Chapter 10: Rule Seventy-Seven

Autumn's POV

On the last night before the Harvest Moon, a guard I did not know knocked on my door at eleven.

He held out a folded note and left before I could ask him anything.

I opened it under the lamp.

Autumn come to the north border gate. Lottie is hurt and asking for you. Please hurry. Tell no one.

I read it once and was already reaching for my boots.

Then I stopped with one boot on.

Rule seventy-seven said I never left the house after dark.

A month of rules had gone by since the Gathering.

I had kept every one, even the stupid ones and the cruel ones, because Jasper had told me nobody could.

He had not touched me since the garden.

He hadn't spoken to me except in front of other people.

When he looked at me, he looked away first.

I had kept the rules anyway.

If I broke one tonight, he had won.

If I stayed, and the note was true, Lottie was lying at a border gate bleeding.

I stood in the middle of the room with my boot in my hand and breathed.

Someone knocked again, softly.

"It's Cordelia."

I opened the door.

She stood in the corridor in her coat, with her hair in its neat knot.

A worried line sat between her brows.

"I heard a guard came for you," she said. "I'm so sorry. It's Lottie, isn't it?"

"I've got a truck at the side gate. We can be at the border in ten minutes."

"The note said to tell no one."

"I wouldn't have known, but I saw him on the stairs." She touched my arm. "Come on. She's asking for you."

I looked at her hand.

It smelled faintly of lavender.