Fly High - Chapter 22
Pairing: Soâlek x Fem!OC
Trigger warnings: Violence, swearing.
Summary: Disgraced but cleared of wrongdoing, former flight lead Robin Walker accepts an RDA mission that promises redemptionâonly to awaken on Pandora in a recombinant body she never agreed to inhabit. Sent to hunt a legendary traitor, she instead finds herself stranded between two worlds: too human to belong among the Naâvi, too changed to return to Earth. As the planet challenges everything she was taught to fear, Robin must confront the meaning of loyalty, survival, and identityâand the quiet, dangerous pull of a warrior who sees past what she was built to be.Â
Masterlist
Chapter 22 -Â No One Will Come
When Robin first woke in this body, the first thing the RDA gave her was a lesson.
Not care. Not explanation.
Information.
Hostile natives. Rouge insurgents. Lethal contact risk. Kill zones. Ambush patterns. Cultural vulnerabilities to exploit if capture became useful and survival remained possible.
Then, later, they had given her the reportâher report.
A fake autopsy, signed and filed by several doctors who had either never seen her body or had seen it and lied anyway. Cause of deathâprojectile trauma, Naâvi arrow. Entry through an eye socket, exiting through the rear skull. Catastrophic encephalic damage. Killed in action after hostile native engagement.
Clean words. Neat words.
Words made to close a grave they themselves had already robbed.
Even then, before she knew the truth, before W-17 returned to her in fragments of blood, static, and gunfire, Robin had not been able to hold much hate for the Naâvi.
Not then. Not before anger, revenge, and fear took hold of her copied mind and turned her into something that wandered from one RDA installation to the next like a war machine with a pulse.
Back then, when the lies still had weight and the RDAâs version of her death was the only version she had, the hatred still hadnât stuck.
âThey were here before us,â she had thought. âThis is their land. They are protecting it.â
Hostile had always seemed like the wrong word for the People.
Humans used violence like architecture. They built with it. Expanded with it. Drew borders with itâthen named those borders progress and acted surprised when the world bled.
Hostile was not the right word for the Naâvi.
It was, however, a perfect word for the ones surrounding her now.
Naâvi in shape. Not Naâvi in anything else.
Not in the way they stood. Not in the way they moved through the forest with that patient, unhurried cruelty, as if the trees themselves had learned to make room for them out of fear rather than belonging. Not in the way they looked at herânot with suspicion, not with caution, not even with the clean anger she had learned to expect from people who had every reason to hate the body she wore.
No. This was different.
Their paint was wrong too.
White across shaved skulls and cheekbones. Red at throats and jaws. Black dragged over chests and arms in marks that didnât look ceremonial, didnât look sacred, didnât look memory honored in pigment.
It looked like a warning. Like old blood dried over their skin. Like death given color.
Their weapons were wrong too. Too many knives. Too many trophies tied into their belts and braids.
Their scars didnât sit like the marks of hunters or warriors who had survived the necessary violence of a living world. They looked displayed. Kept. Fed. Some of them intentional, even.
Nothing about them resembled the way of the People. There was no sign of Eywa in them, Robin realized.
The thought arrived with such certainty it frightened her.
She had no idea how she knew that. No idea whether she had any right to claim she recognized the absence of something sacred. Maybe it was because her soulâif that was what she was allowed to call it, if that word wasnât too large and too dangerous for what lived inside herâhad been held in this moonâs living network long enough to know what called to it and what did not.
Maybe she had simply spent too much time with Soâlek.
Maybe both. Maybe neither. It didnât matter.
The truth of it sat cold inside her.
These people were empty in a way that wasnât absence.
Absence could be quiet.
This was hunger.
Robin didnât fightâshe knew the fight was over the moment she realized there were more behind her.
Not because she didnât want to fight. Her body wanted it. Her hands wanted it. Every old piece of training inside her was already measuring angles, distances, weapons, the gap between bodies and trees, with her bow on her back and knife at her side.
Three in front. Two behind. More above. One close enough to lunge at with her knifeâand another close enough to cut her down before she finished drawing it.
The calculation completed itself with brutal efficiency.
Fight, and she died badly.
Run, and she died faster.
So she did neither. She held stillâit cost her more than she showed.
They closed in slowly, as if disappointed she hadnât given them the entertainment of panic. One of them snatched the bow from her hands before she could decide whether dying for it would be worth the attempt. Another took the knife Soâlek had given her before they reached the Plainsâthat loss landed somewhere sharp, not because she believed the knife would save her, but because it was his.
