by Jess Corban
“Are Nedéans using their power any better than the Brutes of old did? Tell me the truth,” I press. “What were Teera’s orders? Hmm? No survivors?”
She locks eyes with me again.
“With one exception,” she says. “Teera ordered Adoni to stay close to her, but she tasked me with bringing you back—dead or alive. Except for having to bring Jamara along, I took the orders gladly.” She leans forward. “You were my responsibility. Bri was my responsibility. And I failed. I wasn’t going to let that happen again.”
“You had the shot,” I accuse, remembering the fierce look in her eyes as I hung exposed in the treetops.
“I missed.”
“You’re lying.”
She considers the canopy overhead, as if reliving the moment.
“Alright, fine. Something still didn’t add up. I’m no fool. I could see they weren’t fighting full force. I knew it was your voice warning me not to shoot. I had my orders, but still, I wavered.”
“Why?” I press, trying to get her to admit what I hope is the real reason.
She grabs the net between us. “Because some foolish part of me still wanted to believe you were the woman I thought you were.”
I place my hands over hers and lean in closer. “I don’t know if I’ll ever deserve your trust, Trin, but I’m going to do everything in my power to try.”
I slip the bone knife from its sheath and set to work on the net.
She watches me saw at the cords. “How do you know I won’t kill you when I’m free?”
“I don’t,” I say, concentrating on the fibers beginning to fray under the blade. The rope is as thick as my wrist—this is going to take a while.
While I work, she eyes the blade, stark white in the moonlight, and I remember how much it meant to me that she included it with the contraband she slipped me in the cell.
“Why did you return it?” I ask, not looking up.
She takes her time answering. “What you said about the Gentles—I could tell you really cared. You reminded me of Nana, I guess. The knife seemed important to you, so when I saw Adoni lock it in the armory for Teera, I thought you should have it back.”
“Thank you,” I say. “It is important to me.” I don’t, however, think it will be helpful to mention that it ultimately allowed the Brutes more time to prepare for her attack.
She smiles slyly—reminiscent of the confident, charismatic Alexia I first met. “You paid me back by leaving a nice, wide trail to follow your sorry butt.”
I humph at her. “You’re welcome.” Since we still have some time till I’ll get through these impressive ropes, I ask, “But how did you know where to begin your search?”
She grows serious again. “Teera sent us to Bella Terra first, but Adoni said if you weren’t there we should begin at the last known raid site. That’s the spot near Camino del Oeste where, well, you know where it is. Some Gentle field-workers reported a group of horses had passed that way—something about a crying baby—and we found your tracks near the border. From there, it wasn’t hard.”
“Well, with such an obvious map, you should be able to follow the trail back the way you came.” Another segment of net pops open, and I’m breathing heavily from the strain. “About a hundred meters north, you’ll find Bri’s Lexander waiting for you. There’s a little food and a weapon in the saddlebag.”
“Will they come after me?”
I remember the Brute slipping bandages into the cages, Torvus’s mention of relocating. “I don’t think so. We have enough to do in repairs and preparations.”
“We? You’re staying, then—with them?”
I consider sidestepping the question, but the last time I kept back the whole truth from Trin, I almost got her killed. I won’t deceive her again. I take a deep breath before confessing, “I’m leading them to Teera.”
“What? Why?” she whisper-shouts.
“Because power without virtue is tyranny, that’s why. We—Nedé, Teera, all of us—we’re gentling Brute babies without their knowledge.”
The confusion in her eyes is justifiable.
“Gentles aren’t born Gentles. A vaccine we give them at birth makes them that way. Where’s the virtue in forcing them to be what they’re not—in harming them without their consent?” Another segment breaks loose. “We’ve been told they can’t help but hurt women, but now you’ve seen for yourself—they have the capacity for goodness. Harm, too, yes. But don’t we? Who gave us the right to take the choice away from them? You know we’d never give it up ourselves.”
She scans the breadth of Tree Camp, the structures and impressive ingenuity visible in the moonlight, even after battle. “She has known for years, hasn’t she?”
“Who?”
“Teera. I’ve always wondered why she focused so much on building the Alexia.”
I remember the day Trin talked about her Nana with such fondness, explained that she was much of the reason Trin had joined the Alexia. She wanted to serve Nedé as her grandmother had. But her Nana had been able to keep peace with only a single small dagger, which she reportedly never had to use. Trin confessed that since her Nana’s time, the Alexia had become “both more and less.”
A fifth link of rope unravels, creating a hole just big enough for her to wiggle through. She crouches in the shadows beside me, listening and waiting to ensure no one has heard us, then gets to her feet.
“I know you don’t agree with the direction Teera has taken the Alexia,” I say. “I also know she’ll stop at nothing until she has killed every single one of these Brutes. I don’t expect you to trust them—not yet. But maybe you can understand why I can’t let her destroy them. I believe gentling the Brutes has made us less too. You don’t have to lie for me again. Tell Adoni this location if you need to—we won’t be here by the time she can send you back with more.”
Her gaze flits to the clusters of secure cages. “I’m responsible for them, too.”
“There’s no way we can break them all out tonight.”
