Free Grace by Elizabeth Scott Page A

us.
    I thought about saying a prayer for her, but I didn’t. She hadn’t done anything worth praying for. She’d just died, and my heart only remembered that she’d never wanted to see us as alike. That she’d insisted we weren’t. She wanted to show that she was purer of heart and belief than anyone else. She wanted death.
    She’d gotten it.

CHAPTER 30
    I watch Jerusha now and think of her.
    Mary would have killed herself rather than talk to him like I did.
    If she was where I am—if she was here, facing what I’m facing—she would try to kill Jerusha again instead of watching him.
    But I don’t move. I sit. I watch.
    She was right. We are not alike at all.
    Jerusha gives the girl my tea. I swallow, wishing I had taken it with me, that the coolness she’s swallowing was running down my own throat. I run my hands through my hair—still damp, always damp—and then look at my fingers.
    It could be the setting sun, but I think there is yet another bit of yellow stained across my skin.
    I should have died when I was supposed to. It would not have hurt like this waiting. I would not feel like I do now.
    I would not know what it is like to hope.
    I would have no idea what that word really means.
    It is so hot. The setting sun cuts the train into slices of bright light and brings even more heat, heat that makes my head spin. Makes me want to close my eyes. But I do not want to fall asleep. I will not fall asleep. I want to be awake when the Guards come.
    I know I cannot trust anyone but myself, and if they come for me—and I am so afraid they will—I have to take Jerusha with me. Not for the People. Not for the Saints. Not for Mary. For me.
    I watch the sun burn the sky until my vision blurs.

CHAPTER 31
    T he train stops. I know because I almost fall out of my seat, woken from the cobwebs of a dream about the stage and blood-dead flowers as the train shrieks, shuddering to a halt.
    I don’t remember falling asleep, but I did.
    I did and now it is dark out, stars brilliant against the night sky. The window is cold when I touch my fingers to it, so cold it burns my skin.
    The only light I see is the faint, flickering glow of small lamps that some soldiers are carrying. I used to lie on the ground and watch for that very glow. Everyone who lives in the Hills, even Angels, must take their turn at watch.
    You must always know when the enemy is coming.
    The soldiers are holding a bottle—the bottle of tea I bought earlier—and their lamps spark off it, shedding little rays of light into the dark of the train.
    Behind the soldiers are Guards.
    Guards standing and watching, waiting, and back behind them I see the glimmer of polished tick-tock shoes, the man from the train station returned. Come all the way out here into the dark of the desert.
    There is nothing else to see. We are near nothing. We are nowhere, the perfect place to drag someone off to meet death.
    The only reason to be here is death.
    I’ve heard the Guards shoot you in the back of the head if they feel like being kind.
    Please let them be kind.
    Please.
    The soldiers turn back toward the train. The Guards stay behind, waiting, disappearing into the dark. They do not carry lamps.
    For what they do, there is no need.
    The soldiers come into the train car. They fill it up, their faces grim.
    “Who does this belong to?” the soldier who moved me says, yelling so loudly that his voice echoes off the stripped metal of the train.
    Silence. Nothing but frozen, scared silence.
    And then Jerusha stands up.
    “I know who it belongs to,” he says, and his voice is clear. His face is calm. Cold.
    He can live through anything. He will survive.
    He, of all people, might be the one who can destroy Keran Berj.
    No wonder he was kept so close.
    “Who? ” the soldier says, scowling. “You?”
    Jerusha sighs, as if he is talking to someone very stupid.
    “If it was me, why would I say a word? ” he says. “I spoke to you after the last time the train stopped,