When she’d said it, it almost seemed like it could have been real.

But then she’d died. I finished school, got a boring job, and to top it all off, got abducted twice, first by humans, then by Skalla.

Things really aren’t turning out the way we thought they would, Elvi.

After Skalla finished translating what I’d said, Jolakaia put down the Shara plant she’d been working on and bumped her knuckles gently against my nose.

“I am sorry to hear of your sister. I, too, have lost a sibling. My brother still lives, but...” She stared at the metal table for a long moment, then said, “but I know I will never see him again. Nor do I wish to. But it is still a wound.”

A wound. One that wouldn’t heal no matter how many soothing plants you piled on top of it.

Tentatively, I bumped my knuckles against the tip of her snout, and when she smiled I knew I’d done the gesture correctly. We looked at each other for a long moment, and for the first time I noticed something odd gleaming on her chest where her robe gaped slightly.

“What is that?” I asked. It was a simple enough sentence, so I said it in Bohnebregg.

The thing I’d asked about looked to be a hunk of shiny metal embedded in the flesh of her chest. It was vaguely triangular in shape, roughly the size of my thumb with its narrow end pointing down like an arrow. If it was a cultural thing, like a piercing, I hadn’t noticed it on anyone else.

“Ah,” she said, glancing down at the metal hunk adorning her front. “That was a gift from the very brother I just mentioned.”

Her voice was flat, which made me think it had been no gift at all.

“My brother Joleb is a vicious raider warlord,” Jolakaia said, putting down the beaker she’d been holding. “He is very cruel, very wealthy, and very good at what he does. Many men have pledged allegiance to him. His army is the largest and most powerful on this side of the river. His hoard is the stuff of legend, built upon what was hoarded from the generations who came before.”

Generations before...

I followed her gaze to Skalla, who stood directly behind me. Other than a twitchy pulse of his wings, he had no other reaction to her words.

“As his younger sister, I was expected to assist on raids,” Jolakaia continued. “I did so, just as I’d always done for our father, until...”

She paused, appeared to gather her thoughts, then said the rest in a very mechanical sort of voice, like if she let any emotion into the words, she wouldn’t be able to speak at all.

“Until we raided a village with no army and very little metal. I watched my brother slaughter innocents in their homes, pulling children from their beds, searching for any glinting scrap he could hoard. He would not let me tend to the wounds of any of them. I entered a berserker rage, but it was a rage against him, not those we fought. Of course, it accomplished nothing. I was beaten down by him and subdued by his loyal army. When my rage faded, and I became fully aware of myself again, I was bound by chains in our home.”

She touched the metal stud on her chest.

“Joleb pulled out the scale above my heart with his own claws for my betrayal. Then he embedded this metal in my flesh. A reminder of whom I was meant to be loyal to.”

She began to rub at the metal, like it was aching.

“I know it must have been very painful, but I was so angry that I do not really remember feeling it. I feigned repentance for long enough that I was eventually unbound. I escaped after that, wandered alone for days, until I came to Callabarra and vowed to follow the way of cotton.”

Her hand fell away from her chest.

“I thought about taking it out. But ultimately, I’ve decided to keep it. It is a reminder, just as my brother intended it to be, I suppose. But instead of reminding me whom I serve, it reminds me of who I want to be, who I choose to be, every day that I am here instead of there.”

I had absolutely no idea what to say to that. I silently bumped my elbow against hers on the table, knowing it wasn’t enough.

“It is done,” Jolakaia said simply. “It is done, and now we shall work.”

But the look on her face told me it wasn’t done for her. Not really.

Not while her brother was still out there. I remembered the abandoned house Skalla and I had stayed at for one night, and wondered if Joleb had been the one to drive the occupants out.

Or kill them.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Suvi

The rest of the day passed pleasantly. Jolakaia and I fell into a comfortable rhythm, working well together, while Skalla acted as our surly supervisor. He glowered from the corner of the lab as if he had no real interest in joining in the work but was feeling miffed he hadn’t been invited to participate, anyway.

I found it cute. Alarmingly so.

Skalla had been beautiful to me before, no doubt about that, but cute was a whole other level. Cute implied affection beyond mere attraction.

Cute meant that I maybe, sort of, probably liked him. Liked him, liked him. More than thinking about him as the friend he’d become to me.

But then again, what kind of friend would eat you out with his split tongue and then promise, with absolute sincerity, to woo you?

But a part of me shrank back and couldn’t accept it. I thought of Jolakaia’s story about her brother’s raiding, and knew that Skalla had probably participated in similar things. Hopefully not the slaughtering innocents part...

I glanced over at him. Of course, his eye was already on me. Our gazes met, then I wrenched mine away.

I tried to picture Skalla pulling children out of their beds and I couldn’t. I really, truly couldn’t. Maybe he had few memories, but the internal core of him had to be the same, right? And the Skalla I knew wouldn’t hurt a child.

And if he’d hurt adults before, well...

People can change.

I remembered poor Nakib with his crutch, followed by Skalla’s uncaring statement of, “I broke his leg,” and sighed.

Skalla was at my side in an instant.

“She is tired. You are working my mate too hard,” he said. He laid protective hands on my shoulders, which I was about to shrug off to show that I could keep going, when he started rubbing his thumbs in the most exquisite circles on either side of my upper spine.

The sound that came out of me was entirely undignified. And I didn’t even care. I leaned into his touch, not realizing until that moment how long I’d been hunched over the table.

“We have accomplished much,” Jolakaia said. “Thank you, Suvi. Let us return and see what my wife has scrounged up for us to eat tonight.”

“That sounds perfect to me.” I was already looking forward to being back at their place, surrounded by the scent of the dirt road and the herbs and flowers blooming by their house, listening to Zev chatter on. My eyes slipped closed, picturing the scene, as Skalla’s massage on my shoulders deepened.

I felt warm thinking about how I could do this every day. I’d help in the lab, and maybe assist the Mother’s Seeds in the gardens, too. Then we’d go home to the apartment, share a meal with Zev and Jolakaia, then Skalla and I would sleep side-by-side, just as we had last night.

I thought of all these things.

And I was...

Happy.

My eyes flew open.

Happy? How could I be happy?

Happy without Elvi?

Happy when I’d never see another human again and my friends were still stuck on the ship?

How could I possibly feel this way when I’d never even chosen to be here in the first place?

Guilty confusion burned in my stomach. I shied away from Skalla’s hands and stood. Jolakaia and I began to clear the table, and Skala joined in, his eye never tearing itself from my face as we finished tidying up. Kobara had long since vacated her place. It was only us left in the room.