Because he had placed it in her hand with that same quiet gravity he gave to things that mattered more than he would ever explain aloud.
A warrior pulled it from its sheath, weighed it once, and smiled as if he had found something amusing. Robin kept her face still.
Then someone kicked the backs of her kneesâpain flashed white through her legs, and the ground came up fast. She caught herself badly, palms scraping on damp earth, shoulders jolting against the sudden stop. Before she could rise, hands caught her arms and wrenched them forward.
Leather cord wrapped around her wrists. Thin, tight, and expert. It bit into the skin as they pulled the knot closed, a narrow line of pressure that became pain the moment she tested it.
Robin kept her breathing even, or tried to, and she found herself kneeling, bound, surrounded, and with her heart hammering against her ribs so violently it seemed impossible that none of them could hear it.
Still, she straightened her back. Chin up. Shoulders steady.
If terror wanted to live in her body, fine. It could do soâquietly.
They spoke around her. Robin understood only piecesâenough of them.
Reward.
Kuru.
Who.
Cut.
None of the words led her mind towards a promising future.
She lowered her gaze to her wrists and began working at the knot anyway. Small movements with careful pressure. Thumb against cord. Skin dragging. The knot didnât give.
Of course it didnât. Of all the skills these people could have lacked, apparently ropework wasnât one of them.
Fucking fantastic.
A foot nudged hers. Not gently.
Robin looked back over her shoulder, first to her feet, then up.
A woman stood over her, staring down with a small frown. Her head had been shaved close, the exposed skin painted in streaks of white and red. Her eyes moved over Robinâs feet with sharp interest.
âLook,â the woman said. Ordered, really.
Two of the men nearby followed her gaze.
Robinâs stomach tightened before she remembered why.
Five toesâof course.
The woman crouched and grabbed Robinâs bound wrists, yanking them up hard enough for the cord to burn across her skin. Robin hissed once through her teeth before she could stop herself.
The womanâs smile grew.
She pried Robinâs fists open with unnecessary force and studied her hands. One finger after another. The thumb. The wrongness. The human shape written into blue skin.
âDemon,â she said. Amused.
Robin almost laughedâshe had been about to say the same thing to her.
A sound split the forest ahead of them.
Laughter.
High. Sharp. Terrible.
Not loud in the way of someone trying to be heard. Loud in the way of someone who already knew everyone would listen.
The painted womanâs face snapped toward the sound, her grip still cruel around Robinâs wrists.
A few of the others shifted. Not fearâor maybe a little fearâbut mostly with recognition. Submission, tooâor yielding. The subtle change of bodies making room for something worse than themselves.
Robin followed their eyes.
A Naâvi stepped through the trees.
A leader of sorts, her mind supplied at once.
He didnât hurryânot that he needed to. The others had already made the space for him before he entered it, and he moved into it as if it had always belonged to him.
His head, too, was shaved clean. White paint covered the crown of his skull and swept down across his cheekbones. Black and red marked his jaw and throat. The patterns over his skin were too deliberate to be accidental, too ugly to be beautiful. Two scars crossed his face, one cutting through the paint near his brow, another dragging down towards his mouth.
The smile he wore did nothing to soften him. If anything, it made the severity worse.
In one hand, he held a braid. Robinâs eyes dropped to it before she could stop them.
Her body remembered Ăyo lying on his back nearby, eyes open towards the canopy, chest unmoving, the back of his neck bare.
It was themâthey had killed him.
Not the thanator. Not the forest.
Them.
They had cut him apart in the one way that mattered beyond death.
Desecrated him.
Robinâs mouth went dry.
What the fuck were they?
And then memory opened beneath her.
Firelight. Food wrapped in green leaves. Soâlek sitting beside her with the careful stillness he brought to anything that mattered too much to mishandle.
â
Robin had been tying the knife to the woven belt around her waist when Soâlek came to sit by her side. He carried two bundles of food wrapped in broad green leaves and set one in front of her before his eyes moved to the blade.
âYou kept it,â he said.
He meant the knifeâthe one he had given her.
Robin raised her eyes to him for only a moment before returning to the knot with suspicious focus.
âWellâyeah.â Robin replied.
The answer sounded too casual. It wasnât casual. Robin felt like she was about to throw up just by talking about this with him.
