Anoor sat up, the tension between them going slack as she smiled.
“Friends?”
Sylah growled. “I’m going to regret admitting that, aren’t I?”
Anoor’s mischievous grin turned thoughtful, and she asked, “Why don’t you like the word…you know, the word I said.”
Sylah turned to look at her. “It’s a very cruel word, Anoor. It’s used to separate, to make Dusters and Ghostings feel other, to make them feel less than whole. You shouldn’t use it. They’re just like you.”
Exactly like you.
Anoor blinked slowly. “I didn’t know. Everyone in the Keep uses the word.”
“Precisely my point.”
Anoor sat up and hugged her knees. “Are you going to eat that?” Anoor inclined her head toward the seed in Sylah’s fingers.
Sylah was shocked to see it there. She had been rolling it around in her fingers and thinking. “No.”
“Okay.” Anoor didn’t say anything more, though her eyes never left Sylah’s.
Sylah exhaled, giving her a small gift of truth. “The seeds made me feel alive.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t, you don’t really.”
“No, I suppose not,” Anoor conceded. “I’ve always felt alive.”
“I believe that.”
“Even when my mother beats me or when the Embers bully me. I always feel the blood running through my veins.”
Sylah stiffened and looked at Anoor from the corner of her eye. She sparkled in the sunrise. “Too alive.”
“Too alive.”
The pause ached.
“It was my fault,” Sylah said.
“What was?”
“It was my fault my family died. I was the reason all of them were slaughtered.”
“You don’t have to tell me any more.” She shuffled over to Sylah and rested her head on her shoulder. Her hair smelled of sandalwood. Sylah reached for it then faltered.
“I know. One day I will, Anoor. One day I will tell you everything.” Even if it meant losing her.
“Thank you.” She smiled, and Sylah felt lighter.
She put the joba seed back in her pocket.
“I was never going to take it, you know. It was a spite seed.” She smiled wryly.
“A spite seed?”
“Yeah, a seed taken purely out of spite. And if I died from taking it, then it would have been your fault.”