Brooke (Under the Never Sky 2.50) - Page 14

I remember the way Wylan’s voice pulled at the word home. He’d made it sound syrupy, and now I recognize that tone as falseness. Home implies an emotional attachment, but that’s not what he wanted. What Wylan wanted was a roof over his head.

“But they were only three,” Hyde says.

“You told me that when they dispersed, they took a third of the tribe,” Marron says to Perry.

“A quarter. Almost a hundred people. ”

I can’t help but remember Aria’s Marking ceremony, when Gray slipped hemlock into Aria’s tattoo ink. She almost died. Perry beat Gray to a pulp in front of everyone when he learned what Gray had done.

That attempt to poison Aria fractured my tribe. Some people sided with Perry and his right to defend Aria. Others, led by Wylan, saw it as a betrayal. They viewed Aria as a Mole, an interloper who shouldn’t have been there to begin with.

I was one of them. I didn’t want her there. But I didn’t want to see her killed, either. I stayed with the Tides that day, but dozens of people left. Their faith in Perry as a Blood Lord was shattered. They broke oath and followed Wylan out of the Tide compound. That morning I lost friends I had never spent a single day without. It was like losing Liv, but worse. Liv didn’t choose to go.

“You think the others are still with them?” I ask. “Hiding in the borderlands somewhere?”

Marron turns a ring around his finger as he replies. “Wylan was their leader when they left. He still could be. His entry into the territory could have been a scouting pass. The tip of the spear, probing for weakness. ”

“You think he’s coming back with a larger attack,” Perry says.

It is more a statement than a question—he has already accepted it—but Marron replies anyway.

“Yes. We have to be prepared for it. ”

5

When I finally make it to my tent, I’m crushed to find it empty.

Clara isn’t here.

I want to go search for her, but I’m too exhausted. Normally, Hyde and I would have traded shifts, two hours on watch, two hours asleep, but we’d felt it best to double up after what had happened with Wylan, both of us alert for danger. We were thrumming with adrenaline too, but now that rush has faded and my eyes won’t stay open.

I collapse onto my bed pad and barely pull my boots off before I plunge into sleep.

At some point I feel the covers shift, and I emerge from the rainbow colors of a dream to see Clara. She burrows under my blanket and nestles beside me. It’s the middle of the day, and she shouldn’t be here, but I love that she is. I love that my sister has come to find me. I pull her close and drift back to sleep, breathing in her strawberry scent.

When I finally wake, Clara is still sleeping. In my dreams I saw her standing in the rain, shaking and crying. Great big hiccups came out of her between sobs as she said, Don’t leave me, over and over.

But then I touch my shirt, feeling the dampness at my breastbone, and I know it wasn’t a dream. Not all of it, anyway.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help her. She’s not like Talon, who seems to have returned without missing a step. Talon lost his parents and his aunt, and yet whenever I see him he is laughing and running off somewhere with Willow and Flea, no sign at all of being scarred.

Not my sister.

Don’t leave me, she cried in my arms.

Clara isn’t lost, like I thought before. She’s worried we’ll turn our backs on her again. Sell her again. She is afraid of being betrayed. She is afraid that if she lets herself love, she’ll only be abandoned again.

And I understand that. I won’t pretend what I’ve gone through is the same, with Perry, but it’s not different, either.

I am afraid too.

Fear is what pulled me away from Hyde.

An unexpected sadness washes over me as I remember what he said. That he wanted to know me. He was opening his heart, but I couldn’t because mine is closed. Mine is bruised and wailing and grasping to stay afloat. Mine is hiding in a corner, terrified it will be discarded again.

And I don’t want it to be.

So much, I don’t want it to be.

Tags: Veronica Rossi Under the Never Sky
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