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“He’s like you!” Niya gasped, sitting on her knees, her fur coverings bristling as she inhaled deeply. “By the fire, Girl! He could be from your home. He could know you. Did you know him? Why didn’t you bring him back with you?”
Syn whimpered and curled up tighter against me as if she knew we would blame her. Stroking the lynx, I murmured, “Because he tried to take me back to the family that saved him. He was rather...insistent.” I shrugged, sweeping over the fact he’d hauled me over his shoulder and ran swifter than any mortal I knew. “That’s when Syn attacked him.”
Both women had no response.
As one, they looked at Syn and her red-stained mouth.
“She bit him?” asked Niya.
I nodded. “Badly.”
“How badly?”
“His arm was torn to the bone.” Prickles danced down my back; my heart pounded harder. What if he was unconscious in the grasslands? What if he didn’t survive? What about fevers and sickness and—
“We have to find him. If he’s hurt, then he needs a healer,” Hyath said. “Way will help.”
I blinked in surprise. “You’d do that? You’d help him? Even when he tried to take me?”
Even though he bleeds shadow?
Hyath shifted onto her knees, matching Niya’s position. “If he’s like you and has no memories or anyone to call his own, then I suppose his actions at trying to take you are understandable. You probably don’t remember this, because you were in and out of awareness for days after we brought you back to camp, but while you were healing, you kept trying to crawl out of your furs and resume your search. You were very insistent that you had to find what you’d lost. You spoke of things I still don’t understand.”
“What things?” I asked.
“Things like—”
“Sunshine murdering life and the moon granting death an everlasting sanctuary.” Solin’s voice cut through the lupic as he entered. Outside, the sun was setting in a blaze of oranges, golds, and purples. Letting the flap slide back into position, Solin clasped his hands over the fur wrapped around his thighs and came toward us. He didn’t stop until he towered above, his dark skin glistening with heat and his hair heavy with carved beads. Beads I’d helped make, taught by older Nhil women who used tree sap to roll and pierce before baking them in the fire.
“Why are you three in here, talking about Girl’s hallucinations while she healed?” Solin asked with an edge to his rough voice.
I couldn’t catch a proper breath.
What would Solin do if he found out a man like me had tried to claim me for his own? Would he send out the hunters to track him?
“Girl met a stranger in the grass seas, Spirit Master,” Niya said, rising to her feet in an effortless glide. “He had no memories like her and was eager to keep her with him.” Glancing at the lynx, she added, “Syn attacked him, and he left. Isn’t that right, Girl?” Her dark gaze met mine, her eyebrow quirked.
I nodded and looked up at Solin, ignoring how he stood so proud and strong. He’d been so generous with me, so patient and kind. However, apart from sleeping in the same lupic, we didn’t spend a lot of time together. He was busy with clan affairs, and I did my best to be helpful with any tasks that needed doing, but now he watched me as if he’d gathered all my secrets and made them his own.
“Will you leave us, Niya and Hyath? I believe Tiptu requires some help with the feast.”
“Of course.” The two young women gave me a smile before brushing off their furs and vanishing out of the lupic. Syn stood from her spot in my lap, keeping her head low and contrite. She went to leave, but Solin bent and grabbed her around the jaw, peering at the redness staining her fangs. “So, Syn is the reason you’re still here and not with this strange man?” His quick assessment of the truth made my heart pound harder.
“Yes.”
“Is he badly hurt?”
“His arm is torn.”
“Did you bring him back to camp, or did he run like Niya said?”
“He ran.”
“Which direction?” He let Syn go, heading toward the water bowl. The lynx slipped out as Solin selected a cup, gathered some water, then drank his fill. Droplets dripped down his chest as his throat worked. After his second glass, he wiped his mouth and turned back to face me. “Which direction, Girl?”
Standing, I clasped my hands. “Toward the hills in the distance.”
“That is far.” Solin scratched his clean-shaven cheek. “Are you sure he went that way? It would be a very long journey.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I stayed silent. I didn’t know how long it would take or if the injured man could make such a trip.
