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Without another word, I bolted into the grass.
The lynx gave chase but couldn’t match me....
...
I didn’t look back.
Chapter Eleven
. Girl .
I TRIPPED INTO CAMP, SYN at my heels, my basket empty of grain, and my heart still pounding.
Is he the one?
The one who tasted like midnight and honey?
I felt sick.
Cruel.
Cold-hearted.
If he was the one, why didn’t I recognise him? Why was his face as strange to me as the Nhil males when I’d first met them? Why didn’t my memories come flooding back, unlocked thanks to his finding me?
I flinched as Syn huffed beside me.
The way he’d looked at me. The sorrow in his stare and the pleading in his touch. He hadn’t been a threat, even though fear convinced me otherwise. He’d just been lost...just like me. Lost and confused and so terribly alone.
What have I done?
I should’ve made him come back with me.
I should’ve stopped Syn.
I should’ve—
“Girl?” Niya intercepted me as I rushed toward Solin’s lupic. I gripped my empty basket as her eyes met mine, full of friendship and happiness, but then they clouded as she drank me in. “By the fire, what happened?” Grabbing my basket, she tossed it to the ground as her gaze narrowed at the spray of blood across my belly. The blood that’d spurted from the man as Syn ripped into him. The man with a mark like me, no memories like me, and the unexplainable gift of suddenly knowing two different languages.
Like me.
Had I been born knowing the first tongue he’d used? An almost lyrical, guttural language that came from the heart instead of the mind, or had I spoken Firenese first? I’d been dying by the river when Niya found me. My mind had been loose and almost untethered from my mortal body when she first spoke. I couldn’t remember if I could understand Niya from the very first words she’d said or if my mind had slowly grown used to her language, twisting itself to understand, just like it had with the strange tongue the man had used.
The man who was hurt...bleeding—
“Answer me.” Niya grabbed my elbow, her black eyes locked on the dried crimson marking me. “Did someone hurt you? Did Aktor or Kivva—”
“No.” I shook my head, pulling my arm out of her grasp. “It wasn’t them.” Glancing around, I cringed as other Nhil people cast curious glances our way as they went about their afternoon. Syn huffed again and took off, her two tails lashing, bolting back into the grass ringing the camp.
Had she gone to chase after the man she’d hurt? The man who’d snarled as savagely as the very wolves who’d hunted me?
Was he dead?
Could someone survive a wound like that?
I shouldn’t have sent him away!
It didn’t matter that he’d touched me, scared me, and tried to take me. All I could remember was his howl of pain as Syn’s fangs sank into his arm and—
“Girl, you’re scaring me.” Niya lowered her voice to a whisper. “You can speak to me. You can tell me anything. I’ll always keep whatever you tell me in confidence. So, tell me...what happened?”
Swallowing hard, I hugged myself, trying to hide the spray of blood. “It’s not mine. It’s...there was...” I bit my lip. How could I tell her a naked, filthy man was out in the grasslands? A man whose skin seemed to hold a shred of midnight, even while the sun shone. A man whose black hair touched his shoulders with tangles and leaves and eyes that were as smoky and as mysterious as the shadows?
His voice had been as deep as thunder rippling over the horizon. His body carved from the very stones that made up mountains. And the mark on his thigh—in the same position as mine—had bled, just like me.
Everything about him had been rich and raw and real.
I’d been drawn to him, aware of him, but...I didn’t remember him.
And that had broken a piece of him that’d watched me with such hope.
Nausea crawled up my throat with guilt.
Hyath suddenly appeared from her lupic, a short distance from Solin’s. She carried a basket of fresh river reeds, no doubt to sit by the central fire and weave more bowls and mats that were used to cover the earth and hold food in our homes.
Her eyes cast over us, held, then narrowed. She shifted course, striding quickly toward us.
Niya stiffened a little and crossed her arms. “Hyath, you can’t tell anyone.”
“Tell anyone what?” Her gaze switched from friendly curiosity to tight with worry as she noticed the blood on my belly. “Oh, by the fire...what happened?”
“She won’t tell me,” Niya muttered. “She just keeps blinking.”
Hyath studied me for a moment before grabbing my hand and yanking me into Solin’s lupic.
The moment the heavy bison hide cocooned us, Hyath let me go and placed the basket of reeds on the ground by the entrance. The small hearth waited for a fire and the furs Solin slept in were tidy and made. My own furs on the other side of the lupic had been rolled up—like I did every morning so as not to take up too much space.
