And so, the Knights progressed forward throughout the woods, Mateo and Damien alternating between who was in the front, and who would keep watch from the back. The group had formed a circle around Emma, the enemy who had strangely agreed to help them. Damien did not trust her for a moment, but lacked the authority to challenge Mateo's decision. With their current positioning, however, the girl had nowhere to run. He did not believe, however, that she was walking them into a trap, as no matter what her hidden motives could be, she was undoubtedly drawing them nearer towards their enemies.

If there was any chance that Damien could finally swing his blade across Michael Gregory's sleazy throat, then there was no such thing as a trap.

The girl had hardly spoken since she'd become their hostage, but the boys made no effort to speak to her either. Keep moving southeast, she had said. She refused to give a more specific location, promised it all in due time. She was smart, that girl. So long as she was the only one who knew exactly where they needed to go, she was indispensable, and she had bought herself another day. Earlier Damien had tried to force more information out of her, came so far as to cut her skin, but she simply snickered.

The defiant gleam in her eyes made one thing exceedingly clear to Damien, but if the others noticed he was unsure. Emma wasn't afraid of death, and no matter how badly she craved revenge herself, her dignity mattered more. She would rather they kill her than for her to hand over whatever power she'd claimed. Her stubbornness was not just difficult; it was dangerous. If they seeked revenge themselves—and oh, how they sought it—they would have to play by her rules, woven intricately into their own game.

"It's gonna get dark soon," Wes called as they came upon an empty clearing with a few remnants of a fireplace. He was one of the youngest of the crowd, although his brother Rocket was the one who held the first place title. "We should camp out here."

Gavin, the resident traveler who knew every nook and cranny of the woods north of the far-off highway, had already placed his backpack on the ground. "Nobody's consistently here. This is ours for the night."

Damien's eyes wandered from Emma to Mateo, who sent him one solemn nod in return. The leader pulled a long rope from his bag and approached the girl, who simply rolled her eyes. "Sorry about this," he said as he bound her hands together.

Damien took the rope from his friend's hands. "You don't have to apologize. She's our prisoner, we can do whatever the hell we want." He tugged on the rope, beckoning the girl to follow him towards one of the trees on the edge of the clearing. He motioned for her to sit, which she did, and he promptly tied her to the bark. If they were to sleep there that evening, they had to be certain that she could not run nor attack them overnight. At night they were vulnerable, and he knew this girl was dangerous. There could not be too many precautions. "She knows that."

"Just trying not to be an ass," Mateo muttered, running his hand through his black hair.

"She killed Clevis, remember?" Damien hadn't turned to face his friends, but rather spat at the girl before him. Emma gritted her teeth and glared, eyes fuming with an icy rage, but made no move to pull against the restraints or speak in response. That only made him smile. "Whether she was paid off or not, she doesn't deserve our sympathies."

"Whatever you say, captain," she murmured, her voice loud enough that only Damien could hear. He kicked her hard in the shin, a clear reminder that in her position she had no power.

"Fuck you," he hissed. She seemed unfazed. Scuffing his shoes along the ground, he returned to the rest of his crew. "She'll be secured for the evening. And if we keep our voices down here, she won't be able to hear us."

"Why does she look so comfortable?" Benji asked, and all heads shot towards the prisoner. Sure enough, Emma was tapping her foot on the ground, boredly watching the gray clouds above, showing absolutely no interest in her captors or the danger they posed. The word on the street called them Knightmares, but it seemed that bad dreams were all she ever knew.

"She's playing us," Damien said, turning his back so that she couldn't read his lips, even if she didn't seem to be paying any attention at all. "I don't care that we made a deal, we're killing her as soon as we find Michael."

"We don't even know Michael's there," Mateo said. "And we are Knights, Damien, remember? Jordy wanted us to be honorable. We made a deal with her, and as long as she finishes her side of it, we're not backing out."

