Beyond The Walls (NOW ON AMAZON!!!)

A Backstory

The next day, Hadley was building a small pyramid of sugar cubes on the kitchen island as Kade prepared lunch for them.

 

"Can I ask you something, Kade?" Hadley asked, putting the last cube in place at the top of the pyramid.

 

Kade reached into the oven to check on the parcel of fresh fish that they were about to eat. Delicious tendrils of scent snaked over from the oven to Hadley, whose stomach replied with an impatient growl. Kade chuckled at the sound.

 

A week or so before, they had been talking about how exhausted they were of eating canned food and how amazing it would have been to eat something fresh. How they had a whole estuary teeming with fish below them and all they could do was just watch them swim from their glass cube prison. The morning after all their complaining, they had walked into the kitchen and found a platter filled with a dozen fresh, gutted and cleaned fish sitting next to a bowl of fresh fruit and vegetables.

 

They added that to the long list of everything strange that kept happening at The Lodge, like how every night, when they went back to their room, they'd find all their laundry done and their bed remade, with a mint on each pillow.

 

"Not to worry. It's almost ready. And yes, you can ask me anything, Hadley." Kade said with a smile as he tucked the tea towel that he was using in place of oven mitts into the strings of his apron. "At this point, you know more about me than anyone else."

They'd spent the night opening themselves up to each other more than they ever had in the last three weeks, and even though there was still more to learn about each other, this thing between then was amazing. Hadley had already proved that she wouldn't bat an eyelid dying for this man, but now the sentiment was more than earned. And it was a certainty etched into her soul that he would do exactly the same for her.

Hadley smiled back at him, loving and appreciating this new dynamic. She destroyed her little sugar cube pyramid before going on.

"That day you came to break out Jamila and I from the cells, you and Brielle said something that I've never really understood, but that I've thought about often," Hadley said. "You said you were helping us escape for Drew's sake. What's the story behind that? What did they do to Drew?"

She didn't know how or when, but Hadley was going to kill anyone and everyone who'd raised a hand against the boy. Hadley wanted names and wanted Kade to know she would only cross them off her list at their death, even though they were his beloved fellow Wildlings.

Kade lost his smile.

He slowly walked over to where Hadley was sitting on a stool against one of the islands in the expansive kitchen. They had been using just one of the gas stoves, even though the kitchen had two walls lined with burners. Claiming a section of the kitchen as their own space felt like something they had control over, unlike all the other mysterious things going on in The Lodge.

"When I was young, about Drew's age, a Wildling couple was banished by the Council for breaking Wildling ethos, and rumour has it that they joined the Architects. They were Brielle's parents. We never saw them again." Kade started. He paused and took a deep breath before he continued. "Brielle had a brother, Gilbert. He was two years younger than us."

As if it hurt to just sit down and tell the story, Kade got up again and went to rummage in the freezer for a pack of frozen mixed vegetables. Hadley stayed silent and waited for him to come back and continue.

"I didn't understand it then, but we took away everything that mattered to that little boy, and it was never considered a bad thing. It was even encouraged. His dishonourable parents were gone, ridding him of bad influence, but so was his sister, because Brielle spent every moment of her life proving she was the most dutiful Wildling to ever exist, and nothing like her parents.