She finished tying the knife into place and immediately reached for the food just to have something else to do with her hands.
Soâlekâs eyes remained on the blade for a moment longer before he began to eat.
âIt is old,â he said.
Robin paused, hands halfway through opening the leaves.
She cleared her throat.
âIt works.â The words came out almost defensive. She felt more than saw Soâlekâs gaze shift to her face. âYou sharpened it before giving it to me. It works.â
She had hated how nervous she sounded.
Hated more that she was nervous at all.
It was just a knife. A weapon. Nothing soft or remotely unique.
It was also a gift.
From himâfor her.
They ate in silence after that, because apparently both of them were very gifted at turning ordinary meals into awkward, emotional endurance tests. It sucked. She hated it.
When the food was finished and the fire had settled lower, Soâlek spoke again. âI had another. Cycles ago.â
Robin turned to look at him.
He continued, âIt was taken from me.â
She searched for something intelligent to say and found absolutely nothing.
âA knife?â She asked.
Obvious.
Dumb.
Very articulate.
Soâlek answered anyway. âA knifeâkept from before my clan was lost.â
The pull in her chest was immediate and strange. Painful in a place she didnât have a name for. Not yet.
âWho took it?â she asked, though she wasnât sure she had the right to know.
âWukula,â he said. A name, she guessed.Â
âOf the Mangkwan. During a raid.â His gaze remained steady, but something hard sat behind it. âWe fought. I lived. He gained a wound. He kept the knife, too.â
The first thing Robin found in herself was anger. Not toward Soâlekâof course not.
Towards this Wukulaâwhoever he wasâ who had taken something from him. Something old. Something from before loss had carved Soâlek into the person sitting beside her now.
And despite her best efforts not to become ridiculous about it, Robin had begun to think of Soâlek as someone close.
A friend, maybe.
In the quiet privacy of her own mind, where no one could accuse her of optimism as a crime, she liked to think he might see her that way too.
Then another thought arrivedâa fight. Naâvi against Naâvi.
Why?
âMangkwan?â Robin asked.
Soâlekâs eyes found hers. âAsh People.â
Robin offered him a nervous smile. âThat doesnât sound very reassuring.â
He narrowed his eyes. âIt was not meant to be.â
The smile slipped.
âThey are a clan that lives far east, in dead lands.â Soâlek said. âNear a mountain that breathes fire and ash.â
âSoâa volcano,â her mind supplied. For once, she decided against speaking her sarcasm. The moment felt too solemn for that.
âThey have strayed from the way of the People,â Soâlek said.
Robinâs frown deepened, more out of concern than anger now. âWhy?â
Soâlek looked down at the space between them for a moment, as if considering how much truth to give her.
Then his eyes found hers again. âThey reject Eywa.â
Robin leaned back slightly.
He continued, voice low. âThey are vicious. They act with aimless violence and anger.â
A cold discomfort moved beneath her skin.
When she first came to Pandora, that had been the nightmare. Violent aliens in the dark. Teeth. Arrows. Savages who killed because killing was what they did.
Then, slowly, the nightmare had become embarrassing.
The Naâvi were people who respected and protected their land. The RDA had been the monster in the story, and Robin, too young, too desperate, and too guilty, had not been able to see it clearly at first.
What Soâlek described now sounded like the old fear wearing Naâvi skin. Her old nightmare, personified.
That made it worse.
She lifted a hand to the back of her neck, suddenly uncomfortable with the thought.
Robin, being herself, tried to hide the fear behind humorâa skill she had honed through the years.
âGood to know.â She let out a humorless laugh. âIâll keep it in mind in case I ever see one.â
The humor didnât reach him. If anything, he looked offended by it.
âDo not joke,â he ordered.
Robin closed her mouth.
âIf you ever come to face one of the Mangkwan,â he said, low and very clear, âYou run.â
He inclined his head toward her, as if to press the instruction into place. âYou do not fight. You do not linger. You run.â
Robin was not against the ideaâtruly. The look on his face, along with the very short and very haunting description already offered, had thrown any curiosity she might have had miles away from where she sat.
Still, because apparently self-preservation had limits, she asked, âDidnât you fight one of them?â
âBecause I had to,â Soâlek answered. âNot because I wanted to.â
Robin had no answer to that.
As if he believed he had not yet carved the warning deeply enough into her mind, he added, âWith the Mangkwan, a quick death would be mercy.â
Her breath caught.