"So far this system is shit," he argued. "She's been walking free all day with her knife still in her jeans. If she wanted to get away, she'd have done it already. She'd have tried, at least. She's not stupid, she knows we might not keep our word. If any of what she said about that Miles dude was true, she's already been betrayed once this week. She shouldn't be so quick to believe us."

"If what she said about Michael's brother is true, then maybe she just wants revenge," the leader responded. His eyes were drawn towards Emma again, and caught her tilting her head away from them, pretending she hadn't just been watching. But he didn't say anything to the others, didn't let Damien know that perhaps the girl was being more perceptive than they had assumed.

"Not to mention we offer her protection," added Wes, and when Damien and Benji both raised a dubious eyebrow, he continued, "She's a hot girl on her own in the woods, and she's practically the same height as Rocket. As long as she's with us, nobody else will touch her. 'Teo's right. She wants revenge, and we're her safe passage."

Damien couldn't help but snicker, "I'll be damned if she thinks she can actually kill any of them. Once we get there, we're not letting her anywhere near that truck stop." As the boys continued to bicker, Gavin rolled his eyes and pushed his way out of the circle as Damien grabbed his arm, his nails digging into his friend's skin. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

The lean Asian boy didn't flinch, not even to blink. "Information."

"We've already tried getting her to talk, remember?" Damien snarled, his cold blue eyes reflecting the gray sky above them. "She's not gonna budge."

Gavin simply smiled. "She just doesn't want to tell you what you want to hear." Yanking his arm from the other boy's tight grip, he walked up the short hill to where their prisoner was seated. He wasted no time to ask his question, a query he had not yet entertained with the rest of the Knights. "Monarchia or High Midwestern?"

"What?"

"The buses that showed up right after you killed Clevis. It's not like anyone could have missed it," he elaborated slightly, taking a seat beside her. He noticed that her shoulder tensed, that she turned her head to look at him, her eyebrow furrowing slightly as she questioned his casual actions. "Were they from Monarchia, or High Midwestern?"

She shook her head, but sent her gaze back to the ground, if anything angling herself so that he couldn't see her face. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"We were both on the other side of Springfield. If Monarchia is traveling around the High Midwestern to collect kids, we have a problem."

"And you assume I was involved with this?"

He did. Gavin stretched his legs out in front of him, and looked up at the sky the same way she had before. "You said your friends were all gone, and I know it's no coincidence that you show up out of nowhere, your friends disappear, and a couple yellow fucking school buses arrive for the second time."

She closed her eyes and exhaled. "High Midwestern," she said eventually. "They came at just the wrong moment, and now my people are there or scattered somewhere else. That's all I know."

"That's good news," he said, and she turned to face him once again, an unmistakable look of perplexion present in her strong gray eyes. He could see that she was formulating a thousand sentences, calculating every last thought and coming to no conclusions that could be deemed as "good." He wanted to know those thoughts, know what she knew, for there were clearly biases and information she withheld, but he did not press. She'd revealed more to him in the past two minutes than she had to Damien all day; Gavin simply knew what to say.

"I answered your question, now answer mine," she began. "What the hell is Monarchia?"

Gavin frowned, and his eyes widened slightly as Emma's face dropped farther than it already had. A serious disposition to begin with, she now was hard as stone. "You're really not from around here, are you?"

"South of the highway. You all knew that already."

"It's the city in what used to be St. Louis," he began. "Nobody knows much about them other than that they're insane. They'll round kids up like cattle, tie them down in a truck, and I swear it's like a goddamn horror movie. Nobody ever comes back."

Emma didn't appear frightened, which put Gavin on edge. Even he felt threatened by Monarchia's mere existence. "I wouldn't be so sure the Fortress is any better." She froze. Gavin had not referred to the city by the last part of its name, but rather that was what Sebastian had said before he turned his back on her, condemned her to this damnation. She hadn't resisted when Mateo bound her hands, for he was not the one to blame; Sebastian was tying every knot.

