Chapter 27

Every day in the morning, I would practice drowning out the whispers. I had to find the middle where they came and focus on placing them in an empty chamber in my mind, then lock them in and ignore them. I had been at it for days now. When we were walking, I tried to do it. I thought if I could drown them out while doing something else simultaneously, it would help me get better. It did, but it had been a hard task at first.

In the beginning, when the whispers would fill my head, I would stumble and fall, unable to concentrate clearly on what I was doing. Eventually, I could do it, becoming more confident with each passing day.

I was so absorbed with my training that I didn’t hear Otis say my name until he grabbed my arm and pulled me off the road under a bush.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him, a little staggered.

“Shh, there’s a patrol coming our way.”

I ducked my head close to the ground and altogether stopped breathing. This was the first patrol we encountered since we were amb