She chews her thumb. Trin won’t leave if she thinks they need her here.
“Look,” I reason, “if the Brutes wanted them dead, they wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble of keeping them alive. I’ll make sure they’re treated fairly. I promise.”
She grasps my forearm, and I return the gesture, then pull her into a tight hug.
“Be careful, Candidate,” she whispers in my ear.
“You, too,” I say, then give her the handle of her Nana’s dagger—the one she had pulled on Rohan. It surfaced in a pile of weapons reaped from the Jungle floor after the fight. I knew immediately whose it was and that she deserved to have it back. More than I deserved Rohan’s knife from her, anyway.
She rubs the turquoise and ivory stones with her thumb, cleaning mud away until they gleam under the moonlight.
“Just returning the favor,” I say.
The corner of her mouth lifts as she slides the knife into her boot. Then she disappears into the night.
INTERLUDE
ONLY DR. NOVAK KNEW OF Leda’s first pregnancy, and people would notice—ask questions—if the Matriarch’s daughter avoided fulfilling her unexpected destiny. And so she birthed three more children, all girls. The first, Jonalyn, was born only a year after she left Jason with Torvus. Ciela came two years later, and, following an unexpected miscarriage, her Rei of Sunshine completed their family and taught her to hope again.
Her daughters filled her heart with light and joy. They brought a sense of permanence to her life, and her love for them helped fill the deficit left by her separation from Torvus and the ache of leaving Jason. Jonalyn, Ciela, and Reina reminded her that duty must come before pleasure, and that, strangely, pleasure can be found even in duty.
Her role as a Center codirector, combined with frequent treks into the Jungle, limited her capacity for more childbearing. But that didn’t matter to Leda—she had no need of the stipends or pension offered Maternos for more births, and her hands were full with Center business and over
seeing Bella Terra. As a finca-holding Materno, dozens of tiny Gentles were assigned to live with her over the years, the offspring of other Maternos. With the help of a capable tutor, Dom Bakshi, and her trusted chef and friend, Marsa, Leda cared for them as if each were her own Jason, giving them seven years of dignity before reluctantly releasing them to Hives.
Knowing what she knew, Leda treated the older Gentles who came to work at Bella with all the fairness and respect she could, without drawing too much attention. She even allowed her daughter Reina to become friends with an unusually sharp, kindhearted Gentle she had named Treowe.
Regardless of her full life, Leda never forgot Torvus. Sometimes, on hot, dry-season nights, she’d wander the plumeria hedges, allowing the scent to transport her to another time—a world when forever felt as sure as his embrace. But as the years passed, her resignation grew. She had to put duty over love, no matter the cost. Besides, Torvus continued to give her no other option.
No matter how many times she left babies on his porch, he never made contact with her. He could have, she knew. She always timed her journeys with the full moon, making night travel easier. If he wanted to see her, he could leave her a message in the crate—a note, a flower, anything. His silence placed exclamation point after exclamation point on the last words he had spoken to her. He didn’t want to see her ever again.
The only thing stronger than Leda’s fear of facing Torvus was her love for her daughters.
When an Alexia came to Bella Terra to inform her that Reina had gone missing after investigating an attack, Leda packed a rucksack and left that very afternoon. She crossed the kilometers of Jungle in half the time it usually took, marching up Torvus’s steps in broad daylight.
When the aging Brute opened the door, her resolve nearly faltered. Seeing him face-to-face made her feel seventeen again. Despite decades of separation, her heart began to beat a forgotten rhythm.
She watched him watch her a long moment, dappled Jungle light softening his harsh edges. Did she imagine a flash of tenderness in his eyes? It almost seemed he wanted to embrace her.
“Why have you come?” he asked quietly.
She hoped, for the briefest of moments, that he had changed his mind—that he’d tell her to stop leaving the babies in the middle of the night—to come in daylight instead, to be his instead. But he had asked her a question, and she felt he deserved the truth.
“My daughter,” she pleaded. “She went missing near the border.”
At her answer, his gaze hardened.
“What’s that to me?” he snapped.
No, nothing had changed. How could she have thought otherwise? “I was hoping you might have heard something.”
He grunted, then turned and reentered the house.
She followed him inside, uninvited, her own conflicted anger growing with each step. Suspicions she had tried to bury suddenly seemed more feasible, given his response to her.
“I’ve tried not to assume, but there’s talk in Nedé about attacks on fincas . . .”
Torvus’s anger flashed then. He whirled on her, his hurt unmistakable. “And you think I’m responsible?”
Did she? The Brute before her barely resembled the Torvus she had known—the passionate, untamed soul who had stolen her heart under the plumeria trees. But now? Had he become what the foremothers claimed Brutes were—selfish, violent, untrustworthy menaces? No, she had to believe the real Torvus was still there somewhere, underneath his graying beard and sharp tongue. But perhaps when she left him all those years ago, she buried that man too deep in anger for her to ever reach again.
So she quickly sealed her heart back into the cocoon of duty and left the Jungle as empty as she had twenty-five years before. She had made her choice then—had chosen to give life to others rather than live it herself.
Torvus followed Leda all the way to the border, remaining just out of sight, ensuring her safe passage—just as he had every night she had brought infants to Tree Camp.
