Kerra falls into step beside me from approximately nowhere, which is a skill she's had since she was sixteen and which I have never gotten accustomed to.
"You look obscene," she says. "What happened?"
"I have a partner for the hunt."
She processes this for three full steps. "You found someone other than me."
"Shocking development."
"I'm wounded." She puts a hand flat on her chest, not wounded in the slightest. "Deeply wounded. Replaced like a?—"
"You're going to be fine."
"—like a worn-out boot?—"
"Kerra."
She drops the performance and looks at me sideways, with the particular quality of attention she uses when she's actually reading something. A small smile starts at the corner of her mouth.
"It's Aislin," she says.
I say nothing.
The smile completes itself. "Oh, you aresodeep in this."
"Shut up."
"Ursik."
"Walk faster."
She matches my stride, still smiling, and knocks her shoulder into mine with the easy familiarity of someone who has been doing it since we were half our current height.
"Good," she says. Just that. Low and real, the teasing set entirely aside.
I knock her shoulder back.
We keep walking.
14
AISLIN
The morning of the hunt, I stand in front of the small square of polished metal that passes for a mirror in the cabin and I cannot explain what I'm doing.
I'm not doing anything. I'm standing here. That's all.
Wren appears in the doorway behind me, wrapped in a blanket, her pale hair loose around her face. She looks at me looking at the mirror and she doesn't say anything, which is either kindness or Wren being Wren, and I can't always tell the difference.
"I'm going to the hunt," I say.
"I know." She leans on the doorframe. "You told us last night."
"I'm just reminding you."
"We'll be fine." She pulls the blanket tighter. "Pell's got the morning sorted. Deva slept all the way through, did you hear?" A small brightness in that — Deva's bad nights have been improving by degrees, and every full night feels like a collective exhale. "Maret's headache's been gone for three days."
I know all of this. I've been tracking it like a perimeter I check twice daily. But hearing Wren say it out loud does something — releases something — that I don't have a name for yet.
