The forest smelled different at night.
Lily had learned the daytime version of it — the green, living weight of it, the way light changed the quality of the air through the canopy. But this was something else. Denser. Closer. The dark pressed the trees together into shapes she couldn't fully read, and every sound that didn't come from their own footsteps was something she had to consciously decide not to startle at.
She was getting better at that. She was not yet good at it.
Bellamy crouched at the edge of the path and held out his hand, palm flat — stop — and they all went still. Ahead, barely visible through the undergrowth, she could make out the shape of the trail Clarke and Finn were following. Clarke had the berries.
"At least they are good for something," Bellamy said, rising after a moment, pocketing the handful he'd collected.
Lily found herself in quiet agreement. They had been sitting in the supply crate since the night everyone had been high on those.
The flash arrived before she could stop it: bark against her cheek, the cold of the ground coming up to meet her palms, the pressure across her throat that had made the next breath come in wrong and shallow. The warmth of blood reaching her jaw.
She pressed her fingers briefly against the side of her face and made herself release the breath she had been holding.
"Sorry for bringing up Clarke," Jasper said somewhere behind her, in the tone of someone who had said something without quite thinking it through. "Awkward."
"Shut up," Raven said.
"Both of you shut up." Bellamy didn't look back. Keep your eyes open.
Lily kept hers on the path and adjusted her grip on the rifle.
She was still not entirely comfortable with the weight of it in her hands — had not been, even in the clearing during the training sessions, where the mechanics of it had become almost familiar and the targets had been stationary and the stakes had been theoretical. This was not theoretical. If something went wrong out here, he would have to decide, in the space of a second, whether to use it.
She had defended herself against Jake. Her body had simply moved, had found the stone and swung it before her mind had finished catching up. But that had not been the same as pulling a trigger. She had not killed him. She had not known, in that moment, whether she would have been able to. If it came to it out here — a Grounder charging, someone she cared about in the way of a blade — she still didn't know.
Maybe that's what the body does, she thought. Maybe it moves anyway.
But she hadn't even been able to tell anyone what had happened with Jake. She wasn't even able to speak clearly about it, not even with Bellamy, that knew what had happened. If she couldn't speak that out loud, what made her think she could do this?
"Lily". Bellamy's voice was low, just behind her. "Stay close."
She looked up. He was watching her with that particular attention — the one that meant he had noticed something without making it a thing to address in front of the others.
"Hey." He stepped even with her, his tone firm but gentled at the edges. "I need you focused, alright?"
"I know," she said with a nod. "I'm sorry." She took a breath. Jasper and Raven were a few yards back, their footsteps steady. "We are going to make it, right?" She looked at Bellamy sidelong as they walked. "Without a fight?"
He held her gaze for a moment. She could see it — the thing he wasn't going to say, the comfort he wasn't going to offer because it would have been a lie, and he had stopped lying to her.
"Come on," he said instead. "We can't lose ground."
She nodded and followed him.
The night stretched. She tracked it the way she had learned to track most things out here by the quality of the darkness, the sounds that changed as the hours moved, the way her legs registered the miles. Somewhere around what she guessed was the second hour, she found herself thinking about Unity Day — the fire, the particular looseness of the camp, Bellamy's face when she'd found him across the clearing. Strange, that she could be walking through Grounder territory in the dark and still feel the warmth of that when she reached for it. But it was deeply sad to realize that they seem to not be able to have a quite night. With nothing happening. Would have always been like that?
The third hour, or thereabouts, she thought about Finn's expression when he'd told her about the Grounder, Lincoln. The stubborn certainty in it. She had not misread him — he had believed, genuinely believed, that this was the right way. She didn't think he was stupid. She thought he was someone who needed very badly for there to be a peaceful answer, and had decided to find one before he was sure it existed. But she didn't feel to disagree with him, not on everything. She just wished that they would cooperate as a team, and not going behind each other's backs.
By the time the sky had begun to grey at the edges, her thoughts had quieted into something more functional — the path, the tree line, the distance between herself and Bellamy's shoulder. She was tired in the way that went past wanting to stop, into something almost meditative. Her hands had stopped trembling around the rifle.
Then the light came all the way up, and Finn and Clarke stopped.
