Aimee smiled at them disappearing into the dark sky. Then she smiled into the fire. There was nowhere to look without seeing couples pairing off in the night.
Taig, Reina, and Lilith sat alone on opposite sides of the fire. Taig eyed Lilith with a scowl on his face. He wasn’t scooting over next to her any time soon. Lilith stared at the ground. She didn’t even look at her mother. Her split lip pouted and oozed, and her battered eye didn’t blink. Aimee cast a few sidelong glances at her daughter. Lilith hadn’t said a word to anyone since she joined their group. Maybe she wished Roshin had left her with the Outliers. Maybe she wished she was dead.
Aimee’s heart went out to her daughter, but she didn’t have the heart to approach her. What had Lilith endured with the Outliers all these years? None of them could even imagine it. Aimee didn’t want to imagine it.
She stretched herself out on the ground in the warmth of the fire. Her eyes closed, and her breathing softened into a steady tide. The others slipped away in pairs, and after a while, Taig got up and walked away by himself.
Lilith didn’t move from her place, not even when someone sat down next to her. A long silence followed, but no one spoke. In the end, Sarai broke the silence. “You didn’t eat anything. Are you hungry?”
She didn’t respond, but she blinked faster with her good eye.
“You won’t be traveling anywhere if you don’t eat,” he told her. “I don’t think Roshin plans to carry you anymore.”
Lilith pursed her lips together. Sarai regarded her with his direct gaze. He waited a long time, but got no answer. At last he blurted out, “Are you trying to kill yourself?”
Lilith sniffed. “You wouldn’t understand anything about it.”
He stared at her. Then he turned his gaze toward the fire. “I remember when I was very small, I woke up in the middle of the night. Some sound woke me up, a sound I never heard before. I got out of bed and came into the front room of our house, where my father slept. I found him sitting on his bed, and my mother was there, too. I hadn’t seen her in a few days, so I was surprised to see her there in the middle of the night because I wasn’t expecting her to come back until the next day.”
He waited for her to say something, but she wouldn’t even look at him.
“They were sitting side by side on my father’s bed,” he went on, “and they held each other in their arms. I’d never seen them like that before, and tears streamed down both their cheeks. My father’s shoulders shook with sobs. It was the sound of him sobbing that woke me up.”
Lilith blinked faster, but said nothing.
“My mother sat up and wiped the tears off her cheeks,” Sarai told her. “Then she said, ‘we’ve searched everywhere for months. We’ve even searched across the border, but there’s no sign. Turk called off the search three hours ago.’ Then they both fell into each other’s arms and cried some more. I stood there watching them for over an hour. Then I started to get cold, so I went back to bed.”
He stopped. Lilith breathed heavier through her nose, and she compressed her lips more than once. The split started bleeding again.
“I didn’t understand until years later what they were crying about,” he went on. “My father told me about my sister. He told me he and my mother never stopped loving her and hoping they could get her back.”
“Well, now they have,” Lilith muttered. “I bet they wish they hadn’t.”
He cocked his head to one side. “I always wondered what my sister was like. I wondered if she was anything like me, and if we would have anything to talk about. I wondered if she liked the same things I liked, or if we would be friends if she hadn’t gone away.”
“Well, here I am.” Lilith let out a shaky breath. “You can see I’m nothing like you, so you can go over there now and leave me alone.”
“We don’t look anything alike. That’s for certain,” he told her. “I still want to know you, though. You’re still my sister.”
Ever so slowly, she raised her eyes to his face. “What for?”
“You’re my sister,” he repeated. “I’ve wanted to know you all my life, and now I can. I can see you’re not like me, and I don’t want you to be. I want to know who you are, not who I thought you would be or who I wanted you to be. I wouldn’t have a sister if I did that.”
She blinked at him.
“I heard what you said,” he went on. “The Outliers killed that boy you thought was your brother. You thought I was dead, too.”