Speaking with Leda after all these years was unexpected, the effect she still had on him more so. Thirty years had passed since a curious girl on the riverbank had asked him about his armful of iguanas, but she was still herself. The gray woven through her dark hair, the lines settled around her eyes, hadn’t changed Leda Pierce—not really. She had only come to ask for his help once again, not to make amends. Why should he be the one to apologize? How dare she accuse him?
Even as pride strangled his affections, he couldn’t deny what once was, or the timeless beauty of her.
He wanted to forget her.
He longed to hold her.
But pride won out as he watched her disappear into Nedé, just like the last time he had foolishly let her go.
Leda had kept her secrets close to protect her family. When Jonalyn gave birth to her first child, a boy, Leda couldn’t risk telling her, not even to rescue him. When La Fortuna was attacked, it brought questions from her eldest daughter that had forced her hand. She had no choice but to tell Jonalyn the truth, and once she knew, no choice but to offer to take the baby.
But when Reina revealed she had been to the Jungle—in the Center records room, of all places—Leda suddenly worried that her daughter might fall for a Brute the way she had. In all her years of rescuing babies, she had focused on the injustice of gentling humans against their knowledge. She hadn’t considered the repercussions her actions could have for her own daughters. Reina was strong, but hadn’t Leda been strong once too?
In the fresh sting of rejection, having just returned from the Jungle four days earlier, she wanted to spare her daughter the heartache she had endured at the hand of someone she loved that deeply. Where had it gotten her? And she planned to warn Reina . . . until they were interrupted.
Facing eternity distills what matters most. That night, bleeding onto the tile floor, slipping in and out of consciousness, Leda finally realized what a fool she had been. With death clawing at her broken body, her mind hovering between the world and what comes after, she ached to be held by the strong arms of her true love—to be comforted by his voice, steadied by his strength. She wanted to tell him she finally understood that life without him was no life at all. That she loved him.
Like the swelling of a plumeria bud just before it unfurls, she felt her heart might burst with longing for what might have been.
But “might have been,” Leda mourned, consciousness slipping away again, can’t save me now.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE SUN IS HOT TODAY, even with the canopy to absorb some of the strongest rays.
Bri looks as wilted as I feel, sweat dripping down her temples despite her blonde hair being swept back into a ponytail.
“You want to get some water?” I ask.
She nods, setting the sack she was working on—a patchwork of netting and leather—on the wood bench.
“We’ll be back,” she tells the Brutes.
Jem’s mouth twitches, wrinkling a thin line of hair above his lip, his eyes barely flitting to us before returning to his task.
Théo nods brusquely. He doesn’t say anything either, but his dour expression communicates that we don’t have to return. We could just as well go back to Nedé. I don’t blame them for hating me. I’m the reason they have to leave their home. And they don’t even know I released their highest-ranking prisoner.
Well, one of them does. A few hours after freeing Trinidad, once the sun climbed to claim a new day, I confessed my crime to Jase.
He didn’t seem as concerned about my releasing the Alexia’s second-in-command as I thought he would be. He only asked me why.
“Because she saved me first.”
That’s all I felt needed to be said. I didn’t disclose that a few hours before releasing her, I had discovered a certain Brute I was growing to trust had secrets of his own, which had led me to question their kind as a whole. That may have had something to do with my actions. I didn’t mention it, though, because standing beside Jase this morning—his mussed hair fa
lling around earnest, hazel eyes—I couldn’t remember why I doubted. I couldn’t imagine not trusting Jase. His warmth, his openness, his easy laugh and desire to please make the strongest case—of all the Brutes I’ve encountered here in the Jungle—for trust. For partnership. For fighting for their right to be Brutes.
He put his hand on my shoulder, bent down so he could look right into my eyes, and said, “I trust you, Reina. If you needed to do it, you had your reasons.”
As with Trinidad, his trust was a gift I hoped to prove I deserved, and so I asked, “Should I tell Torvus?”
He stuck his tongue in his cheek before answering with a slight smile. “I don’t think he needs to know just yet.”
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved. Torvus had enough to be angry with me about, even before I released Trin without consulting him. Because of me, Tree Camp was compromised. I had cost six Brutes their lives, all of them their home.
Shortly after my talk with Jase, Torvus called everyone together to explain the necessity of abandoning camp, glaring pointedly at me more than once.
“The Alexia may return at any time,” he said, “with more force than their first attack. Tomorrow we make for the ruins.”
A murmur went up from the gathering, but it didn’t last long. For one, who could argue with Torvus’s reasoning? The Brutes barely prevailed last night—they might not be so lucky again. Second, there wasn’t time to object. Twenty-four hours isn’t long to salvage what you can from years of living in one place, especially while tending to the wounds of battle.
Consequently, instead of beginning our journey toward Phoenix City today, as was previously planned, every able-bodied Brute has been preparing for relocation. Tomorrow they’ll travel a day’s journey south through the Jungle, where they’ll attempt to make the ruins home as Tree Camp has been. The eleven of us will accompany them to the ruins, make sure they’re settled, then continue our mission.
Today, my companions and I have been helping where we can.