“Careful,” he said, pointing at a tangle of roots hidden by a mass of purple leaves. “The ground gets pretty uneven here.”

Wells took Octavia’s small hand and helped her climb over a fallen tree. It was strange to think that something without a pulse could die, but the soggy, peeling bark was decidedly corpse-like.

“So is it true?” Octavia asked as they began walking down the slope that led to the stream. “Did you really get yourself Confined so you could come with Clarke?”

“I suppose it is.”

She sighed wistfully. “That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”

Wel sie itls gave her a wry smile. “Trust me, it’s not.”

“What do you mean?” Octavia asked, cocking her head to one side. In the shadows of the forest, she looked almost childlike again.

Wells glanced away, suddenly unable to look her in the eye. He wondered grimly what Octavia would say if she knew the truth.

He wasn’t the brave knight who’d come to rescue the princess. He was the reason she’d been locked away in the dungeon.

Wells glanced at his collar chip for the fourteenth time since he’d sat down two minutes earlier. The message Clarke had sent him earlier that day had sounded anxious, and she’d been acting strange for the past few weeks. Wells had barely seen her, and the few times he managed to track her down, she’d been practically twitching with nervous energy.

He couldn’t help but worry that she was about to break up with him. The only thing that kept the anxiety from burning a hole through his stomach was the knowledge that she probably wouldn’t have chosen the library to dump him. It’d be cruel to tarnish the spot they both loved best. Clarke wouldn’t do that to him.

He heard footsteps and rose to his feet as the overhead lights flickered back on. Wells had been still for so long that the library had forgotten his presence, the dim safety lights on the floor providing the only light. Clarke approached, still wearing her scrubs, which normally made him smile—he loved that she didn’t spend hours stressing over her appearance, like most girls on Phoenix—but the blue top and pants fell too loosely from her frame, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

“Hey,” he said, stepping forward to kiss her lightly in greeting. She didn’t move away, but she didn’t kiss him back. “Are you okay?” he asked, even though he knew full well that she wasn’t.

“Wells,” she said, her voice breaking. She blinked back tears. His eyes widened in alarm. Clarke never cried.

“Hey,” he murmured, putting his arm around her to lead her to the couch. Her legs seemed to buckle beneath her. “It’ll be okay, I promise. Just tell me what’s going on.”

She stared at him, and he could see her urge to confide in him battling her fear. “I need you to promise me that you won’t say anything about this to anyone.”

He nodded. “Of course.”

“I’m serious. This isn’t gossip. This is real, life-or-death.”

Wells squeezed her hand. “Clarke, you know you can tell me anything.”

“I found out…” She took a breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and then started again. “You know about my parents’ radiation research.” He nodded. Her parents were in charge of a massive ongoing study meant to determine when, if ever, it would be safe for humans to return to Earth. Whenever his father had spoken of an Earth mission, Wells had thought of it as a distant possibility, more of a hope than a real plan. Still, he knew how important the Griffins’ work was to the Chancellor and to the whole Colony. “They’re doing human trials,” Clarke said softarke ofly. A chill traveled down Wells’s spine, but he said nothing, just tightened his grasp on her hand. “They’re experimenting on children,” Clarke finally said, her voice barely a whisper.

Her voice was hollow, as if the thought had been circulating for so long, it no longer held any meaning. “What children?” he asked, his brain racing to understand.

“Unregistereds,” Clarke said, her tear-filled eyes flashing with sudden anger. “Children from the care center whose parents were executed for violating the population laws.” He could hear the unspoken accusation. People your father killed.

“They’re so young.…” Clarke’s voice trailed off. She sank back and seemed to shrink, as if the truth had taken some part of her with it.

Wells slid his arm behind her, but instead of recoiling as she’d done every day over the past few weeks, she leaned into him and rested her head against his chest. “They’re all so sick.” He could feel her tears seeping through his shirt. “Some of them have already died.”

“I’m so sorry, Clarke,” he murmured as he searched for something to say, anything to make her pain go away. “I’m sure your parents are doing their best to make sure it’s…” He paused. There weren’t any words that could make it better. He had to do something, to put a stop to it before the guilt and horror destroyed her. “What can I do?” he asked, his voice becoming firm.

She bolted upright and stared at him, a different kind of terror filling her eyes. “Nothing,” she said with a resolve that took him by surprise. “You have to promise me that you’ll do nothing. My parents made me swear not to tell anyone. They didn’t want to do this, Wells. It wasn’t their choice. Vice Chancellor Rhodes is making them. He threatened them.” She grabbed Wells’s hands. “Promise me you won’t say anything. I just…” She bit her lip. “I just couldn’t keep it from you anymore. I had to tell someone.”

“I promise,” he said, though his skin was growing warm with fury. The slimy bastard had no right to go around the Chancellor like that. He thought of his father, the man who had an unflinching sense of right and wrong. His father never would have approved human trials. He could put a stop to it immediately.

Clarke stared at him, searching his eyes, and then gave him a small, trembling smile that vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. “Thank you.”

She returned her head to Wells’s chest, and he wrapped his arm around her. “I love you,” he whispered.

An hour later, after he’d walked Clarke home, Wells headed back along the observation deck alone. He needed to do something. If something didn’t change soon, the guilt would destroy her, and he refused to stand by and watch.