âRobin, they are not merciful people.â
â
The memory ended.
Mangkwan.Â
Thatâs what they were. Mangkwan.
A braid landed in front of her.
The leader had thrown it there, casually, as if discarding a strip of hide. It hit the ground barely a foot from Robinâs knees.
Her stomach turned.
The severed end was cleanâprecise. A cut made by someone who had done this before, and would continue to do so.
The freezing realization struck her all at once.
She had not followed Soâlekâs instruction at all.
Run.Â
Do not fight. Do not linger. Run.
Not that she had been given much of a choice. By the time she knew the Mangkwan were there, they had already closed every path. Running would have turned her death into a chase. Fighting would have turned it into entertainment.
She refused both, but refusal didnât change the shape of the trap she had fallen into.
She was still bound. Still kneeling. Still at their mercyâor lack of.
The leader crouched before her.
He had presence even in silence. The kind that pressed into the space around him and made everything else smaller. Robin refused to bend under it, and even when her eyes would not quite meet his face, her back remained straight.
He seemed to enjoy that. The defiance.
A breath of laughter left him through his nose.
âDemon of the People,â he said. As if that explained her.
Robin was not sure anything explained her that easily. Not in this life. Not in this body.
âAre you one of Toruk Maktoâs?â He asked.
She understood the question. Toruk Makto. Jake Sully.
Once human. Once a dreamwalker. Once a demon, maybe, in the eyes of those who had not yet known what he would become.
A demon who had dressed like the People. Spoken like them. Learned their ways. Been accepted by Eywa in a way Robin still found impossible to fully understand without feeling something hollow and ugly open under her ribs.
She didnât answer, thinkingâmaybe foolishlyâthat maybe silence might buy time.
Enough time for Nawkâtan to find her, or for Vauk to circle backâif either was still alive. Enough time for a distraction, a mistake, a shift in their attention. Enough time for her to get her bound hands under herself, force her weak knees to work, and run the way Soâlek had told her to.
Her gaze dropped briefly to the braid at her knees.
Whose?
Vaukâs?
Nawkâtanâs?
Some other poor Naâvi who had crossed the wrong path in the wrong forest and found these bastards waiting?
A small part of her hoped Nawkâtan was alive at least. He seemed like the kind of man who would not leave his own behindâshe only hoped she counted as one of them in his eyes. The thought hurt more than she wanted it to.
Before they had left, she had insisted on the radio. Nawkâtan had hated it immediately.
Too small. Too mechanical. Too complicated for something whose only purpose was speaking across distance. Robin had given him the communicator anyway and explained how to press the switch, where to speak, how close to hold it, what not to touch unless he wanted to turn the whole thing off and make her regret ever trying to bridge the technological divide.
He had looked deeply unimpressed.
She had kept hers on anyway.
Now, a larger and much more useless part of her wanted to press the comm at her neck and call Soâlekâs name.
Not because it would workâshe knew it would not.
He was too far away. She was too deep under the canopy. The terrain was wrong, the distance worse. Even if the signal reached somewhere, even if by some miracleâsome impossible mercyâ-it found the right receiver, he wasnât close enough to do anything.
Calling him wouldnât be strategy. It would be hope, stained with fearâthat was worse than hope alone.
She wanted his voice anyway.
Not only because he would know what to do, though she believed firmly he wouldâthough maybe that was unfair. Maybe she gave him too much credit because some part of her had started assigning steadiness to his presence and didnât know what to do with herself when he wasnât there.
âFoolish,â she called herself in her mind.
Still. It didnât feel wrong to trust that. To trust him.
The leaderâs eyes moved over her in one sharp sweep.
Then he reached out.
Robin recoiled before she could stop herself when he lifted the edge of her coat, exposing the skin at her side to the humid forest air. His fingers brushed the scar tissue there.
Not hardâthat made it worse somehow. The touch was almost thoughtful, curious.
Robinâs breath shortened.
The scars along her side remembered claws and impact. They remembered Tamteyâs voice breaking above her. Remembered the white-hot certainty that she was about to die because Pandora had finally decided to finish what the RDA started.
He tilted his head, considering. His smile widened as he pressed one finger into one of the raised scar lines against her ribs, painfully.
Pain licked through her side. Robinâs mouth tightened. She did not give him the sound.
Then, through the panic, something important returned.
Two scarred lines.
