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“I promise I’ll tell you one day,” I grin.
Once the horses are ready to go, we lead them out onto the prairie and toward the border wall. There’s only one gate in the nine-foot fence, effective enough at keeping out any intruders, so we ride that way. Grant is standing outside it, dark circles under his eyes and a stubborn smirk on his lips.
“Hey, lovebirds!” he shouts, waving his hand. “You sure you don’t want company?”
I shake my head. “It’s only a few hours ride—we should be back by nightfall, hopefully with good news.”
“And if you aren’t back…?”
“Then Will is in charge, like I told you,” I say. “You’ll defer to Will or Suyin for any major decisions. I trust his judgment, but that shouldn’t be necessary.”
Doubt clouds Grant’s face, but I don’t let it scare me—and I hope it doesn’t scare Tilda. She doesn’t say a word as he opens the gate, and then we take the horses out onto the old, crumbling asphalt road trailing through the prairie.
We ride in silence for the first hour, listening to the hoofbeats of the horses on the old road, then on the forest floor. Cicadas drone all around us, birds singing in the trees overhead. When the Celestial Curtain covered the world, all life vanished…but now it’s slowly coming back.
I bring my horse up to ride beside Tilda, falling into the rhythm of its stride. “So what should I prepare for?” I ask.
“With Homestead?” she asks. “Hm…typical country folk, I guess. Friendly enough if you’re the right kind of people, hostile if you’re the wrong kind.”
“Am I the wrong kind of people?”
She bites her lip. “Well, you’re a lycanthrope,” she says. “And you’re…I don’t mean this the wrong way, but there never was a lot of diversity in the country, and that’s still how it is in Homestead.”
“So they’re racist,” I conclude.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“I can’t say I expected anything else,” I shrug. “And contrary to what you might believe, cities weren’t multicultural paradises before the Convergence. Unfortunately, I know how to deal with this kind of thing.”
She puffs out a heavy exhale. “Can’t imagine how.”
“I normally lead by saying my family has been in Texas since before it was a state,” I say with a wry smile.
“There was a timebeforeTexas was a state?” Tilda says with a dramatic gasp. “Heresy.”
I laugh. “Right…because Texas has always been here, of course, eternal and everlasting.”
“Yeah,” she chuckles. “I think you’ll get along with the people of Homestead just fine.”
I can’t say I agree…but I know how to pretend.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
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TILDA
My feelings are mixed as we draw closer to Homestead. I thought I would be excited—eager to see my sister again, for the most part. But I can’t shake the dread sitting like a stone in the pit of my stomach, the feeling that this is avery bad idea.
For one thing, I feel like an idiot. It hadn’t even occurred to me that the people I lived with just a few weeks ago might have an issue with Reyes. He’s diplomatic enough to sway the worst of them, I’m sure, but he shouldn’t have to do that. I’m putting him in a horrible situation.
They could hurt him. They could hurtme, and even Enid, if they don’t like what I’ve done.
“You don’t think we should turn back, do you?” I ask, chewing on my lip.
He glances over at me, looming large as sunlight filters through the trees and onto his bronze skin. His brow furrows in confusion. “Doyou?”
“I’m just…thinking more and more about this, and I wonder if I wanted to see Enid so badly that I let my judgement slip,” I say. “The people in Homestead—they aren’t kind, Reyes. No matter how badly you want to help them, they might still say no.”
