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it’s a name that’s obviously very... well, anti you.”
    A deep sigh was the first part of Cormack’s response. The rest he issued verbally with a frown, knitting his dark brows.
    “The answers to your first two questions require lengthier and more involved responses than I’m willing to give right now. But to answer your third question, I call my brother AntiCormack for one simple reason... to continually remind myself that he is against me at all times, at every moment, and would love nothing more than to see me dead. With as close as we once were, sometimes I’m tempted to forget this, but I can’t let myself. Doing so might cause my people, or me, to be harmed. Calling him AntiCormack reminds me of who he truly is and what he wants.”
    “Oh. I think I understand now.”
    Cormack had slowed his pace while speaking and had even looked at me a few times, but he now abruptly picked up his pace, extremely stony-faced again, and changed the subject, as if afraid he’d shared too much. “Anyway. When you escaped from the hospital, had they finished treating you yet?”
    “I guess so. Dr. Moore gave me a clean bill of health, and I was supposed to be discharged later today. But back to AntiCormack... when he mentioned a ‘prophecy,’ what exactly-?”
    “And are you suffering from any amnesia?”
    I ground my teeth, once again irritated by him. It had taken him wanting to change the subject for him to ask anything at all about my well-being.
    “No. I don’t have any amnesia at all. I remember everything about my past.”
    If I’d actually thought he was going to ask me anything about that past, I would have been disappointed, because he didn’t. A gruff good was all he said. The gruffness in that single word also told me that he was done speaking for the time being, so I didn’t say anything further. I was kind of done speaking for the time being. My legs were starting to feel strangely rubbery, and my mouth was parched. I was sorry that I’d left my plastic hospital bag of supplies, including water, back at the clearing, but as hastily as I’d followed Cormack, I just hadn’t remembered to pick it up.
    For several minutes, the two of us walked along without speaking. Birdsong and the sound of our feet crunching twigs were the only things that filled the silence. Occasionally, a stiff breeze rustled the green and yellow leaves of the trees around us.
    My stumbling and almost falling in a near-faint kind of came out of nowhere. Or maybe not, since my legs had been weirdly rubbery for a little bit by this time, and I’d been extremely thirsty for just as long.
    I wasn’t sure if I’d stumbled on anything other than my own feet, probably not, not that it even mattered. All I knew was that my feet had done something funny beneath me, and I was now falling forward in some kind of dizzy slow motion, a moment that seemed to last forever as the ground became closer and closer.

CHAPTER THREE
     
            I didn’t hit the ground. Strong arms caught me first, and I clung to them instinctively.
    “Sorry. Sorry, I’m just a little....”
    I was just a little dizzy, and thirsty, and rubber-legged, though my mouth was too dry for me to get the words out, and even if it hadn’t been, I was too tired to finish the thought anyway. I wasn’t too tired, however, to not notice and fully appreciate a heavenly scent emanating from the hard chest I was leaning against, or more like slumping against, cheek against one very well-defined pectoral muscle. The scent was woodsy and leathery and clean, with faint notes of citrus and soap. It was a scent I could have breathed in for hours, days. It was ending, though, to my disappointment. Cormack was sitting me down on a tree stump or something, I really didn’t even know, withdrawing his arms and chest from me.
    “Is this better?”
    Sitting on a stump was not better than being in his arms, breathing in his scent, though I supposed it was better in the sense that my