Brooke

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.

A lump rises in my throat as the urge to talk to someone slams into me. I need to tell someone how lonely I feel. How Perry and Liv and Roar left a hole in my life that I don’t know how to fill. I need someone to tell me that everything will be all right.

Molly.

Molly is strong, like my mother isn’t. I don’t have to worry that my problems will burden her with worry. No one else is as wise and understanding.

I pull on my boots, tuck the blankets in around Clara, and jog to the Dweller cave, because that’s where I’ll surely find Molly.

Right away I see that the situation in here has deteriorated. The Dwellers are not shivering and drifting in and out of consciousness anymore. They are silent and still and barely breathing, and there is nothing even partly amusing about it.

It’s frightening.

They are on the verge of dying, and it’s so chilling that I almost forget why I came here until Molly calls my name. I see her in the dimness, crouching over one of the Dwellers. But any thought I had about having a long talk with her vanishes when she snaps, “Hurry, Brooke! Now!”

I rush over and see that she’s pinning Aria down.

Aria is convulsing. Her legs thrash against the blankets and her eyes are wide, but I can’t see her pupils. They’re rolling back.

“Get Perry,” Molly says. “Bring Perry and Marron now!”

For a second, I can’t move. I can only stare. The bandage has been removed from Aria’s arm. The bullet wound on her bicep almost makes me retch. It is swollen and raw. The smell that comes from it is curdled and festering and wrong. The infection is worse. Even I can see that it’s spreading into her bloodstream.

“Brooke, go get Peregrine!” Molly snaps.

I turn to go, but it’s as though Perry somehow sensed he was needed, because there he is, running toward us. Gren appears behind him, and that explains why Perry is already here.

Gren is an Aud. They were likely in the Battle Room nearby and Gren heard Molly. Heard her panicked voice shouting Perry’s name.

I step back before I am run over by them. There is a mad scramble as Molly issues orders. Then Aria is in Perry’s arms and it’s like the night she was poisoned. The night of her Marking ceremony.

He carries her out, but this time we all follow.

He takes her into the Battle Room and sets her on the trestle table. Marron enters, making clipped demands for clean towels, boiled water, and surgical supplies from the Dweller Hover. I have never heard such a commanding tone from him.

I’m there. I know I’m there because I see and hear everything. But I am numb as the supplies arrive. Numb as Aria is injected with needles that finally relax her rigid, shaking muscles. Numb as her arm is sliced open by Molly while Marron aids her.

The smell and the blood make me queasy, so I stare at Perry’s face as he hovers over Aria. He speaks to her though she’s unconscious. He begs her to hold on and he tells her in a dozen different ways that he loves her.

The things he says . . . they are beautiful.

I don’t want to see or hear any more.

I leave the Battle Room, with its small army of people fighting to keep Aria alive, and wind my way through the dark corridors of the cave.

I wander aimlessly for a while, not feeling angry or hurt or much of anything.

All I can hold in my mind is hope. I want Aria to heal. I don’t want Perry to have his heart broken too. As much as it hurt to be left by him, he’s my Blood Lord. And he’s my friend.

He was my nemesis in archery competitions when we were young. He was my best friend’s little brother. Roar’s constant companion in tormenting Liv and me. A pest for many years, in truth. Awkward and gangly and too quiet, until the day he became gorgeous and graceful and quietly confident.

He is not just a friend, I realize. He is family. That means we have an unbreakable bond. I want him to be well and happy. Even if it’s not with me.

His face appears in my mind as he whispered to Aria so passionately and desperately. The bond between them is visceral, like Marron said in the meeting this morning. Life-sustaining.

It’s what I want.

Perry never felt that way about me. He cared for me. I know he did. Does. But he never felt that for me, like if one of you dies, you both die.

Then it hits me, and I don’t know how I didn’t realize it before.

I never felt that way about him, either.

6

It’s a revelation.

It’s a revelation, and I need time to consider it.

It’s a precious jewel; I need to hold it up to the light. Turn it, so I can see its shine from every angle.

