Vicinus (Walking Shadows Book 3) by Talis Jones

Author:Talis Jones [Jones, Talis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tri-Blood Publishing
Published: 2020-12-23T22:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

3 YEARS AGO

And then there was one.

I lie on the cot I share with Tabi, clutching the blanket to my chin and shuddering as I relive the past week. Has it been a week? Maybe not. Maybe more. I don’t know. I learned to brave my prison in the Confederation, or at least to pretend, and I learned to survive the trek across the Coalition, though at a heavy cost. Now I lie here in the den of the Alliance, facing another set of unknowns and variables. I’d rather shut my eyes and sleep it away but trying only makes the fear stronger not to mention the nightmares.

Absently I rub the latest bruise on my ribs from when Tabi elbowed me angrily for waking her up. I didn’t mean to. If I could simply choose not to endure nightmares, doesn’t she think I would?

Two to each cot we’re crammed together in the home for runaways, strays, and orphans alike. It seems like only this morning that a farmer pointed in a direction and I followed it to the border. There was an outpost with armed guards but also a surprisingly inviting welcome sign.

The guards felt familiar.

The sign had me terrified.

The last of the twelve I finished our journey alone. Maybe I could have stayed in the Coalition. Might have been safer with its more rustic living, but it was also ruthless and I knew if I stayed I would break. It didn’t feel like home, it didn’t feel like safety or arrival, and so I kept going. The Alliance, everyone said, was supposed to be full of money and dreams. Easy food, warm shelters, and ignorance enough to power a nation, they’d shake their heads and say.

Why doesn’t everyone move there? I’d asked more than once. If they had a refugee program to help set you up to prosper, then why stay here in a land of dust and bones?

Because the cost of comfort is too high, they told me. Out here we have little but we’re free, we have privacy, and we get our justice. In there we could have everything except for that.

I could appreciate that. Understand it too. But I’m not tough or savvy enough to pay the price of freedom and privacy so I’d hoped that the Alliance could be my answer. So far, I suppose it is. I’m warm, I’m fed, and I’m not alone. Technically.

Maybe I need too much.

Maybe I’m too soft to live anywhere for long.

I surrender another shudder at the memory of my panic attack when the guards delivered me from a government building full of paperwork to a clinic for a physical examination as part of processing. A clinic full of white walls and white coats and smiles I didn’t trust. After so long away from that place I’d thought the fear had faded but it came surging back in full force when I stepped inside that clinic. How can a color have such a hold on me? Even the stains

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