There was a bridge ahead — elevated, old, the kind of structure she had only seen in pictures. Clarke and Finn had stopped at its near end, and Lily eased back with the others into the tree cover, watching. She scanned the bridge, the tree line on the far side, the scrub below. Nothing yet.
Then she saw Octavia.
"What's Octavia doing here?" Jasper's voice was barely a whisper.
Lily looked immediately to Bellamy. His jaw had set, his eyes fixed on his sister with that particular expression — not quite shock, not quite anger. But she knew he didn't like for her to be there.
Lily moved her hand to his arm without thinking about it. She felt the muscle there, coiled and still.
Then suddenly Lincoln appeared.
She looked at Octavia moving toward him, and the last piece of it fell into place — how Finn had managed it, who had been the bridge between them. And then Octavia ran the last few steps and Lincoln's arms came around her, and the embrace was not tentative or uncertain. It was the kind that came from people who had already been through something together.
He's in love with her, Lily thought. The man who had stabbed Finn was in love with Bellamy's sister.
"Guess we know how he got away," Raven said quietly.
Lily tightened her grip on Bellamy's arm. She felt him wanting to move — felt the tension shift and gather, the way it always did before he acted on something — and she held on without increasing the pressure, just reminding him she was there.
The plan could still work. Lincoln had already shown that he didn't want anything to happen to Octavia. If Finn's read had been right, if the desire for peace was genuine on both sides, then the next few minutes could end something before it became a war. All Bellamy had to do was hold still.
She watched Lincoln and Octavia separate. She watched Finn reach for Clarke's hand, and she turned her eyes briefly to Raven before she could stop herself. Raven's expression had gone very still. Lily looked away, feeling the particular discomfort of witnessing something that belonged to someone else.
Then Bellamy moved, and she was already turning before she consciously registered why.
His rifle was coming up.
"What are you doing?" She kept her voice flat and below carrying distance.
"Let go." Bellamy said pointing his rifle in Lincoln's direction.
Lily's eyes widened. "You can't kill him — he's not attacking anyone." Her grip on his arm held when he didn't turn to her. "Bellamy!" She called almost desperately.
He didn't lower the rifle, but he didn't fire. And then the sound of hoofbeats reached them.
Wait. Raven's hand went up. Guys, look.
They turned. At the far end of the bridge, three figures were emerging from the tree line — and they were mounted.
Lily had seen horses in photographs, in the Ark's educational archives, in videos that had the quality of something recorded from another world entirely. She had read about them, had known their approximate size and the way they moved. None of it had prepared her for the reality of them in motion — the particular grace, the sound of them, the sheer living presence. For one involuntary second she simply looked.
Then she registered the riders.
Two men flanked the central figure, enormous, their faces hidden behind masks shaped like skulls, long lances resting across their horses. And between them, a woman — upright, unreadable, her expression carrying the particular dignity of someone who had never once in her life wondered whether she belonged somewhere.
Lily looked away from the horses and toward Bellamy. His rifle had moved again, tracking.
Would he keep his promise? The thought arrived with a specific sharpness, and she hated that it did, hated that it still surprised her when Bellamy did the thing she had asked him not to do — though it did not surprise her, not really. Fear in him moved toward action. That was what fear did in him. She knew that. But he had promised that he wouldn't attack first.
She was about to speak when he glanced sideways and found her eyes. Held them. And the rifle didn't move further.
She turned back to the bridge.
Clarke was walking forward, alone, toward the center. The woman with the skull-masked riders had dismounted, and she was walking forward too. Lily's palms were damp against the rifle stock. She watched Clarke's posture — straight, deliberate, the particular composure Clarke had when she was afraid and refusing to show it — and tried to believe it was enough.
Please make it work, she thought, watching the distance close between the two figures.
She was too far to hear the words. She watched the gestures, the pauses, the quality of the silences between them. The Grounder commander — because that was what she was, whatever her title — did not look afraid.
Raven raised her rifle and Lily's hand moved on reflex. But she relaxed when she noticed Raven only peering through the sight. "The grounder princess looks pissed." She said.
Bellamy didn't seem surprised. "Our princess has that effect."
"She can make it," Lily said. The words came out quieter than she intended, more for herself than anyone. "She will."
Then suddenly Jasper made a sound.
"No, no, no." Low, under his breath, "This is bad."
