Outcast: A Defiance Novella (HarperTeen Impulse) by C. J. Redwine

Author:C. J. Redwine [Redwine, C. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

“He’s dead,” Elder Toilspun says. “You killed him.”

I walk past the elder without a word and sink down beside Willow. There’s blood on my hands, but I no longer know if it’s hers or my father’s.

I killed my father.

Something warm wraps around my shoulders, and I look up in surprise to see Jared’s cloak resting on me while he shivers in the winter air.

I’m shivering, too. My teeth are chattering, and the rage that drove me now feels like a sea of ice chilling me from the inside out.

I killed my father.

Dimly, I realize that Willow’s injury is packed with turmeric to clean the wound and that Jared is carefully wrapping a bandage around her stomach. Her eyes are open, and she’s staring at me.

I killed my father.

Killed him.

“So much violence,” Elder Saintcrow mutters. “It isn’t natural.”

“You didn’t have a problem with it as long as we kept it outside the village border,” Willow says weakly. “You turned a blind eye. Kind of hypocritical to complain now.”

“I killed my father.” I try the words on for size, shocked to hear my voice shaking.

“He was trying to kill you, son.” Jared’s voice is kind.

“You stopped him,” Willow says. Her eyes are fierce. “Nothing else would’ve worked, Quinn. You stopped him.”

Do the echoes of his violence—echoes of my own violence—die with him? If I turn away from everything he taught me to be and choose a different path, can this moment be the ashes on which I build a new life?

“Quinn—”

Willow’s hand is cold against mine. I try to wrap my fingers around hers, but all I can think of is the blood on my skin. The blood on my soul.

“We will meet to decide what must be done in the wake of these events,” Elder Saintcrow says to us before ushering the rest of the elders into the council house, where we can no longer hear what they’re saying.

“I told Dad he was done,” I say as I meet Willow’s gaze. “I’m done too.”

Her grip becomes almost painful. “What do you mean you’re done?”

“No more weapons. No more fighting. I’m not going to be a monster like him.”

“You’re not a monster,” she says.

I don’t reply. The elders debate for hours. Someone brings Jared a blanket, and he wraps it around Willow. She tries to get me to talk to her, but I have nothing left to say. I’m hollow, my rage spilled out like my father’s blood. Jared sits quietly beside us, occasionally checking Willow’s wound. I’m strangely grateful that he still looks at me with clear-eyed calm instead of the terror imprinted on the face of every villager we see.

Finally, the elders leave the council house and approach. Elder Toilspun looks at me, his weathered face solemn.

“Several village laws have been broken tonight,” he says. “The most important, of course, being the law against killing a fellow villager.”

“He was defending himself!” Willow struggles to sit up, but hisses in a gasp of pain, shoving Jared’s hands away when he tries to help her.

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