Chapter 157 Teach Me

Chapter 157 Teach Me
The latch came up hard, the wood was old and it took both of them pushing from below before it gave, scraping against the ground above it, and then the cool air of the outside rushed in. Grace pulled herself through first and Silena came up behind her and pushed the latch back down. They came up in an old shed in the forest, they didn’t bother to know where they were exactly as they immediately ran.

The forest received them, trees thickening around them as they moved away from the shed, the light dropping between the branches as the sun began its descent toward the horizon.

Grace's lungs were burning by the time Silena slowed.

She stopped near a cluster of large rocks that jutted from the ground at angles, it was the kind of formation that created natural shelter on two sides, she looked at it and looked at the trees around them, quickly scanning the area with her eyes then moved toward it.

Grace followed, hands on her knees, trying to get her breathing back to something manageable. She had been in that place for long enough that her body had not been moving the way she needed it to move, and the run had reminded her of every hour she had not spent moving.

Silena was already scanning the ground around the rocks, picking up dried branches with the alert focus of someone who had made camp in worse places and knew exactly what she was doing. She gathered an armful without speaking and arranged them near the base of the largest rock.

Grace watched her.

She had been watching her since the cell. Since the moment she ran into this woman and had moved together through the underground of wherever Vance had been keeping Grace without exchanging anything beyond gestures.

She still did not know who she was.

Grace sat on the ground near the rocks, crossed her legs, and breathed, waiting for her pulse to come down from where it had been living for the last several hours.

Silena finished with the branches and straightened to look at Grace.

She touched her own chest. "Silena," she said.

Grace looked at her confused, wondering why she had to touch her chest, then she touched her own chest still. "Grace."

Silena nodded once. That seemed to be the end of it as far as she was concerned, the introduction complete, the necessary information exchanged, and she turned back to the branches and began working on the fire situation.

Grace got up to help.

She moved toward the branches and picked one up then looked around for another her hand found another branch on the ground nearby, longer than the others, solid enough to grip, and she crouched to pick it up too, then stood and turned.

She suddenly stopped.

The smell hit her before the thought did. Her senses had been sharpening since the marking and the change in what she was, now, what they were telling her right now was something she was not prepared for.

Maddox.

His scent was threaded through this woman's body like she had been close to him for a long time. Grace stood with the branch in her hand and watched Silena's back, she felt the heartache and worry that she had been carrying about Maddox hit her with such force that she almost staggered.

She raised the branch, held it level, and pointed at the back of Silena's head, "Why do you smell like Maddox?"

Silena went still.

For a moment she did not move at all, just stood slowly with her back to Grace and the branch aimed at her head. Her eyes were wide, but underneath the surprise something else arrived on her face, a slow smile though it wasn’t completely a smile, Silena had the expression of someone who had just learned something they found interesting.

She raised both hands slowly, palms out.

Grace kept the branch exactly where it was.

Silena's right leg moved.

It swung backward in a low arc, connecting into the side of Grace's ankles with enough force to take her balance completely, Grace stumbled but did not go down, her body finding its footing faster than a purely human body would have, but by the time she had recovered Silena was no longer in front of her.

She was behind her.

Grace had not tracked the movement. One moment Silena was raising her hands in surrender and the next she was behind Grace.

Silena kicked the back of Grace’s knees, forcing her to drop to the ground, a dried branch of her own now across Grace’s throat from behind.

Neither of them moved.

Silena lowered the branch to step back. She tossed it aside and turned away, and somehow, the whole scene happened in less than ten seconds.

Grace turned and looked at her.

Silena looked back over her shoulder and shrugged, "Leave many openings."

Then she turned fully and looked at Grace with the directness of someone making sure they were understood. "I. Not enemy." She touched her own chest and then gestured outward, searching for the words and using them slowly. "Raja. Maddox." She paused. "Friend."

Grace lowered her own branch.

She stood in the forest with the darkness closing in around them and looked at this woman who moved like nothing she had ever seen and smelled like someone she had been looking for. Grace tried to understand what she said and figure out something she could work with.

"You know Maddox," Grace shifted on her feet.

Silena nodded.

"Take me to him."

Something crossed Silena's face. The directness that had been there a moment ago shifted into something more complicated, she looked at Grace and then looked away and then looked back, and Grace could see her internally fighting with something. Silena opened her mouth once, then closed it, she opened it once more with no words coming out, she winced and shook herself in annoyance and finally spoke.

"Maddox," Silena said carefully. She touched her temple, tapping it twice. Then she shook her head. "Not Maddox."

Grace frowned. "What does that mean?"

Silena looked frustrated, she was trying so hard to communicate but the sentences weren’t coming together, she’d only picked up some random words from Khan, how was she supposed to put them to use now? She spread her hands and looked at them and then looked at Grace.

"Body," she bit her bottom lip. "Maddox body." She touched her own face, her own hands, indicating the physical. Then she shook her head again and pointed at her temple. "No Maddox, inside."

Grace stared at her.

"I don’t understand. Please, take me to him. I’m begging you," Grace pleaded now.

Silena stayed quiet, her frown deepening.

Then she turned and walked to the far side of the rock cluster and sat down with her back against the largest stone drawing up her knees up and looked at the forest ahead of her, saying nothing.

Grace watched her.

The fear on Silena's face was real. She made no effort to hide it as she sat against the rock and looked at the trees.

Grace sat back down near the unlit fire and looked at her.

She thought about what Silena had said. Body but not Maddox inside. She had known something was wrong since Bastian's back room, had known it with some suspicion. But hearing it from someone who had been there, from someone who smelled like she had been standing next to him for weeks, made it real.

‘Someone else was in his body.’

And Silena was terrified of whoever it was.

Grace looked at the unlit branches on the ground, somehow she felt relief. Relief at the fact that the wild creature who had attacked her and Bastian wasn’t Maddox, she thought about what that meant for what she had been planning to do, which was to find Maddox’s body and return it to him.

But if the real Maddox wasn’t in Maddox’s body, then where was he?

“Bastian!” She snapped her fingers at the sudden realisation. But her relief slowly shifted to dread at the thought of what could be in his body that was enough to make this trained fighter woman sit down against a rock and stare at the trees with that expression.

She watched Silena for a while and thought.

Then she got up and found two rocks with the right surfaces and started working on the fire herself, striking them together over the dried branches the way she had seen done once in a survival video she had watched at three in the morning when she couldn't sleep, it took considerably longer than the video had suggested it would but eventually a small flame caught and she fed it carefully until it was a real fire.

Silena had been watching her from the rock.

When the fire was going, Grace sat beside it and looked across at Silena and thought about the problem in front of her, which was that they were two people in a forest who needed to be able to communicate and currently could not do so with any reliability.

She looked at the fire.

Then she looked at Silena. She had no idea what this woman’s connection was with her childhood friend and mate, but it felt genuine.

"I teach you," Grace threw a stick into the fire, she said it slowly, breaking it apart, enough for Silena to understand. She pointed at herself, gesturing to her lips. "English." She pointed at Silena. Then she mimicked a fight, she threw her hands up into a fist and jabbed at the air a few times, it was nothing like what Silena had done behind her back but communicating the intent. She pointed at Silena again. "You teach me." She pointed at herself. "Fight."

She spread her hands to complete the offer. 

“We save, Maddox. Together.”

Silena looked at her.

She looked at Grace's hands for a moment, then the corner of her mouth moved.

Not a full smile. Something smaller, something that had been sitting back behind the fear and the exhaustion and had found a small opening to come through.

She looked at Grace across the fire and gave one slow nod. “Yes.”