Wells had never broken a promise before. It was something his father had impressed upon him from an early age—a leader never goes back on his word. But then he thought of Clarke’s tears, and knew he didn’t have a choice.

He turned around and begaros, and knean walking toward his father’s office.

They filled the water jug at the stream and started to make their way back to the camp. After giving enough one-word answers, Wells had gotten Octavia to stop asking about Clarke, but now she was walking along sullenly, and he felt guilty. She was a sweet girl, and he knew she meant well. How had she wound up here?

“So,” Wells said, breaking the silence, “what could you have possibly done to end up in Confinement?”

Octavia looked at him in surprise. “Haven’t you heard my brother talking about it?” She gave him a tight smile. “He loves telling people about how I was caught stealing food for the younger kids in the care center—the little ones who are always bullied into giving up their rations—and how the monsters on the Council Confined me without batting an eye.”

Something in Octavia’s voice gave him pause. “Is that really how it happened?”

“Does it matter?” she asked with a weariness that suddenly made her seem older than fourteen. “We’re all going to think what we want about each other. If that’s the story Bellamy needs to believe, then I’m not going to stop him.”

Wells stopped to rearrange the heavy water jug. Somehow, they’d ended up in a different part of the woods. The trees grew even closer together here, and he could see far enough ahead to tell how far they’d strayed.

“Are we lost?” Octavia glanced from side to side, and even in the dim light he could see the panic flash across her face.

“We’ll be fine. I just need to—” He stopped as a sound shuddered through the air.

“What was that?” Octavia asked. “Are we—”

Wells cut her off with a shush and took a step forward. It sounded like a twig snapping, which meant that something was moving just behind the trees. He kicked himself for not bringing a weapon. It would’ve been nice to bring back his own kill, to show that Bellamy wasn’t the only one who could learn how to hunt. The sound came again, and Wells’s frustration turned to fear. Forget catching dinner—if he wasn’t careful, he and Octavia might become dinner themselves.

He was about to grab her hand and run away when something caught his eye. A glint of reddish gold. Wells lowered the water jug and took a few steps forward. “Stay here,” he whispered.

Just ahead, he could see an open space beyond the trees. Some kind of clearing. He was about to shout the name hovering on his lips when he froze, skidding to a stop.

Clarke was standing in the grass, locked in an embrace with none other than Bellamy. As she brought her lips up to the Waldenite, fury tore through Wells. Heat shot up through his chest to settle in his racing heart.

Somehow, he managed to wrench his eyes away and stagger back into the trees before a wave of nausea sent his head spinning. He grabbed on to a branch for balance, gasping as he tried to force air into his lungs. The girl he’d risked his life to protect wasn’t just kissing someone else—she was kissing the hothead who may have gotten his father killed.

“Whoa.” Octavia’s voice came from beside him. “Their walk looks a lot more fun than ours.”

But Wells had already turned and begun walking in the other direction. He was vaguely aware of Octavia scampering after him, asking something about a medicine chest, but her voice was drowned out by the pulsing y t to brinof blood in his head. He didn’t care whether they’d found the missing medicine. There was no drug strong enough to repair a broken heart.

CHAPTER 18

Clarke

By the time Clarke and Bellamy returned to camp with the medicine, darkness had fallen. She’d only been in the woods for a few hours, but as they stepped through the tree line into the clearing, it felt like she’d left a lifetime ago.

They’d spent most of the walk back in silence, but every time Clarke’s arm accidentally brushed against Bellamy’s, electricity seemed to dance across her skin. She’d been mortified after their kiss, and had spent the next five minutes stammering an apology while he grinned. Eventually, he cut her off with a laugh and told her not to worry about it. “I know you’re not the type of girl to make out with random guys in the woods,” he’d said with a mischievous grin, “but maybe you should be.”

But as they approached the clearing, all thoughts of the kiss were pushed aside by the shadowy outline of the infirmary tent. Clarke took off with the medicine tucked under her arm.

The tent was empty except for a delirious, feverish Thalia, and to Clarke’s surprise, Octavia, who was just settling back in her old cot. “The other tent is just so small,” Octavia was saying, but Clarke couldn’t do more than nod.

She flung the medicine chest onto the floor, filled a syringe, and plunged the needle into Thalia’s arm. Then Clarke turned back to the box, searching for painkillers. She quickly gave Thalia a dose and smiled as her friend’s face relaxed in sleep.

Clarke knelt next to Thalia for a few more minutes, breathing a deep sigh of relief at her steady pulse. For a moment, she looked down at the bracelet on her wrist and wondered if, somewhere up in the sky, someone was monitoring her own heart rate. Dr. Lahiri, perhaps, or another of the Colony’s top doctors, reading the hundred’s vital signs like the day’s news. Surely they had seen that five people had died already.… She wondered if they’d chalk the deaths up to radiation poisoning and rethink their colonization efforts, or if they’d be smart enough to realize they’d been killed because of the rough landing. She wasn’t sure which scenario she preferred. She certainly wasn’t ready for the Council to extend its jurisdiction to Earth. And yet her mother and father had devoted their lives to helping humanity return home. A permanent settlement would mean, in a way, that her parents had succeeded too. That they hadn’t died for nothing.