Lily turned immediately with a frown. "Jasper?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Bellamy, tight and controlled.
Jasper didn't answer. He was looking through the rifle sight, his body gone rigid, and Lily watched the tension move through him. What did he see?
"The Grounders are in the trees."
The breath left her before she could stop it. She turned to Bellamy and in his eyes were scanning the trees. Lily tried to do the same but she couldn't see anything.
"Where?" Bellamyn asked confused. Lily really hoped that Jasper was mistaken.
"Are you sure?" Raven asked with a frown.
"I don't see anything," Bellamy said, but then siddenly Jasper let out a gasp and before one of them could do anything, he moved.
"They're gonna shoot!" He yelled, making everyone turn in their direction, "Clarke, run!"
And then everything happened at once.
The first shots were Jasper's. They broke the morning open, and for a full half-second Lily stood exactly where she was with her rifle in her hands and the sound ringing through her body — nothing like the training sessions, nothing like the controlled percussion of the clearing inside the east wall. This was inside her chest, inside her teeth. A man fell from the trees. He had been there. Jaspen was right...
Then the arrows began.
They came from the tree line on the far bank, fast and low, and the four of them moved without discussing it — down to the stream bank, behind what cover there was, Jasper still firing. Lily brought her rifle up. Her hands were steady. She aimed at the space between the branches and held the position and did not pull the trigger, because there was nothing specific in her sights.
What should I do? She trembled. What do I do?
Then the shot from directly beside her made her flinch — Bellamy, not at the trees but at the bridge, and when she tracked his line she saw the commander stumble, her shoulder struck, already moving away.
"Go, go!" Bellamy's voice was behind her, "Lily, go!" And she was running.
She ran.
The woods closed around her immediately — branches catching at her jacket, roots she had to read in half-seconds, the ground uneven beneath her boots. Behind her she could still hear the arrows, the crack of Jasper's rifle, and then Bellamy's voice again cutting through it all, close and certain, and she ran toward the sound of him.
She had not fired.
The thought arrived between one stride and the next and stayed there, flat and specific and impossible to put down. She had brought the rifle up. Her hands had been steady. And she had held the position and not pulled the trigger, and now she was running through the forest with her heart hammering against her ribs, and she kept thinking: what if Bellamy had been hit? What if it had been Jasper, or Raven, or Clarke on that bridge? What if her hesitation had cost someone something she could never give back?
She had defended herself against Jake. Her body had moved then without asking permission. But this had been different — a choice, a real one, and she had made it, and she didn't know yet if it had been right or only the thing she was capable of.
You hate violence, Bellamy had said to her. She did. She still did.
But hating something and being safe from its consequences were not the same thing.
The trees thinned. She could see Finn ahead, Clarke beside him, Octavia just behind — all of them moving fast, not yet speaking, the shared understanding of people who knew they were not yet clear. Lily pushed harder.
They ran for a long time. The forest changed around them — the quality of light shifting as the sun climbed, the sounds of the birds returning slowly to the canopy as if testing whether the morning had gone back to normal. It had not. She could feel the camp pulling at her from ahead, that particular orientation she had developed over weeks of knowing where north was relative to the dropship, and she followed it without having to think.
When the wall finally appeared through the trees, grey and solid in the evening light, she felt the breath leave her in one long, involuntary release.
They had been in the forest for almost a full day.
Nobody spoke until they were inside and the gate had been drawn shut behind them, and even then the silence lasted another full minute — six people standing in the clearing, breathing hard, the camp moving around them with the ordinary sounds of evening that felt, at that moment, almost incomprehensible.
Lily stood between Bellamy and Clarke and pressed her hands flat against her thighs and made herself breathe.
"You've got something to say?"
She turned. Bellamy was looking at Finn, who was looking back at all of them with something that had passed through fury and arrived somewhere quieter and colder.
"I told you — no guns."
"I told you we couldn't trust the Grounders," Clarke said. "And I was right."
"Why didn't you tell me what you were up to?" Raven's voice was tight in a different way — not at Clarke, at Finn.
"I tried," Finn argued back. "But you were busy with the guns."
"You're lucky she brought that." Bellamy's voice was hard and flat. "They came there to kill you."
"You don't know that!" Finn excalimed.
