She shoots me a glare. “I can’t believe you won’t go check for me.”
“There’s no scorpion waiting just below the edge,” I grumble, covering my eyes with my forearm.
“Then explain to me why I didn’t hear it fall.”
“Because you were shrieking at the pain in your arm and couldn’t hear it over your own screams? Because you were focused on making sure both of us survived, and you can’t pay attention to that many things at once?”
My sister flops dramatically on the ground. “So you admit I risked my life to save you—ripped my chest muscles in half to deliver you from that monster—and you won’t peek over the edge of the chasm so I can have peace of mind?”
We stare each other down for a moment. I can’t believe she just used the word deliver in conversation. I let out a sigh. “Fine.”
She looks a bit too appeased for my liking as I crawl over to the edge.
“Why are you crawling?”
“Because everything hurts.”
When I get to the edge, I hesitate. “You’re sure you didn’t hear it hit the ground?”
“Ha! So you don’t think I’m being paranoid, after all!”
I groan and force myself to look over the edge. To my relief, there’s no lurking scorpion in sight. Just a glittering expanse of fog that I can’t help but think looks more satiated than it did earlier.
“Well?”
“Just like I told you, it’s gone.” I retreat from the edge all the same.
“Then why didn’t I hear it hit the ground?”
I rub my temples. “I can’t say I have the energy to think about that at the moment.”
“But it is noteworthy that I didn’t hear it, right?”
I crane my neck to look over at her. Zora has the smuggest grin I’ve ever seen pasted across her face.
It makes my stomach twist, but not in such an awful way.
“It’s sort of nice,” I say.
She frowns. “What’s nice?”
“You being insufferable. I think I might have missed that.”
Zora blinks, the smug expression vanishing. In an instant, I’m wishing I could swallow the words whole, banish them from existence. But I can’t, and Zora clears her throat as she stands, dusting her britches off.
I scramble to my aching feet, hurrying after her as she strides into the woods. “Please,” I call after her. “Don’t leave. I know you don’t trust me. I know you have every reason not to. But I think…”
“Think what?” She whirls on me. “Think you could help me? It might be true. You might be my brother, but that doesn’t mean you’re here for me. I heard you and Farin talking back at the pit. You’re chasing after a girl you fancy, which is perfectly fine. But don’t act like you’re here on some rescue mission for me.”
I stand stunned, my words caught in my throat. What am I supposed to say to Zora? She doesn’t know the entire story, of course. Doesn’t know that I’ve spent years of my life as a slave trying to buy her freedom.
Then again, it’s my fault she was enslaved in the first place.
Her calves tense, and I ready myself for her to leave me behind, but then she jerks her head agitatedly. “Come on.”
“You want me to come with you?”
She runs her hands through her cropped hair and immediately gasps.
“Here, let me help,” I say, remembering how lifting me out of the chasm pulled her arm out of its socket.
Zora bites her lip reluctantly, but she nods all the same.
I don’t hesitate. In fact, I strike as quickly as if it were an attack; I don’t want to give Zora time to anticipate the pain.
A shriek grinds through her teeth, and she pales. For a moment, I think she might pass out, but then she steadies herself, her uninjured hand on my shoulder.
“As I was going to say,” she says, still heaving, “you want to get back to your girl. I want answers about who…what I am. The way I see it, we can help one another. Oh,” she says, holding her palm out. “I almost forgot—I want my knife back.”
We spend half of the day setting up a new campground in a cavern tucked into the base of one of the island’s many mountains. Neither of us does much talking, at least not until our campsite is set up and we’ve gathered enough berries and roots to get us by for the night.
My stomach growls, eager for meat, but I have to say I’m relieved not to be eating raw hare any longer.
Once we’re done eating and the last rays of sunlight fade over the horizon, Zora sits down cross-legged in front of me and clasps her hands together, as if to signal it’s time to talk business.
“I’m going to need you to tell me everything,” she says. So I do.
I tell her of our parents, of how Mother always had a tendency to undercharge merchants who passed by in need of cloaks after being robbed on the Serpentine. I tell her of how Father always scolded her for it, but never seemed to mean it. I tell her of snowball fights, and the loneliness of being rejected by the other children in the village, and finding friendship in each other. Then there’s Abra and my false apprenticeship, and the series of foolishness that led to Zora being taken as a punishment for my disobedience. I tell her of my Turning, and she bites her lip when I get to the part about developing the ritual to bargain for her freedom. Of Gunter, how I think of him as a father-figure, but struggle with how to feel about him now that I know the pain he caused her. I tell her everything. Well, almost everything. I mention Blaise, but leave out some details I’m not quite ready to admit aloud to myself yet.