Two scratches on the tree bark.
The thanator.
It was still out there.
Still hunting.
Still angry, reckless, and feral in a way nothing born to the forest should have been. Both kurus cut away, severed from connection forever, leaving only a creature driven by pain, confusion, and ungrounded hate.
A thing made wrongâRobin understood that better than she wanted to.
Her gaze lifted towards the canopyâtoo thick, too crowded. Nika could not land here even if she came.
Good.
Robin didnât want her close to this.
Noise. She only needed noise. Movement, maybe.
One mistake from the circle around her.
âYou will look at me,â the man said.
His hand gripped her side fully now. Robin didnât look, her eyes remained raised to the hidden sky behind the leaves, thinking.
Spite was a stupid, petty form of courage. It was all she had left at the moment. She accepted it anyway.
âLook at me, demon.â
She turned her head, but not to his face. Past his shoulder. To the trees.
His fingers dug harder into her scarred side, displeased.
Robin drew air into her lungs.
Then she called. High and sharp, cutting through the damp air. The way she had heard the Naâvi call for their ikranâher own version of it, shaped by practice, embarrassment, and Nikaâs selective willingness to acknowledge she had any rider at all.
A sound meant to carry. A sound meant to pierce through distance.
The manâs expression changed.
Robin drew breath to call againâa hand clamped over the lower half of her face. Hard.
His fingers dug into her jaw with enough force to make pain flash behind her eyes. His palm crushed over her mouth, stealing sound and breath in the same motionâinstinct surged so violently she nearly threw herself backward without plan or purpose.
She stopped herselfâbarely.
Her nostrils flared as she tried to breathe around the obstruction.
He leaned close.
Now she looked at him. Now she could not help it.
Only then did he seem pleased with himself.
His hand tightened over her face. The other stayed at her side, keeping her pinned in place through pain alone.
âNo one will come for you.â The words were quiet. Certain. He said them like he was telling her the weather.
Robinâs eyes burned, partly from pain, partly from the sharp panic of not having enough air.
He watched that too. Enjoyed it.
âDreamwalker,â he said softly. âI will cut away every stolen piece of you until fear has nowhere left to live.â
His hand left her side and reached back.
For a weapon, most likely.
Robin did try to move away, then. His hold on her face didnât yield.
A faint laugh left him, low and almost fond, as if her attempt had amused him.
âI will take your kuru last,â he murmured. âI want you to know the moment you become nothing.â
The words went through her colder than the knife could have.
Not death.
Erasure.
The fear in Robinâs body changed shape.
Her hands strained once against the cordâthe knot held.
Wukulaâs fingers shifted against her jaw.
Her heart lurched before she could stop it.
His smile deepened.
âYour people will follow what I leave,â he said. âEnough to understand. Not enough to bury.â
Robinâs vision narrowed.
For one terrible second she wasnât in the forest. She was back in another room, another death, another voice asking for last words while her body bled beneath her and the air tasted like metal.
I wonât be able to protect you, Walker.
The memory hit hard enough that she almost broke against it.
Then the forest answered.
A roar tore through the trees, deep and furious. Close enough to rattle through the ground beneath her knees.
Every Mangkwan body around her shifted at once.
The leaderâs head snapped toward the sound.
Robinâs ears pressed flat against her skull. Her side throbbed, not from his touch, but from the memory of claws, weight, and Tamteyâs trembling hands trying to hold her together.
The thanator roared again. Closer.
Wukula looked back at her, eyes narrowing as understanding settled over his face.
âDemon.â He spoke it like an accusation, then he shoved her aside by the hold on her jaw.
The force sent her hard into the groundâpain burst through one shoulder and for half a second she saw nothing but roots, leaves, the severed braid lying too close, the shape of Ăyoâs unmoving hand.
The pressure on her face was gone. Air came back violently. Robin didnât waste the breath on sound.
The Mangkwan formation had brokenânot fully, not enough for safety, but enough. Some turned towards the roar. Others moved to higher ground. One shouted a warning. Another drew a bow.
Robin rolled onto her knees.
Her wrists were still bound.
She had no idea where her own bow was, but she saw the startled Mangkwan who had taken her knife. Wrists bound and all, she pushed at him with her shoulder towards a tree, and taking advantage of his surprise, she snapped her hands forward, snatched the knife from his hold, and ran.
The forest floor was slick under her feet and every root seemed built for the express purpose of killing her pride before the Mangkwan could.
