Forbidden by Ted Dekker Read Free Book Online Page A

her arms.
    Rom strode to the chair and sat in it himself, got up again, rubbed at his face, sat back down. Looked at the box.
    “You’re making me more nervous,” Avra said.
    It was everything he could do to remain calm. “Help me think. I can’t think.”
    “You shouldn’t have taken the box.”
    “I know. But the old man talked about my father. He told me to swear. And then…and then they killed him.”
    She let out a shaky breath. “Anyone would have run. I would’ve.”
    “Run, yes. But taken the box…”
    “You shouldn’t have taken the box.”
    “But I did.”
    “We could leave the city, go to Greater Europa,” she said. “To my parents’—”
    “No. They’ll turn us in.”
    “We can’t stay here! Maybe your mother was right. Maybe we should just go to compliance.”
    “Are you forgetting everything I say the moment I say it?” He jabbed a finger at the box. “They’re killing people connected to that thing. They killed my father!”
    “You don’t know that! Your mother took him to the wellness center herself. He was sick with fever.” But she shuddered when she said it. Rom knew Avra would never go willingly to a wellness center.
    “She was right,” Avra went on. “Your mother was a wise woman. She was…” She trailed off, staring at the box. “What about a priest? You could tell one of the priests. They should know what it is. They could take it.”
    He hesitated, considering that. “The writing inside the box talked about death. Maybe a priest would know what to do.”
    “Then that’s it, we’ll take it to a priest. The priest can turn it in.”
    Rom got up and paced away, shaking his head. “I don’t know why, but I think they’d still come after me. They killed my mother and she hadn’t even seen it yet! No. They’re killing everyone associated with it. Which now includes you.”
    “But I don’t have a clue about this box! I want nothing to do with it!”
    “They don’t know that.”
    “Then you shouldn’t have come to my house!”
    “Even if I hadn’t, they’d assume you’d lead them to me. You’re not understanding the nature of this thing, Avra! They’ll kill you because other than my mother, you’re the closest to me.”
    “But I’m not even your family!”
    “We’re closer than family. No one else may know, but somehow they know.”
    Indeed, Rom and Avra were like twin lungs, breathing the same breath for more years than he could count, through school and afterward. No one knew the secrets kept between them, though it was clear that secrets existed.
    Avra went to the chair and sat down. The hem of her cloak pooled against the old stone floor.
    “Maybe you should destroy it.”
    “I thought about that. But they think I have it. No. I’m a dead man either way.”
    “Maybe you could go to the royals.”
    “Like who? Do we have Brahmin friends I’m not aware of?”
    She fell silent. After a moment, she said, “The canyonlands. We could run to the desert. They say people live out there. Nomads, living beyond the reach of Order.”
    “It’s a myth.”
    “Are you so sure? People whisper. There are reports—”
    “Even if it’s not a myth, who would want to live beyond the Order?”
    For the first time he realized that Avra herself already did, in a manner of speaking. Of course she had thought of leaving. And he realized, too, the reason she had not.
    She would never go without him.
    “Think of it, Rom. No Order…no Honor Code. No citizens reporting one another for the smallest infraction, living every day in fear. It would be living. Just living , for as long as possible…”
    “Outside the Order? Without a chance to attend assembly at all? We’d be damning ourselves!”
    Avra was silent. They both already knew where Avra’s eternal destination lay.
    She abruptly looked away.
    “Avra…”
    She bolted up and hurried toward the door, stumbling over the hem of her cloak. It pulled askew, dragging wide the neckline of her tunic beneath,