I cross the main cavern in a daze, barely aware of the eyes that follow me as I pass the platform and walk outside to the sandy cove. I don’t stop until the waves are pushing against my shins. Then I stare at the ocean and let it come. All of it.

The truth.

There was no beginning to Roar and Liv. No starting point. The day Roar came limping into the compound with his grandmother, he was already in love with Liv. She was in love with him, too. Everyone in the tribe saw it. We all knew the seed was there; it just needed to emerge. When it did, Liv had something incredible in her life.

Something I wanted too.

But there was more to it than just that. There were other reasons I wanted Perry. My attraction to him was growing by the day, and he had always been honest and loyal and good. I wanted him for who he was, and for what he’d help create. A perfect foursome of friends, made up of two couples. Made up of two sets of best friends. Every combination felt good.

More than anything, though, I wanted us to be like Roar and Liv. As unabashedly in love. But we weren’t.

Unlike Liv and Roar, Perry and I had a beginning. It was a spring night, in the clearing. The tribe was gathered after supper, enjoying a crisp evening outside after a long winter. Roar was singing while Pierce played guitar. I sat next to Perry on the dirt, close enough that our legs bumped. He moved to scoot away, but I grabbed his forearm and kept him there. Then I kissed him, right there in front of everyone.

At home, my mother nearly pinched my arm off for that. But I knew Perry too well. Know him, since he hasn’t changed. He doesn’t do anything unless he believes in it, heart and soul. I knew I’d need to give him a big push to get us started. And it worked.

After that kiss, everyone assumed we were together. I let them think we were. I watched Perry’s amusement at the notion gradually shift to acceptance. The next time I kissed him, he kissed me back, and that was all.

In a way, Perry was the last to know about us.

But while I initiated things between us, it didn’t stay that way. Perry was there for me. Laughing with me. Wanting me. I know, for a time anyway, that he was as swept away by me as I was by him. But that started to change as soon as Liv and Roar left for Rim. With our foursome split in half, Perry began to drift away from me.

The hints were subtle at first. He’d draw away from a kiss too soon, or fall silent when I spoke to him about our future. Then the signs grew into bigger things. Misunderstandings. Arguments that never felt like they were resolved. I saw the direction we were heading. I just didn’t want to believe it.

But I believe it now. Perry and I had a beginning. We were bound to have an end. And I understand that we were great together sometimes, but what we had was flawed and maybe a little forced. Maybe it was something that I really wanted, but that wasn’t actually there.

Maybe the magic wasn’t in us. It was in my eyes.

7

Why do you get to go outside, but I can’t?” Clara asks me that evening.

“I have to,” I answer.

Clara blinks her wide blue eyes at me. “But I haven’t been outside in months and months and months.”

“You aren’t missing anything.”

“Yes, I am! I want to run on the sand! And it’s so dark in here.”

“It’s dangerous out there, Clara.”

Wylan and his band aren’t the only things I want to protect her from tonight. Outside, the Aether is raging, dropping funnels only a few miles from the cave. When the wind blows in from the right direction, it carries the smell of smoke from forest fires. It’s a measure of Perry and Reef’s concern that they’re sending us out there tonight. They wouldn’t put the patrol at risk unless they had legitimate fears about Wylan returning.

Clara crosses her arms and makes a sulky face, like she is five instead of eight. She thinks it’ll melt me, seeing her act so young. Like the sweet, innocent little sister I lost. But my reaction is the opposite. At some point in the past year she learned to manipulate people, and that makes me want to hit something.

“Then why are you going?” she asks.

I’m not going to tell her about Wylan, so I drop a kiss on her head. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Brookie, please take me with you,” she says, her eyes filling with tears.

Those aren’t an act. They’re real, and my throat tightens up. “Clara, I have to do this. You know I wouldn’t leave you otherwise.”

Around the platform, people are watching us. The tribe has been shaken all day, worried that the Dwellers are faltering. The only thing we want less than sick Dwellers on our hands is dead Dwellers on our hands. Aria’s condition has rattled them as well. She pulled through her surgery, but it was close. She almost lost her arm. And judging by the restless glances thrown my way, the tribe has heard about Wylan and his band too.