; he knows I’m only doing what I must. I climb until I reach the top of the stone wall and pull myself up onto the ledge. As I look at the dark forest that stretches before me, beckoning me to come home, I think of the sweet liberty I am about to experience—a liberty I have been deprived of for months. But when I shift to begin my descent, it is as if an invisible barrier holds me there, and no matter how hard I try I cannot move. I sit there, straddling the wall, half free and half not, trying desperately to find the strength to scale down and escape into the woods where I belong, but I am powerless.

Here I stand at the crossroads, weighed down to the point of immobility with this newfound emotion called guilt. Either way I go, I am turning my back on somebody. I remember the vow I made my father on his dying day, the vow to stay alive no matter what the cost, to be the survivor he made me into. That man gave his life to save mine, to give me the opportunity to grow old in a world where most die young. I can see him now, the dark blood flowing from his neck, his crimson-stained beard, his hazel eyes with the light slowly fading from them. To change my mind and climb back down this ladder would be the ultimate betrayal. If I go back, if I help these people, if I die for them, then my father’s death will have been for nothing.

But why
would
I help these people? Ever since Connor and I came to Sweetbriar we have been mistrusted, ostracized, threatened, and betrayed. From the moment we arrived we were treated like outsiders, and it was only after I saved a group of their people that they began to consider us Sweetbriarans too. Only then did they idolize us, love us, but as soon as their lives were threatened they were back to their old ways. Hell, some of them probably would have killed us themselves to save Roman the trouble. These people turned their backs on me.

So why do I still care?

I shouldn’t care. I should scale down this wall without a second thought right now and be done with all of them. But I know they’re only acting out of fear. They don’t understand how the world works outside of these walls, they don’t understand that Roman and his gang will not stay true to their word, that they will storm the gate of Sweetbriar despite his feigned lack of interest. They don’t understand that these people will do whatever it takes to secure their own safety, even if it means wiping out another group in the process. They don’t understand that that is what gangs do: take what isn’t theirs and destroy whoever stands in their way. They assume this man must have a good reason for wanting to hurt us, and they would gladly sacrifice us for the greater good of their people. It seems like a simple solution, but they have no idea how wrong they are. And at daybreak they will know the truth.

I think of Elijah Sheppard, who cared about me from the beginning, who befriended me of his own accord, who refused to be a part of my capture. I think of Nate, of how he outright disobeyed his beloved leader to defend me and allowed himself to be physically reprimanded and nearly killed for his actions. I think of Savannah, who nearly cried when I told her I was leaving because she was afraid of what would happen to me. I think of the children at the schoolhouse, whose little voices always greeted me joyfully when I came to visit. I think of Claire and Sophia, who defended me against the harsh accusations of the townspeople when everyone thought I was a menace. I think of Mrs. Sharma, whose scarf I still wear around my neck. And finally I think of Reina, who would do anything to protect her town and her people, even lie to them. These are good-hearted people, and they don’t deserve to die tomorrow.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper into the gentle night wind, hoping he will hear me somehow. “I’m so sorry.” With that, I make my descent down the wall. When I step back down from the ladder, I turn to face the three men, whose surprised expressions are illuminated by the moonlight.

“Alright,” I say. “I’m in.”