“What?” David gaped.

“Mema!” Amari said.

“Yes!” Jed said. He scooted from David’s side to Amari’s, his fingers digging into her shoulders. “Tonight! They’re getting married, and they can travel with the company!”

David’s breath caught. He turned to the official, the dull hammering of his heartbeat echoing in his ears.

“That’s right,” he said, loud and sure. “We’re getting married. And we’ll be the legal guardians of my sister.”

It didn’t matter that he barely knew her. It didn’t matter that she hated him—she’d already made that plenty clear. All that mattered was the girl crouched behind him, the one he had to get out of here.

Grace. Safe. That was the only thing that mattered.

The official stared, skeptical. “Papers.”

The girl—Amari—was trembling. Her grandmother, weathered and wiry, pulled the folded sheets from Amari’s frozen hands and handed them to the man. David did the same.

His heart pounded as realization settled over him like the scratchy wool blanket from the tent he shared with Grace. This was it. Their ticket out.

He hadn’t expected it to come like this—marriage to a stranger, a girl who hated him—but if it got Grace to the Sanctuary, it didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered.

Except the Cinderbone. The thought slipped in, quiet but persistent. The note Kip had given him yesterday still burned a hole in his memory.

Ready for pickup. Don’t forget your end.

David hadn’t forgotten. But now he might not have to pay the price. He could take the Cinderbone and vanish before Kip could cash in.

This marriage? It was a key. A forged key to get Grace safely out of Camp Orange. To walk away with a legal status that said he was someone. A man. A guardian. And with that, he could disappear—into the mountains, into the West, into wherever Sanctuary rose out of the quartz cliffs.

Maybe they’d track him. Maybe Kip would come looking. But David had made it this far. He could make it farther.

He just hadn’t expected the cost to be so… human.

The official wrote across their papers, drawing David back into the present moment. “I’ll write your names in the ledger in pencil. But you must be back here before curfew with the appropriate signatures, or I will not put the stamp on your papers.”

Jed clapped his hands once. “We’ll be back in an hour.”

He was too damn cheerful about this. David’s stomach was tying itself in knots.

Amari

Aug. 29

I’m shaking so badly I can barely hold the pen.

My skin won’t stop buzzing. My teeth won’t unclench.

It’s like my body already knows I’m being led to slaughter.

My grandmother is marrying me off.

I didn’t agree to it.

I didn’t even get the chance to say no.

She didn’t ask.

Just signed my name like she was signing away a borrowed coat.

And to him.

To E22.

I’ve known him since the day I stepped foot in Camp Orange.

He’s been a thorn in my side since the beginning—always patrolling the storage tents like he owns them, acting like the rules apply to everyone but him. The kind of guy who thinks surviving makes him important.

I hate him.

I hate the way he looks at me like I’m something feral. I hate that he’s caught me more than once trying to take what I needed to live. I hate that I had to take anything in the first place.

I hate that he’s still breathing when so many others aren’t.

But worst of all, I hate him because he’s a man.

I don’t even need to know the rest.

He could be the cleanest, gentlest soul in the world—and it wouldn’t matter.

I lost my mother.

I lost my sister.

I lost who I was.

God, I want to scream.

I want to throw this notebook into the fire.

But it’s all I have.

It’s the only place I’m still mine.

And now they want me to pretend like I can belong to someone.

Like I can walk into a future with a man I hate, just to get inside the Sanctuary.

But still.

Still.

There was a second—just one damn second—when I saw him holding his sister, and something in me cracked.

Grace.

She’s so small. She doesn’t know what the world is yet. She clung to him like he was the only thing she had left.

And he—

He wasn’t the smug little tyrant then.

He was a brother.

Begging.

They told him no.

He held Grace like she might disappear if he let go.

And something inside me twisted.

It made me sick.

Because I had a sister too.

And if someone had offered me a way to save her—any way—I would have burned the world for it.

But that doesn’t make this right.

It doesn’t make this okay.

I don’t want this.

I don’t want him.

I don’t want to be anyone’s anything.

Oh God—if you still exist, if you ever existed—save me from this.

Pull me out of it.

Tear up the contract. Burn the papers.

Do not marry me to this man.

Don’t ask me to smile.

Don’t ask me to pretend.

I will not be his.

I will not be anyone’s until I choose it myself.

If that day ever comes.