Lily stepped forward. "Finn." She kept her voice below the heat of it. "They had weapons too. You saw it."
"It was Jasper who fired the first shot!" Finn said.
"You ruined everything." Octavia's voice, directed at Jasper, and Lily watched it land on him — watched his face receive it and close around it.
"I saved you." His voice cracked slightly at the edges. He was already backing away. "You're welcome." He turned and shook his head and walked.
"Jasper—" Lily reached for his arm and he moved past her touch without looking at her, and she let him go, because she knew the shape of what he was carrying and she knew it needed to be set down somewhere private.
"Well, if we weren't at war already, we sure as hell are now." Finn, still going.
Lily looked down. She could not disagree. Whatever the Grounders' intentions had been on that bridge, this was what they were left with. Shots fired. The commander wounded. A man dead in the trees. Whatever Lincoln had promised Finn had ended in a way that could not be undone.
"You didn't have to trust the Grounders," Finn said, and now it was only at Clarke. "You just had to trust me."
Then he walked away and Raven followed letting out a breath.
Lily watched them go. She thought about Finn's face when he'd asked her — obliquely, carefully — to keep Bellamy occupied. She thought about the rifle in her hands at the stream bank, the moment she had held the sight steady and not fired. She thought about what it would mean if the Grounders came for them now in force, and whether not pulling that trigger had made any difference to anything at all.
She didn't know. She was beginning to accept that there were things like that — things you did or didn't do whose consequences you would never be able to fully read.
"Like I said," Bellamy said, with that particular flatness that meant he was containing something, "best Unity Day ever."
She turned and looked at him, sharing a glance that made him touch her back, silently leading her inside. But before she could walk away, she turned to the other girl.
"Clarke." She put her hand on the girl's shoulder. "It was the right thing to do."
Clarke looked at her. Something in her jaw shifted. But with a little sad smile, she nodded.
They were turning back toward the camp when the sound reached them.
It was not a sound she had heard before, but her body understood it before her mind did — the deep, percussive wrongness of something large descending too fast, the particular quality of an impact that hadn't been cushioned. She looked up the same moment Bellamy did, and Clarke half a second after.
"The Exodus ship?"
"So soon?" Lily's frown came immediately. "They were supposed to be here in two days."
"They must have decided to come earlier," Bellamy said, from just behind her.
Clarke's face had opened into something that was almost relief, almost joy, and Lily watched her and understood it; she was probably thinking about her mother. As the chief doctor, she was surely coming down with Marcus. And she observed the longing smile on her face, that anticipation of wanting to meet a person she loved that much again after so much time. And Lily wanted to feel it too, she really did, but found she couldn't. The thought of seeing Marcus was giving her so many mixed thoughts and feelings.
She was sure that Clarke and her mother would have hugged each other, once they would meet. What would have her and Marcus do?
Nothing surely, she thought bitterly. They would have looked at each other from across the camp, not daring to speak to each other with so many people around. Like it had always been.
Lily had so many questions on what he would have done once on the ground. How he would have handeled everything. And part of her was sure that he would disappoint her again, and yet she hoped he wouldn't.
Stop that, Lily, she told herself as she kept looking up.
As she looked the dropship keeping with its descend, Lily found herself frowning. It was so strange that Marcus had told her that the landing was scheduled in sixty hours. Why tell her that if he was going to be on the ground earlier?
That thought made her really consider that. It didn't make any sense.
"Wait." Clarke's voice had changed. Lily turned to her, a strange feeling was creeping in her stomach.
"Too fast," Clarke said and only then Lily noticed it. The angle was strange, the deceleration sequence hadn't engaged, the parachute wasn't there, and the thing descending was no longer a ship being guided but an object obeying gravity, and they were watching it and there was nothing any of them could do.
Lily's eyes widened when the ship hit the ground. It was far from they were, but they could still see it and hear it.
The sound traveled through the earth before it reached the air — she felt it in her feet, in her spine — and then the sky lit with it, the explosion blooming orange against the dark, and the sound that followed was the kind that stopped thought entirely.
Lily's hand found Bellamy's arm. She was not aware of reaching for it. Her breath laboured.
And then she saw it, the cloud rising up into the sky, dark smoke that brought fire with it. Fire from an explosion.
The Exodus had crashed.
Marcus, she thought.