A tinge of moisture dampened her eye, and she pressed her lips together again to stop them quivering. “The Outliers....” She stopped short. “You shouldn’t think about that. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“You can’t stop me knowing about it,” he told her. “I already heard what you said, but it doesn’t matter. I would still want to know what happened to you out there. I want to know everything about you.”
She murmured under her breath. “You don’t want to know me and you don’t want to know the things I did out there. I don’t blame the others for wanting to kill me.”
“Taig doesn’t want to kill you,” he pointed out. “And Aimee doesn’t want to kill you.”
Lilith snorted. “Taig!”
“He defended you against Tara,” Sarai told her. “I heard him do it more than once before Roshin brought you to us. He’s the only one who does.”
Lilith turned her face away so he couldn’t see her. “He’s the one who’ll kill me in the end. He’ll come to his senses and then he’ll cut my throat.”
“And you’ll lie there and let him do it, won’t you?” Sarai countered. “He told Aimee what you did to him. They all thought I was asleep, but I overheard the whole story.”
Lilith stole a glance at him. “Then you know why he can never put it behind him. He’ll wake up one of these mornings and decide to pay me back for what I did to him.”
“He doesn’t have to put it behind him,” Sarai replied. “He remembers how you helped him escape. That’s what he remembers.”
Lilith shook her head. “I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be around these people.”
“You mean you shouldn’t be around your mother and brother?” he asked. “You shouldn’t be around your own family you haven’t seen in six years? Where you do you belong, then? With the Outliers?”
She only shook her head.
“You don’t belong anywhere else in the world, Lilith,” he told her. “You have no faction, no band, and no country anywhere. You’re whole world is here, with us.”
Chapter 3
Aimee stirred the ashes in the firepit to make sure they were cold. Then she shouldered her pack. “Let’s go. The sun will be up soon.”
At that moment, Roshin and Talya landed with a flutter of feathers.
“Good. You’re here,” Aimee said to him. “We’re moving out. You can fly over us.”
Roshin shook his head. “We aren’t coming with you. We’re heading back to Avitras territory.”
Aimee opened her mouth, but Tara interrupted. “Good. We don’t want you around, anyway.”
Aimee pursed her lips. “Please, Tara. We need all the friends we can get, and Roshin is a powerful ally. If we can convince him to come with us, we should.”
“We’ll never be friends with him,” Tara growled. “He killed Ari.”
Roshin started to argue, but Aimee stopped him with a subtle shake of her head. “You heard what he said. He killed Ari in self defense.” Tara crossed her arms over her chest. “Do you deny Ari attacked him first?”
No one answered. Aimee settled her load on her shoulder again.
“Right,” she said. “That settles that. So we don’t need to hear anymore about that. The fight could easily have gone the other way, and then some relative of Roshin’s would be coming after Ari for revenge.”
She started to walk away when Roshin spoke up again. “We aren’t going with you. We’re going home.”
Aimee turned around. “D
on’t go, Roshin. We need you.”
Roshin held back. “We talked about it last night. Talya’s been away from Avitras territory all her life. We don’t want to lose any more time. We’re going home to give her the home she never had.”
Aimee’s shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry to lose you.”
Roshin glanced around the group. “You’re the only one.”
She sighed. “Do me a favor, will you? Try again to convince Piwaka the Outliers are threatening our border. I know he turned you away before, but please, try again. Do it for me.”
Roshin shrugged. “I won’t try again. I tried once already, and look what it got me. He’ll want to make an example of me for defying him. I hesitate even to return to our village, but I have to think of Talya now. I’ll take her to my parents. They’ll welcome us.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she told him.
“I won’t try to convince him again until you’re there to back me up,” he went on. “Who knows when you’ll get back to Avitras territory, but I won’t try again to convince him alone.”
Aimee dropped her pack to the ground and extended her hand to him. “Take care of yourselves, Roshin. I wish I could go back with you. This information is too important to wait.”
