We Who Are Forged in Fire by Kate Murray

Author:Kate Murray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hardie Grant Children's Publishing
Published: 2023-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

Robbie’s frustration with me missing the supply run comes to fruition the next day, when I check the jobs console and see I’ve been reassigned. She’s moved me into gardening. It’s even lower down the hierarchy than supplies.

I report to the listed lieutenant, who shoves a line trimmer into my hands and tells me to cut the grass on the pathways around the compound. At least this gives me the opportunity to get to know the base better and find those centres of operations, like the comms room and guard stations and security centre, where, eventually – if I can get in Robbie’s good books – I hope I will be admitted as a trusted rebel.

And it keeps me out of the hotel, and out of Dominic’s way. I don’t want to see him after witnessing what he did to Inez and how he seemed so unbothered by it.

His actions in the mess hall were a demonstration of what he could do to me, too, if I don’t play his game. I’m the minion here. He’s the boss.

The boss who knows my secret.

I can sense him right now, up in the hotel. I can imagine him watching me as I go about my new job. Making plans I want nothing to do with.

For the whole day he sits there like a grain of sand in my eye, something I cannot see but feel all the same, scratching at me. Whenever I feel we’re coming close to each other, I shift direction. My mowing, as a result, is rather haphazard. I’ll be doing it again tomorrow.

When I sleep that night, I dream of him. I see him in his suite, empty of almost all furniture, with the balcony doors wide open. He has his face turned to the same wind that billows the walls of my tent; it blows through his doorway, numbing his wet cheeks.

He’s crying. His hands are clenched so tight the nails dig into his palms, carving purple half-moons of pain, and it’s still not enough to distract him from his guilt. It consumes him – ravenous, unending, both old and fresh – and I know, without a doubt, that it is real. I’ve felt a portion of that very same guilt: Inez suffered because of me too.

I had to, he’s saying to himself. I had no choice. They would have seen through me. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do it again. I can’t.

It’s a desperate refrain.

I wake up, soaked in it. I wake up, and I know it is not a game.

Yes, he knows my secret, but he has secrets of his own. He’s been holding that mask together tooth and nail, holding it so tightly nobody can see the gaps. Holding it like a drowning man clutching at a buoy.

But his grip is close to shattering.

And the only thing he thinks can save him before that happens … is me.

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