No. No! It couldn’t be! It probably wasn’t that bad. “Did the Wall people say anything? Did they say when he would be back? We need him, especially now that - that - Henry…”

Garen shook his head again. “They said nothing. But there really wasn’t any chance for him. He took a bullet to the chest. He’s probably dead now.”

His dark brown eyes pierced me like arrows fired into me.

“No! No! You’re wrong! The Wall can heal anything! They healed me! They can heal him!” I screamed at him. How dare he suggest that Dan was dead! I had seen how the Wall could heal people. The Wall would heal him!

He put his hand on my shoulder, and the movement awoke a seething hot beast inside of me. I batted his hand off my shoulder. He had no right! He was wrong. The fire raged in my throat, ready to spit at him. The beast clawed at my mouth and eyes ready to be released on any available target. No one should ever suggest such a thing as Dan being dead. “Don’t you dare,” I hissed at him.

Daniel grabbed the arm of the lightly armored ex-soldier and pulled him toward the door and away from me. He pulled the man through the door leaving me alone.

They should leave! Both of them! They were wrong! There was no way Dan would leave me alone.

The fire inside fled through my eyes and gushed down my cheeks. No. It was their fault. It was Henry who sent Dan away. But Dan was fine! He had to be fine. And Henry wasn’t. I needed Dan. There was no path forward without him. There was no life for me or this city without him.

I curled up against a corner of the enclosed room and let the fire flow from me. How could I lose them all? How could Dan leave me for the Wall alone? I would wait here until they brought him to me. Dan would run this stupid thing once he got back. Dan who left before I could say goodbye. He owed me. Why couldn’t this Wall be him with his soft curling brown hair for me to run my fingers through. I closed my eyes and let that reality take over. My head leaning against his warm arm. His hands softly strong my hair. His hand slowly stroking my hair mesmerized me, and I knew this could last forever. We would sit here together, and the City would burn, but it could burn. It deserved to burn.

Something shook me, and I woke to a dim gray box, and Daniel’s green-eyed glare. “Falling asleep now? We need you to be strong. We need more people if we are going to hold the warehouse.”

“Hold?” Where was Dan? Wasn’t he here when I fell asleep? “Did Dan leave?”

“What are you talking about you daft girl? He’s dead!” Daniel shouted at me and shook me.

“You’re wrong. He was right here. We’ll wait for him to be back. He’ll come back, and then he’ll tell us what to do. Till then, we wait,” I looked around my dim gray prison. “We wait like rats in our tunnels. No one can get the rats.”

Daniel let go of me and backed up a step. His eyes were wide as if I had turned into a rat. “You crazy mad and unknowingly brilliant woman! That’s it! We need to be rats. We know these tunnels and they don’t!” He turned and ran out of the plain room.

What a crazy and strange man getting so much out of me calling us rats. At least this plain room wasn’t filthy like the prisons where the rats actually did live. Could a rat make it into this place? I stood and felt the walls of the room, searching for a way for rats, and found a small door that opened to a tiny indent in the wall. There was nothing in the indent but a pit like hole at the bottom. That must be the refuse pit for this place. The only other thing in the room was the door and the bed. I thought about leaving, but where was there to go? It was best to wait here till Dan came back.

I laid on the bed and let my mind drift back to my cottage in the village with all the spring flowers blooming. Dan was watering the bushes with water hauled from the local well, and Jade was off in fighting practice with Sandy. “Shouldn’t you be out teaching fighting or something?” I muttered to Dan from my spot in the sun.

He smiled over at me, and came walking over to me, “And shouldn’t you be at the weaving shed?” But his actions fought his words as he laid down next to me.

“It’s such a pretty day, and we can have this morning, can’t we?” I curled into him, leaning my head on his chest, listening to his heart beat calmly into my ear.

“One morning can’t hurt.” He pulled me close and his strength fed me.

A knock. Was someone knocking on the cottage door? But no one was there.

“Don’t get up. Don’t let this morning end,” Dan whispered into my ear.

A hand shook me, pulling me from Dan’s grasp. “You have to eat!” A high pitched voice yelled at me.

“Why?” There were no pretty flowers, just the smooth, hard, cold surfaces that made up the barren room. And an wrinkly gray haired woman with a raggedy smock on holding a bowl that had the pungent charred wood smell of the rosemary Dan grew next to the cottage.

“You need your strength. We all have to keep fighting. Daniel’s calling on everyone to come to the tunnels and do our parts. It’s time to end this terror.” She held out the bowl toward me as she spoke, and I could see steam rising off it. “It’s not much, just some bread, herbs, and water boiled to make a soup. A good way to stretch the rations so we can feed all the rats.” She winked as she said this.

Rats. I took the bowl from her and slurped down the offering. Would rats like herbs in their food? The warm soft bread oozed down my throat, but the lightly bitter herb was a blessing to the bland fair.

The woman took the bowl from me, and I sank back into Dan’s arms. “Don’t listen to them,” He whispered.

He was right. I should ignore them. I should never go back to the weaving room. We should stay here laying in the sun under the blue sky forever.

The lady came again with her assault on the stale air of the room, and I slurped down her offering. She left, and I slipped away to Dan’s embrace. It was a quiet cycle. Drink. Sleep. Repeat.

Dan lips brushing my ear as he whispered, “Come find me.”

“But you are right here. “ I responded, feeling his arms holding me tight.

“Am I?” He asked, and I remembered the stark room. Where had he gone?

But the room felt like sandpaper against my head, and the grass was soft, moist, and warm compared to that cold dry place.

“I have no need to find you. You and I can just stay here.” I informed him, certain there was no better place than here under the blue cloudless sky with the towering trees lining the edge of our vision.

He didn’t respond, but shifted and his grip tightened around me, holding me close and protecting me from the outside world.

A red haired woman smacked me, ringing out against the silence of the room. I pressed my hand to the stinging cheek and looked up to see her brow pressed against her blue eyes and her clenched jaw. “You good for nothing, useless, waste of food! How dare you just lie here as we are all working hard for your plans!”

Her voice was like a hammer against my head. “What are you speaking of? We’re waiting for Dan. He’ll know what to do.”

“Waiting for Dan? You are supposed to be some great inspiration, and my husband fought for you not to die, and yet here you are not even being worth those that sacrificed their lives to save you!” Her eyes were narrowed as she yelled out her frustrations at me.

I felt like a lake on a clear windless day. I could feel the ghost of Dan’s arms holding me. “No one should have died for me. I should have just died that day. Everyone’s destiny is to die.”

Dan asking me to find him. The ghostly presence of his arms. We all die one day.

“We are fighting because we all want a better life while we are alive. Sure one day we die, but I like my miserable life! I worked in the castle kitchens for thirteen years, and I’m tired of it! I’m tired of being considered without honor when no one has any idea what this whole stupid honor system even means! I want more, and if that spark is some girl who survived exile, then that girl should fulfill her obligation to those that saved her life!” Her face was getting closer and closer to me as she yelled.

She worked in the castle kitchens. Diagrams in a long ago time when Kevin and I plotted out a way to change the system. Bringing down the castle wasn’t necessarily such a bad idea was it? I thought of Dan asking me to find him. He was right. He wasn’t here anymore. I had to go to him.

I smiled up at her snarling face. “I have an idea on how to win.”