“I agree,” he replied, “but neither you nor I is Alpha of our faction.”
“Maybe your father....” she began.
Roshin cut her off. “No one will convince Piwaka except you. He won’t give the Outliers a second thought until you come back and tell him what I said.”
“I can’t come back now,” Aimee replied. “I’m the only one who can take Reina home, so we’ll just have to hope the Outliers don’t make a move before that.”
“That’s asking a lot,” Roshin countered.
Aimee shrugged. “It can’t be helped.”
Roshin turned away. “I’ll see you later then.”
Without another word, he took Talya by the hand and they flew away together. Aimee sighed. “This is bad.”
Tara passed her. “Good riddance. I’m just glad he came to that decision on his own so we wouldn’t have to drive him off.”
“You wouldn’t drive him off,” Aimee told her, “not with me around.”
“I wouldn’t stay with him no matter what you said,” Tara shot back. “He’s our enemy, and he always will be.”
“Well, he’s gone now,” Aimee murmured. “You don’t have to worry about him, but I do. I’ve got a serious situation waiting for me back in the village. I don’t look forward to that.”
“There’s only one problem,” Taig interrupted. “We can’t run with Lilith here.”
The group looked around. Lilith glared back at them. “Leave me here, then.”
Taig sighed. “You know we can’t do that. You’re coming with us, but none of us is going to carry you the way Roshin did.”
“Tara carried Reina away from the Outliers,” Allen reminded him.
Tara snorted. “That was an emergency. I wouldn’t carry her all the way to Felsite territory.”
Lilith spun around. “Just come right out and say it. You would carry Reina but you wouldn’t carry me. You don’t have to spare my feelings.”
Tara squared her shoulders. “I wouldn’t spit to spare your feelings. You’re right. I wouldn’t carry you to save your life, and I certainly won’t carry you now.”
“None of us is going anywhere if we keep bickering like this,” Aimee snapped. “Lilith is coming with us.”
“Who says?” Aeifa growled.
“I say,” Aimee shot back. “No one is going to Felsite territory without me showing you the way, and I say Lilith is coming with us.”
The others glared at her, including Lilith, but no one argued.
Aimee hefted her pack again and motioned Sarai to walk next to her. “Now come on. Let’s get out of here.”
The group hiked up the path out of the canyon, out of the mountainous Ursidrean territory into the Felsite plains. Aimee went first with Sarai at her side. The others’ hatred kept Lilith close behind Aimee. Tara and Allen came next, but out of repugnance for Lilith, Tara lagged farther and farther behind. Taig and Reina came behind them, with Taman and Aeifa bringing up the rear.
Taman and Aeifa didn’t walk side by side the way the others did but kept single file. Taman came last, and he never stopped glancing over his shoulder to check nothing was following them. When he did, Aeifa glanced back and smiled at him. His presence guarded the whole group from unforeseen danger.
Not a tree interrupted the flat terrain. Everyone could see for miles in every direction—Aimee at the front, Taig and Tara in the middle, and Taman and Aeifa at the back. The farther they walked, the more they relaxed. No one could sneak up on them in that wide open country.
Reina took deep breaths of the air, and she closed her eyes and threw back her head. The sun beat down on her skin, and heat waves shimmered off the plain. The farther they got from the cool mountains, the hotter it grew. The Lycaon sweated and puffed, but Reina walked faster until she passed Tara and caught up with Aimee. The Lycaon fell farther behind. Even Lilith could walk faster than they could.
Tara stewed in silent resentment. She would turn her friends around and go back to the mountains if she thought she could convince them. They didn’t need to go to Felsite territory. Only Reina needed to go there, and Aimee would take her. Tara and Allen and Aeifa and Taman and Taig should have stayed in Harbeiz the way Donen wanted them to. They wouldn’t be saddled with that scourge Lilith.
She leaned over and muttered under her breath to Allen. “This is madness. Let’s go back to Harbeiz.”