"I ran right after you finished your job," Gavin said, pushing himself up to his feet and brushing the dirt off the back of his pants. "For whatever it's worth, I don't know what you saw, but your friends were boarding that bus willingly. I know less about the Fortress than I do Monarchia, but they weren't taken by force."

Emma blinked. She hadn't known that. She hadn't seen any of them since the morning she and Miles left their makeshift camp on a secret mission Donny Mayler would never have approved of; she hadn't seen Donny since he'd arrived in the clearing with Sebastian.

Had Donny forgiven her brother? Or perhaps he now praised him.

Perhaps he had not forgiven her.

"The others don't know about the buses," Gavin added as he began to walk away. "And as long as we're not dealing with Monarchia, they don't need to know." She wasn't quite sure why he felt that this was worth keeping a secret. They weren't friends. They weren't allies. If this was some form of olive branch there was no point to it. Once they reached the truck stop, Miles would be dead, and they very well may kill her too. She knew that. She wasn't afraid.

She watched as Gavin shook his head, as Damien—the pretty blonde asshole she found more entertaining than threatening—simply rolled his eyes. Before long the sun had set, and their only light was from the flickering flames of their fire. She could hear the boys speaking, but was too far to make out any words with clarity.

At some point, a figure came towards her. Although she didn't know any of them well, she recognized the silhouette to be Mateo. He held out his canteen of water. "Drink."

She rolled her eyes, but in the darkness he couldn't see. "I can't," she said, "You tied my arms down, remember?" They had used only one rope to bind her hands together, and then wrap the excess around the tree behind her. Her wrists were pressed right between her hips.

"Something happened to our other rope," Mateo sighed. "It's a long story, doesn't matter anyways. Usually we'd have two, and this would have been a hell of a lot simpler."

"Lucky me," she murmured and he laughed.

"Tilt your head back," he said. He knew she didn't have much of a range of motion, but he placed his hand on her forehead to keep her steady as he poured the water into her mouth. He couldn't see her grit her teeth when it was over.

Emma had seen the worst, had had her heart ripped out and stomped on time and time again, to be faced with blood and pain and darkness so strong she couldn't breathe. But this was new. Never in the past three years had she been treated like a child, like she was incapable of even the most simple task.

She knew Mateo was trying to help. It was the best he could do in the twisted situation where they'd found themselves. That didn't mean she thanked him, that didn't mean she was grateful to be degraded once again. Her throat had been parched, but she would rather be dry and powerful than to lose control over that most basic bodily function.

"You should sleep." Emma heard the metal top of Mateo's bottle screwing back on. "We'll be walking all day tomorrow."

She didn't need him to parent her. "Tell that to the kid," she muttered, and saw the leader turn around. In the base of the clearing, Rocket—the one boy whose name Emma had yet to learn, mainly because she doubted his nickname to be serious—was running around with one of the older kids who she couldn't quite make out in the darkness.

She couldn't see his face, but she could tell Mateo was smiling. "I'll see you in the morning," he said, and that was the end. She wasn't quite sure she slept at all that evening; she rarely did. Any time sleep came close she felt her knife slashing across Jack Clevis' neck, she heard Donny scream her name, she saw Sebastian. She saw Sebastian closing in. Sebastian staring at her as though she was a stranger. Sebastian plunging a needle into the base of her neck. She saw darkness.

Even in the pitch black of night, there was less darkness than when she closed her eyes. She wanted to shake it, but it filled her hollow bones, weighed her down more than the Knights' one rope. And so she was entranced by the flickering flames, the red and orange sparks shooting up into the night sky.

The fire burned until morning; she hadn't noticed the sun rising, nor did she remember allowing sleep to overcome her. But Mateo had come and undid the knots, and they resumed their circular position with the prisoner on the inside with nowhere to run, as though she had some place to run to, and onward they marched.