She ran anyway.
Behind her, the man called something. Too close. Too controlled to be panic.
A promise, maybe.
She didnât understand. She didnât look back either.
Looking back was for people with spare time and better options. Robin had neither.
She ran with her hands tied in front of her, using them for balance when she had to, catching herself against trunks, shoving through broad leaves and low hanging vines. Pain flashed through her wrists each time the cord pulled. The leather bit deeper. Warmth slid beneath it.
Blood, probably.
Branches slapped against her face and shoulders. The ground dropped without warning. She stumbled, caught herself, kept moving. Somewhere behind her the thanator crashed through the forest with the sound of something too large and too furious to care what broke in its path.
A scream cut off sharply.
Mangkwan.
Robin didnât let herself feel relief. Not yet.
Another voice shouted behind her, closer than before.
She angled left, then immediately right, refusing any clean path that might give a pursuer line of sight. The canopy was too thick. Nika could not come down here. Nawkâtan had to be somewhere. Vauk too, unless theyâ
No. Not that thought. She shoved it away.
The comm at her neck crackled.
Static first.
Then a voice, broken by interference and distance. âDoes anyone hear?â
Robin almost tripped.
Nawkâtan.
He had used the radio.
Stubborn bastard had actually used the radio.
Her bound hands flew to her neck, careful with the knife she held, and her fingers fumbled with the switch. The cord cut deeper with the movement. She pressed anyway.
âNawkâtan!â Her voice came out rough, breathless. âThere are Mangkwan!â
A beat of static.
Then his voice returned, shaken beneath the control. âI saw.â
That answer was worse than she wanted it to be. Robin pushed through a curtain of hanging leaves and saw light ahead.
A clearing. Small. Open enough.
Maybe.
âFly,â Nawkâtan said. âFind a clear path and fly. We will meet in the air. Be quick!â
Robin would have rolled her eyes if she had not been busy trying to avoid dying.
Very helpful.
Just fly.
Brilliant.
Fantastic insight.
A roar shook the trees behind herâokay, maybe he had a point.
The clearing opened ahead, green and bright after the undergrowth, sunlight filtering down in hard shafts through the canopy break. Robin stumbled into it, chest heaving, wrists burning, side screaming with each breath.
She threw her head back and called for Nika. Once. Twice.
Nothing.
Her nerves spiked so violently she felt it in her teeth.
Behind her, something crashed through the trees. Not close enough to see. Close enough to feel.
Robin called again, sharper this time, throat tearing around the sound.
For one unbearable second, the sky didnât answer.
Then a screech split the air above her.
Nika dropped through the opening like fury given wings.
She landed hard in the center of the clearing, talons tearing into earth, wings flaring wide enough to scatter loose leaves across Robinâs face. Her head snapped towards Robin, then towards the trees behind her, pupils narrowing.
Robin had never been so relieved to be judged by a reptile in her life.
âYeah,â she rasped, already running toward her. âI know. Bad day.â
Mounting with bound hands was inelegantâthat was the kindest possible word for it.
Robin grabbed the harness, missed one grip, caught it again, and hauled herself up with a sound she would deny making if anyone survived to mention it. Pain tore through her wrists. Her knee slipped. Nika shifted beneath her with an irritated shriek, which, frankly, wasnât helpful.
âOhâshut it!â Robin snapped breathlessly.
A figure broke from the trees. Mangkwan.
Robin didnât wait to find out who.
The ikran launched. The ground vanished beneath them with a force that drove Robinâs stomach into her throat. She pressed herself low against Nikaâs neck, bound hands twisted awkwardly in the harness, every muscle locking around terror.
The sky caught them.
Below, the clearing shrank. The trees closed around it. A painted figure stepped into the open and looked up.
Even from above, Robin knew him. He stood at the edge of the clearing. His face lifted, painted skull bright against the green.
He didnât shout. Didnât rage. He only watched her rise.
Robinâs breath came hard and uneven against the wind.
Her wrists throbbed. Her side burned. Her mouth still remembered the shape of his hand.
Nika climbed higher, wings beating strong beneath her, carrying them through the gap in the canopy and into the brutal relief of open air.
For one second, Robin looked towards the distance.
She felt the exact moment her face crumpled, a sharp breath escaping her mouth against her will. She leaned down and pressed her face against the back of Nikaâs neck.
