Reached

holds.
    “Hunter,” Colin says, “you must leave now.”
    Hunter nods. I can’t tell if he feels anything. Someone hands him a pack and there’s a disturbance as Eli comes running for Hunter, wrapping his arms around Hunter to say good-bye. Anna embraces them both, and for a moment they are a little family, three generations, connected not by blood but by journeys and farewells.
    Then Eli steps back. He will stay with Anna, who must remain with the rest of her people. Hunter walks straight into the forest, not taking the path, not looking back. Where will he go? To the Carving?
    And now the crowd murmurs and Xander comes forward. In that moment, I realize that the people have spent their mercy on Hunter. They lived and worked with him for the past few months. They knew his story.
    But they don’t know Xander.
    He stands in front of the village stone, alone.
    Xander will do anything for those he loves, whatever the cost. But, looking at Xander now, I think the cost has become too high.
He looks like Hunter,
I realize.
Like someone who has been driven too far and seen too much
. Hunter kept himself together long enough to deliver Eli safely to the mountains. For a long time, he did what he had to do to help others, but then he broke.
    I can’t let that happen to Xander.

CHAPTER 50
    XANDER
    W ho will stand with Xander?” Colin asks.
    No one answers.
    Anna looks at me. I can tell that she’s sorry, but I understand. Of course she had to use everything she had for Hunter. He’s like a son to her, and it was right for her to have spent everything on him.
    But there is no one else. Cassia has to stay in the infirmary with Ky, to give him the cure and make sure he wakes up. Ky would stand with me: but he’s still.
    People shuffle their feet and look in Colin’s direction. They’re impatient with him for letting the moment go on so long. I’d like it to be over, too. I close my eyes and listen to my heart, my breathing, and the wind high up in the trees.
    Someone calls out: a voice I know. “I will.” I open my eyes to see Cassia pushing her way through the crowd. She came after all. Her face is all lit up. The cure must be working.
    Something’s wrong with me. I should be glad that Cassia’s here and that the cure could be viable. But all I can think about are the patients in the Provinces, and Lei when she went down, and I worry that it’s too late. Will we be able to bring enough people back? Will the cure work again? How will we find enough bulbs? Who will decide which people get the cure first? There are a lot of questions and I’m not sure we can find the answers fast enough.
    I’ve never felt this worn out before.

CHAPTER 51
    CASSIA
    P eople come up to take their stones back from the vote they cast for Hunter. The stones are still wet and they drip a little onto the villagers’ clothes, leaving small, dark spots. Some of the people roll the rocks in their hands as they wait.
    “This trough,” Colin says, pointing to the one nearest him, “is for the maximum penalty. The other,” the one closer to Xander’s feet, “is for the lesser penalty.”
    He doesn’t specify what the penalties are. Does everyone already know? Anna guessed that the worst sentence Xander would receive would be exile, because his crime wasn’t as great as Hunter’s. No one died.
    But for Xander, exile would
mean
death. He has nowhere to go. He can’t live out here alone, and it’s a long journey through rough terrain back to Camas. Perhaps he could find Hunter.
    But then what?
    I look up at Xander. The sun has crept through the trees and shines gold on his hair. I’ve never had to wonder what color his eyes are, the way I did with Ky; I’ve always known that Xander’s are blue, that he would look at you from a place of kindness and clarity. But now, though the color hasn’t changed, I know that Xander has.
    “I’m lonely with you sometimes,”
he told me in the infirmary earlier.
“I didn’t think it could ever be that way.”
    Are you lonely
now
, Xander?
    I don’t even have to ask.
    There are birds in the trees; there are stirrings in the crowd, and wind in the grasses and coming down the path, and yet all I feel is his silence—and his strength.
    He turns to the crowd, straightening his shoulders and clearing his throat. He can do this, I think. He’ll smile that smile and his voice will ring out over the crowd like the Pilot he could be someday, and they’ll see how good he is and they won’t want