I explain the Drakav will be moving slower than usual, making the journey longer, but that they will ensure the women’s safety. This seems to help, but there’s still an underlying tension. Even among the Drakav. Even though none of them mindspeak their unease, I can feel it in the way their gaze shifts over the suns around us. They do not like this place. This valley of silence, as they call it.

It’s hard leaving the group when I’ve just found them again. But I need to. I bid my farewells and head toward Rok and Tharn. Kol intercepts me.

“We will guard these females. These daughters of Ain,” he projects.

“I know you will, dra-dam…I put my trust in you.”

I feel his brush of surprise at my use of his official title.

“You learn quickly, soft one,” he projects. “I have felt your thoughts. My brothers and I do not care if you are the true daughters or not. We will die for any one of these females anyway.” I swallow down the lump of feeling that rises in my throat. His words feel like a vow. “No harm will come to them while we draw breath.”

“Thank you.” I give him a slight bow. “They are my family. My clan.”

He inclines his head, accepting my designation. “Find your sister-female. Bring her home to your clan.”

With that, he steps aside, and I join Rok and Tharn at the edge of the camp. “Ready?” Rok projects, his golden eyes searching mine. The urge to throw myself into his arms and just curl up and cry is almost overwhelming. His quiet support through all this has done more than he even knows.

I nod, casting one last glance back at the camp—at the human women tentatively putting their trust in the Drakav warriors as they prepare to head in the opposite direction.

“Let’s find Jacqui,” I say, turning to face the vast expanse of desert that swallowed my sister. “Let’s bring her home.”

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 37

OceanofPDF.com

OKAY, DESERT. TRUCE?

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JUSTINE

The stone formations grow larger as we approach, their jagged silhouettes stark against the darkening sky. We’ve been walking for hours, following the path Jacqui supposedly took, and my body aches with each step. I remember when I first took this journey. How I had to stop so many times. Now all I need is a swig from the waterskin and I keep going on. The heat is trying and the emergency blanket Alex gave me hardly feels like it’s helping, but I can’t stop. Won’t stop. Not when my sister is out there somewhere.

By the time we reach the stone formation, I’m drained, but hopeful.

“Jaqs?” I call out. Only, there’s no sign of Jacqui.

All that’s left, all that’s still there, is my message I left in the dust. The stones, now almost covered with sand, pointing toward the other stone formation in the distance.

Tharn releases a low rumble in his chest.

“In that direction lies our rivals. Territory we cannot cross.”

I gulp hard. I’ve seen their rivals. I understand why they’d want to stay away. But it’s my sister we’re talking about here.

“We have to go. At least to the point where Rok caught up with me.”

Tharn’s gaze shifts to Rok. I can tell they’re having an argument that Rok shields me from. Finally, Tharn’s shoulders sag.

“We move with caution.”

I swallow hard, nodding.

Tharn leads our small group, his powerful frame moving with surprising grace across the shifting sands. Every few minutes, he drops to a crouch, examining the ground with an intensity that gives me hope. Sometimes he lingers longer, head tilted as if listening to something I can’t hear, before rising and adjusting our course slightly.

“Does he know where he’s going?” I project to Rok, who walks beside me, his stride shortened to match mine.

“Tharn reads the dust like few others can,” Rok replies, his mental voice confident. “Even traces that would be invisible to most leave marks he can follow.”

I watch as Tharn pauses again, his clawed hand hovering just above the sand’s surface. “What’s he looking for, exactly?”

“Disturbances. Changes in how the sand settles. The dust remembers those who cross it, at least for a time.”

The dust remembers. He’s talking about tracking. It’s such a poetic way to describe it and as I watch Tharn, there’s something almost spiritual in how he approaches the task, as if communing with the desert itself.

“Your sister-female moved with purpose,” Tharn projects suddenly, his thoughts directed at both of us. “Her path does not wander. She knew where she was going.”

That sounds like Jacqui. Even lost in an alien desert, she would approach the task with her head on her shoulders. No panicked running in circles for my sister.

“Is that good?” I ask, hope fluttering in my chest.

“It means she conserved energy,” Rok explains. “Used her water wisely. That improves her chances.”

Her chances. The phrase sends a chill through me despite the lingering heat of the day. We’re talking about her survival in terms of probability, and I hate it. I hate that we have to think this way.

As the sun, Ain, begins her descent toward the horizon, the stone formations that were my second destination loom before us. There’s a small boulder that Tharn heads toward, gaze shifting from side to side now that we can see the stone formation that marks the rival clan’s territory clearly.

“Justine.” Rok’s voice in my mind pulls me from my thoughts. “Come.”

I turn to find him and Tharn standing a few yards from the boulder, both looking at something on the ground. My heart leaps into my throat as I hurry to join them. “Did you find something?”

Tharn gestures to the sand at our feet. At first, I see nothing unusual—just the endless grains that cover everything on this planet. But then, as I look more carefully, I notice a slight depression, a different texture to the surface.

“Someone rested here,” Tharn projects. “Recently. Within the last two sols.”

“Jacqui?” I can barely breathe around the hope swelling in my chest.

Tharn kneels, his long fingers hovering just above the impression. “The size matches what a being your size might leave.”

I drop to my knees beside him, scanning the area desperately for any other sign. “But where did she go?” I lift my head, looking at the stone formations in the distance. If she went over there…

“There is…something else.”

Tharn moves a few feet away, where the sand seems smoother, more deliberately arranged. Rok follows, crouching beside him, his head tilted in that curious way that reminds me he’s not human, despite how comfortable I’ve become with him.

“What is it?” I ask out loud, joining them.

Rok looks up at me, his golden eyes reflecting the last of the sun’s light. “Markings. In the dust.”

I look down and my breath stops in my throat. There, etched into the surface, are lines and curves that I recognise immediately. Letters. English letters.

“J + J,” I read aloud, my voice cracking. “4 EVER.”

It’s our childhood code, the one we used to carve into trees at summer camp, into the wooden bench at the park, even into the corner of my bedroom windowsill when I was twelve and Jacqui was eleven.

Tears spring to my eyes as I trace the letters with my fingertip. “It’s from Jacqui,” I whisper, then remember I need to use my thoughts. “She was here. She left this for me to find.”

“What does it mean?” Rok asks, studying the markings.

I swallow hard against the lump in my throat. “It’s her way of telling me she was here…and that she’s okay.”