It was a search and rescue. A simple mission.Â
She remembered telling Soâlek she could do it. That she had survived worse.
What a fool.
She thought of him again. Not as a strategy this time. Not as a rescue.
Robin thought of his hand offering her the knife. His voice warning her to run. His face in the dark before dawn, serious, steady, and asking her to be careful, as if care could be ordered into the world by saying it clearly enough.
She had tried.
She was alive.
That would have to count for something.
Nika banked hard, answering some movement below, and Robin tightened her grip.
Static cracked at her neck again.
âNawkâtan?â she forced out.
A burst of interference.
Then his voice, faint but present. âFly south, Robin. We go to Hometree.â
Robin let out a breath that almost became something else.
Not relief.
Not yet.
She let her forehead rest again against Nikaâs hide.
âCopy,â she said, because some habits survived every life.
Behind and below, the forest rolled on, green, endlessâhiding its dead.
Ahead, the sky opened.
Robin held on.
â
Soâlek watched the great Toruk climb into the sky.
Its wings caught the light above the Spires, vast and red against the open blue, each beat carrying it farther from the stone teeth and drifting cloud.
For a long moment, all sound seemed to draw back around it. Even the wind appeared to pause, as if the world was remembering old stories and had gone still to make room for them.
Against his better discipline, Soâlek thought of Robinâher name rising inside his mind without permission.
He wondered what her face would have done at the sight. Whether her eyes would have narrowed first in suspicion, because wonder rarely reached her without passing through some wall of practical distrust first. Whether she would have gone quiet. Whether some small, dry comment would have found its way out of her mouth because silence made her feel too seen.
Her relationship with the sky was still complicated.
He had learned that not from what she said, but from what her body did before words could interfere. The way her shoulders still tightened when Nika climbed too quickly. The way her hands sought the harness with too much force, even when her seat was steady. The way her breathing changed before she mastered it. The way she looked away from height and then looked back, as if afraid and hungry for it in the same breath.
She loved the sky.
She feared it too.
Both truths lived in her at once, and neither seemed willing to yield.
A part of him believed she would have loved the Spires more than she had liked the Plains. The high wind. The vastness. The sharp stone rising through cloud and light. The sense of being above the world, untethered from all the things that waited below.
Then he stopped the thought.
It was not his place to assume the shape of her wonder. It was not his place to decide what would hurt her or heal her. Not yetâperhaps not ever.
He turned his gaze away from the sky.
Tamtey, Teylan, Riânela, and Rasi remained near one another, their voices low after all that had passed. The Spires still held the echo of battle. The RDAâs smoke had not yet fully cleared at the distance. But among the Sarentu, something quieter had taken rootâsomething fragile and stubborn, like green returning to burned ground.
Rasi had given them song.
Old words carried through her own grief and survival, passed at last to those who had been left reaching for a history stolen before they could know its shape. Soâlek stood among them while the sound rose, and though the song did not belong to his clan, though he was Trrâong and would always carry that loss in the center of himself, he had felt the offering all the same.
They had welcomed himânot as an ally only, not as a weapon to be called when the fighting grew too difficult, not as the last remnant of a dead clan standing at the edge of another peopleâs future.
Family, they had said, without saying it too loudly.
The word sat strangely in him.
It had been a long time since he had allowed any place near it.
There was still much to do. Much to learn. Much to find. Nor was still missing, they would have to find him. They would have to make him see that the Sarentu had not ended in the dark places Mercer built for themâtheir future still existed. Not because it had been spared, but because they had chosen to make it with their own hands.
Soâlek closed his eyes for a moment.
Only a moment.
When darkness came, it did not bring rest. It brought the Plains.
Smoke. Pale new wood. Firelight low against tired faces. Robin sitting beside him with her elbows on her knees, one hand caught in the sleeping childâs fingers, pretending she did not know he was watching her.
It had been days since he left.
Tamtey had asked him, once, whether there had been any word from Robin. She had asked it as if he would be the one to knowâas if Robinâs movements, her safety, her silence, had become things that would naturally pass through him first.
Soâlek had not disliked this as much as he should have. What he had disliked was having no answer.
There had been none to give. No quick communication existed across such distance, not in the way the Sky People liked to pretend all distance could be conquered by machines. The radios they carried had limits. The land had moreâstone, forest, weather, and the strange interference of Pandora itself, all had their own will.
A signal from the Plains would not reach the Spires, much less one from Kinglor.
