Echo

Chapter Two

I swallow, and feel a bead of blood swell to the surface of my skin. I force myself to stay perfectly still, even as the droplet slides off my neck and splatters onto the face of the boy beneath me. He blinks once, those coffee colored eyes focused on the figure behind me.

"Get off him," the person says. It's a stark contrast—her soft, feminine tone is dripping with malice.

I comply, rising slowly. The boy sits up, coughing again, then rests his arms on his knees, breathing the damp scent of the forest in deep. It's getting even darker, more difficult to see as the sun sinks further past the horizon line. The Druthers will be wrapping up soon, and I'll need to be getting back.

I rotate in a circle until I'm facing the girl. Her dagger is no longer at my throat, but she still clutches it tight in her slender fingers, aiming it threateningly at me. I have never seen a person before who reminds me so much of fire—and not a controlled one. This girl is the personified version of a raging forest fire, an inferno with untamed ginger locks that frame her face and fall to her armpits, wild brown eyes blown wide. Even this girl's freckles are ablaze, clustering at the bridge of her nose and climbing up to her forehead, like flames that lick her hairline. She wears laced black boots and a brown quilted vest overtop of a white button-up shirt, a more feminine version of her companion's outfit. It's strange—I'm not used to seeing women clothed in anything other than dresses and skirts.

From the forest floor, the boy speaks. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sneak up on you. We mean you no harm." His voice is smooth and honeyed, yet somehow still seems genuine. I'm not sure what to think—I need to coax more information out of them.

I lock eyes with the girl. "That's why there's a knife in my face?"

"Elowyn, put the dagger away."

The girl narrows her brows, but reluctantly sheathes her weapon in a case made of the same unknown material as the boy's vest—almost like the leather we make from cow skin, but not quite. I am quick to notice that the metal the knife is made of is foreign to me as well.

"Where'd you learn to fight like that?" she asks.

I shrug. The truth is, I've been attending trainings for the guardians of the Wall in secret ever since I was little. Some of my most distinct memories were mine and Desh's footsteps echoing throughout the palace's great halls till we reached doors to the balcony that overlooked the training room, where we'd lay down, just out of sight, our stomachs pressed to the cool tiles and our little fists gripped tight around the white-painted wooden bars that held up the platform's handrail. Eyes wide, we watched attentively, and we practiced everything we learned with one another in secret for years. But I wasn't quite ready to trust these new people and their unfamiliar clothing yet. The fact that they were so quick to point a weapon at me, the princess, without a single spark of recognition in their eyes only intensified my wariness.

"Which village are you from?" I asked, redirecting the conversation and stealing a glance at the boy, who's risen from his place on the grass to his full height. He's maybe six feet tall? Enough to be an entire head taller than myself.

"We're not," the girl—Elowyn—responds bluntly.

I blink. "What?"

"We're not from a village. We're from outside the Wall. I'm Rowan, by the way," the boy clarifies. "Look, I'm really sorry to be rude, but we don't quite have time to talk. Do you know where we could find Princess Liana? It's immensely important that we speak with her."

Alarm bells go off in my head. How could they be from outside the Wall and know who I am? And if they really were, didn't that mean they were dangerous? All my life, my father had warned me about the bloodthirsty monsters that roamed the rest of the world. Born from the rage that infected human kind during the last battle, fructified by the blood that soaked the lands and polluted the oceans, these creatures desired nothing more than to satiate their hunger with human flesh. He told me that we were the only living people that remained after the Great Fall, that nobody else had made it. We were the last of the human race.