Page 152 of The Cost of Blood and Bonds

I turn back just long enough to confirm they’re through. Finn meets my eyes with a single nod, and Grier is already scanning the trees.

I don’t wait. My feet are already moving.

“Rye!” I hear Finn’s voice somewhere behind me.

I don’t stop. Can’t stop. The safe house is half a mile north. The forest pushes back, roots catching my boots, branches grabbing at my arms. I cut hard around a cluster of trees and keep pushing.

Please be there. Please be safe. Please.

The ravine opens up ahead, and I don’t slow, scrambling down the slope, with my boots skidding on loose rock. I barely catch myself before I go down. I’m already scanning the boulder face before I hit the bottom. The moment my boots land, my hands find the wall, fingers scraping across stone, searching, until I find it. A knot in the rock, almost invisible. I press the knot in, turn it left twice, right once, and hold. It gives with a click.

The air goes out of me all at once.

“Ella?” I step inside. “Ella, it’s me⁠—”

The safe house is empty. There’s no bedroll disturbed, no pack, no sign that anyone has been here at all.

No. No, no, no⁠—

“Rye?” Finn appears at the entrance with Grier right behind him.

“She’s not here.” The words come out strangled. “She’s not here—she was supposed to be here⁠—”

I push past them, scrambling back up the ravine. My heart is slamming against my ribs so hard I can barely breathe.

“GEMMA!”

My voice tears through the trees and comes back empty, birds scattering in its wake, but nothing else answers.

“GEMMA!”

I’m already moving, crashing back through the underbrush. A branch catches my face. I turn left, then right, then left again. Every direction looks the same. The trees close in, the fog rolling at my ankles, swallowing any sense of where I came from or where I’m going.

“ELLA!” My throat is already raw with it. “ELLA!”

“What did you just say—” Finn’s voice cuts off mid-sentence behind me. I hear him stumble.

“ELLA!”

Nothing. The forest swallows my voice and gives me nothing back.

I cut left, then right, pushing harder, scanning every shadow, every gap between the trees. She has to be here.

“ELLA! PLEASE!”

“Rye!” Finn is closer now, footsteps pounding behind me. “Rye, stop!”

His voice doesn’t reach me. Nothing does.

“ELLA!”

A hand closes around my arm, wrenching me back so hard I stumble. Finn spins me around, gripping my shoulders.

“Rye, STOP.” His face is flushed with his chest still heaving. “You’re going to get us killed. You need to stop.”

“She’s not here, Finn.” My voice cracks. “She wasn’t in the safe house. I don’t know where she is. I don’t⁠—”

“I know.” His grip tightens. “I know. But running blind through the Weeping Woods, screaming at the top of your lungs, is how we all die. We need to think. We need to⁠—”