He didn’t answer, and when she looked for him, she found he wasn’t at her side anymore. She spun around and gasped out loud when she saw Taig and Allen walking back the way they’d come. Aeifa stood some distance back down the path, and Taman stood even farther back with his eyes fixed on the horizon.
Tara hurried to catch up with Taig and Allen. She didn’t reach them until they stopped next to Aeifa. “What’s going on?”
Aeifa shook her head. “I’m not sure. He stopped back there, and he hasn’t moved since.”
Taig and Allen exchanged glances. Then the whole group set off back the way they’d come until they came to where Taman stood. They formed a line behind him and waited, but he didn’t notice them. In the end, Aeifa touched his arm. “Taman?”
A shiver ran through him. “Something’s back there.”
Aeifa frowned. “There’s nothing there.”
“We would be able to see anything coming up behind us,” Allen told her.
“We thought there was nothing there when we first ran into the Outliers,” Tara reminded him.
Allen swept the landscape with his hand. “Where would they be? We can see everything, and there’s no one there.”
Taman spoke up. “They’re in the canyon.”
Tara frowned. “How can you tell?”
“I can’t,” he murmured, “but they’re there. Don’t ask me how I know, but they’re there.”
Allen rounded on his brother. “If they’re in the canyon, why didn’t they take us last night? We would have been defenseless.”
Aeifa scanned the surroundings. “We’re defenseless now. Even knowing they’re there doesn’t help us. There isn’t a clump of grass for us to hide behind.”
Tara turned with her, but before anyone could speak again, a black shadow welled up from the canyon. It spread over the landscape and blotted out the glowing gold of the plain. Taman let out a heavy sigh. “Here they come.”
Aeifa drew her blade from her waist. “It’s hopeless, but I’m ready. I’ll face whatever comes.”
Taig copied her, but he didn’t face the growing black blob spreading over the horizon. “I’ll run ahead and warn Aimee. She probably hasn’t turned back once since we left the canyon this morning.”
He set off running at top speed to overtake the others. They’d outpaced t
he friends so far that only a speck in the distance showed where they were. He ran so fast he didn’t see the black tide spread sideways to the south.
Aeifa came to Taman’s side, and they both armed themselves. Tara and Allen drew close behind them, and the four instinctively formed a square with their backs together to face the oncoming threat. The longer they stood and watched, though, the stranger the sight became. The line stretched and stretched, longer and longer, but didn’t come any closer. It stretched away south. Aeifa frowned. “What are they doing?”
In a flash, the line jutted sideways and stabbed across the plain. Aeifa sucked her breath through her teeth. She could make out individual people now, all dressed in rags with matted hair and dusty cloths bound around their feet. She shuddered, though, when they got close enough to see what they held in their hands. Instead of blades, they pointed plain metal cylinders at the travelers. They’d brought the Ursidrean phase reciprocators, the high energy weapons they’d stolen.
Taman spotted them at the same moment, and his hand holding his blade dropped to his side. No one could fight against those weapons with a simple blade.
The Outliers raced over the plain with lightning speed. They flowed over the parched ground faster than the eye could follow. Tara caught her breath. “How are they moving so fast?”
“They’re running,” Aeifa whispered.
“Lilith said they were a genetic combination of all the factions,” Allen remarked. “They must have Lycaon blood, too. They must have all the strengths of all the factions and none of their weaknesses.”
“How are we supposed to fight them, then?” Tara asked.
No one had time to answer before the black arrow shot across the land, but the Outliers didn’t attack them directly. They didn’t attack Aimee’s group, either. Taig joined them, and they formed a square, back to back, too.
Too late, the travelers realized what was happening. The Outliers cut them off from their friends. Once between the two groups, the Outliers split into two phalanxes and drove them farther apart. They kept just out of reciprocator range, but the friends didn’t wait for them to fire. Allen spread his arms out at his sides and backed away from them, back toward the canyon.
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