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“You don’t seem tired at all.”

“I’m not. I walked for long stretches back on earth,” she mentioned. “For miles at a time. I am no weakling like you assume me to be.”

“No.” I shook my head. “You’re not. I can see that. But Zunator is different, you know.”

“Of course it is. There weren’t mindless beasts and mud pits,” she said, staring straight ahead, trying to keep her endurance level on par with mine. “Well, if you count stupid human men as mindless beasts and the archaic rules and confinements of living within the settlement the equivalent of a mud pit hell then maybe the two planets are not that different after all.

“Why were you traveling such long distances?” I asked.

“I was part of a resistance group,” she admitted. “We had to gather supplies for survival all the time. And just so you know, I was abducted by your race while I was out on one of those supply runs. I wasn’t able to resist capture, unfortunately.”

“Did you want to?” I asked.

“No.”

I halted and looked at her. There wasn’t an ounce of amusement on her face. She was serious. She had not resisted them. Just as the other warriors had said, the vast majority of the women secretly wanted to escape something in their Earth life.

“It’s true,” she added. “When they ran up to me, I dropped my basket and held my hand high, thinking they were settlement guards at first sent by the Governor to find me. When I realized they were aliens, I thought I was dreaming. I mean, you and the rest of the warriors look like big Viking giants.”

“Big Viking giants,” I chuckled. “Okay.”

“No, like for real. I was herded up with about a dozen other girls and then led onto the most luxurious spaceship I’d ever seen. I mean, I’ve seen them in books, but it was amazing. Unfortunately, as soon as I got on the ship I was put in a chamber to preserve oxygen levels and when I woke up I met my nurse and then I was sent to xinalǔ—school.”

“I heard they were grooming the human women to be warrior’s mates,” I said.

“Not really grooming. We were actually learning.”

She trudged on as we reached a minor incline. She was huffing and puffing, exerting far too much energy than the terrain presented.

She was cute and a little fiery. I admired her spunky spirit. She wasn’t bad to look at either. In fact—she was so beautiful that I found myself inadvertently staring at her throughout the day.

It was then that I started to realize I was only fooling myself if I truly believed this scrawny human woman to have killed my uncle. There was no way she could have been capable of murder, then, or even now. My instincts in my heart told me otherwise.

The dust storm from the night prior had littered the ground with tons of treasures that we were now encroaching upon. I began scooping up items up left and right.

“What are you doing?” Alliana shot me a quizzical glance, staring at me, and not bothering to lift a finger to help me, either I might mention. “What is all this stuff on the ground?”

“Treasures,” I said.

“Treasures?” She laughed. “I don’t get it.”

I frowned at her. “I’ve always been able to collect things that aren’t from Zunator when the dust storms kicked up like they did last night.”

Alliana gave me a contemplative glance before kneeling down to the ground. She picked up something that caught her eye, inspecting it in her hand.

She stood up like a rocket and gasped.

“What is it?” I asked, my heart plummeting in response to her visible shock.

“This looks familiar,” she said. Her forehead wrinkled.

“How can that be?” I had my doubts.

Alliana held up the object for me to see. “It looks like the same belt clip—or at least it’s very similar—to the same one Roult tried to sell in the market a few days ago.”

“It’s probably just a coincidence,” I said and went back to my own scoping. I was on the hunt for anything useful, combing the surrounding land. “He trades at the market quite a lot.”

“No.” Alliana shook her head adamantly. “I’m convinced that this was Roult’s belt clip.”