Rise An Eve Novel

or not Arden and I should be allowed to stay. I know you were planning on using me to negotiate.”
    She rubbed her hands over her face, letting out a low breath.
    “Quinn was the only one who defended us. Tell me you didn’t say that—tell me it’s not true.”
    “No, I said it,” she admitted. “I did.”
    “If you report any of the girls here, I will make—”
    “I said if ,” Maeve interrupted. “It was always an if . I never wanted to use you against the King. I just said that if I had to, if he put pressure on us to turn you over to the army, I would use it to our advantage.”
    “I thought you were supposed to protect the settlement,” I said, “not give its residents over whenever there’s a threat.”
    She turned away from me, grabbing a few bottles from the table and shoving them back into a cabinet. “At that point, what choice would I have?”
    I heard the hollow sound of footsteps on the stairs. When I turned, Lilac was standing against the doorframe, her hair tied back with a purple scarf. She wiped the sleep from her eyes. “Did you find her?” she asked.
    Maeve plucked the doll from the kitchen table, glancing sideways at me before pressing it into Lilac’s arms. “Here she is. Like I promised,” she said, her hand resting on Lilac’s back. “You must’ve dropped her while you were playing on the path.” Even in the dim lantern light I could make out the creases across Lilac’s cheeks, imprints from the crumpled sheets. Her lips puttered as she let out one long breath, her face giving in to exhaustion.
    “Come on,” Maeve said softly, hooking her arm beneath the girl’s knees. She scooped her up in one swift motion and climbed the stairs.
    Lilac’s head rested easily in the crook of Maeve’s neck, her cheek pressing against Maeve’s shirt. There was something about the girl’s tired face, the way her dark lashes curled up at the ends, how her fist swiped at her nose, trying to keep away an itch. It had been so long since I’d seen them together, I’d forgotten how Maeve softened in Lilac’s presence. She seemed calmer, more herself, easily moving through the quiet of the old house.
    I listened to them somewhere above, the bedsprings creaking as Lilac climbed back into the bunk. I wondered if I would ever have that sense of calm, that comfort with my child, knowing that my father was still out there hunting me. He wouldn’t give up on finding us, I knew that, even now.
    There were a few glass jars filled with nuts on the kitchen table. There couldn’t have been more than five handfuls in each. I found myself counting them, imagining how long I could make them last if I was back out in the wild (twenty days). I started tracing the time it would take to get back to the City, calculating how long it would be by foot, by horse, with the help of a stolen vehicle. I could be there in three days’ time, at best.
    No matter how many troops were brought from the colonies, no matter who was leading them, they wouldn’t succeed if my father was still alive. He was at the center of everything inside the City. From what Quinn had said, his power had only grown since the siege. There seemed no way around it—I could sit here and wait, hoping that things would be different, or I could act. If the colonies came to the City, I could be an ally to them, one of the few rebels who knew the workings of the Palace.
    By the time Maeve made her way back downstairs I’d decided. There wasn’t anything for me to do in Califia except wait: Wait for the soldiers to track me here, wait to see if Maeve would give me up. Wait for news of another siege and another failure. Wait for my father to come for my child.
    “I’m going back,” I said.
    Maeve paused in the doorway, her head tilted to one side. “If you’re trying to punish me for—”
    “It doesn’t have to do with you,” I said. “It has to do with him.”
    Maeve collected a few more jars from the table, working quickly as she set them in another cabinet. She spun around, watching me as she wiped her hands on the front of her tattered pants. “You should stay a few more days,” she said. “Rest. Recover.” Her eyes fell to my midsection. I pulled my sweater tighter, covering it.
    “I have to leave soon,” I said. “Before I can’t anymore.”
    “Who else knows?”
    “I haven’t told the girls yet,” I said. “But Quinn, Ruby, and Clara know. Beatrice, too.”
    She stared down at the table, picking up a few