He knew this.
Knowing did not quiet anything.
Her missionâthe one she had called simpleâshould have been over by now. By this time, Robin should have returned either to the Zeswa or to the Resistanceâs hideout near the Hollows.
Or perhaps she had been sent elsewhere after. Perhaps she had chosen, against the better sense she sometimes found after long struggle, to move towards another problem before resting.
Or perhaps she was on her way to the Spiresâno, he dismissed the thought almost as soon as it arrived.
She did not know the territory. Reckless as she could be, Robin did not cross unfamiliar forest alone when there was no need. Her respect for the wild still bordered on fear. He had seen it. He had seen the way her gaze moved through trees too dense for comfort, the way she listened for danger even when no danger had yet spoken.
She had learned the forest could take without warning. She had learned this in blood.
Soâlek let out a slow breath and opened his eyes once more.
He hoped, perhaps uselessly, that her recklessness had not found a sharper edge wherever she stood now.
He did not enjoy the shape of that thought.
Robin was not his responsibility.
He was not her guardian. She was not a wounded hunter needing care. Not a duty given into his hands by clan or oath.
She had survived before him. She would survive beyond his sight. She was capable, stubborn, trainedâshe was also far too willing to step into danger if she believed there was someone on the other side of it who needed help.
He knew all of this.
Truly, he did.
Understanding did not make the worry leave.
By then, he had learned to accept this concern as part of his days. Fighting it had become a useless thing. A waste of strength. Like trying to stop rain with his bare hands.
The worry remainedâso he carried it.
He had begun walking back towards the cave when he heard the voices.
In his hand, almost without realizing he had taken it out, was Robinâs bracelet. The one she had called ugly.
He looked down at it briefly, thumb resting against one of the beads. These days, he had developed the habit of finding it inside the pouch at his belt and holding it in his palm. There was no purpose to it, no reason that could be spoken without sounding foolish.
He only did it.
The bracelet was poorly madeâthere was no kindness in pretending otherwise. The spacing was uneven. One knot had been tied twice as if the first attempt had angered her. The pattern had the uncertain quality of a thing made by hands with no grace.
A small child could have made it better, perhaps.
Still, the colors had meaning.
He could see Nika in themâher hide, her markings. The choices were careful, even if the craft was not. Robin had chosen them with attention, and maybe also irritation, along with fondness she would have denied if named.
He had kept it because it had been hers. No cleaner reason had come since.
A young hunter passed nearby, speaking too loudly for the words he carried.
âThey saw them by the forest,â he said, voice solemn and strained. âThey were Mangkwan. It is true.â
Soâlek stopped. Every part of him went still.
The young hunter did not see him. Neither did the warrior beside him, who turned sharply with disbelief already on his face. âIt cannot be. Mangkwan in Kinglor?â
Kinglor.
The name struck through him cleanly.
The first hunter continued, troubled by the fact that he had to believe his own words. âIt is. Siâna saw it with his own eyes. Demons, he called them.â
Soâlekâs hand closed around the bracelet.
âThey hunted animals and hung them for display while they were still alive,â the hunter continued, his voice lowering now, as if the words themselves were unclean. âWounded and crying, still. They have no feeling. No respect for our brothers and sisters.â
The warrior exhaled hard through his nose, ears flattening with offense so deep it looked almost like pain. âHow can they do this?â
âI do not know.â The first shook his head. âI have never seen one face to face. I did not believe people could stand so far from Eywa and still be alive.â
Their voices moved past him.
Soâlek remained where he was.
Mangkwan in Kinglor.
Robinâs voice came back to him at once, talking about a group of hunters lost in the forest in Kinglor, with no reason for their disappearance.
He saw her kneeling beside the half-finished frame, back turned slightly, hands too still against the wood. He heard the careful flatness of her voice. The way she had told him she was leaving too, as if stating a fact plainly could keep him from hearing what sat beneath it.
Her voice was clear in his mind.
It is a search and rescue.
Four people.
Daylight.
Known terrain.
Known terrain meant little when the danger did not belong there.
His grip tightened around the bracelet until the beads dug into his palm and pain answered. He loosened his hold at once and looked downâa dark mark had formed where one of the beads had pressed too hard into his skin. For one breath, the mark held his attention with unreasonable force, his eyes on the colorful beads.
Blue, yellow, pinkâNika.
Then the thought came.
Nika circling above Kinglor Forest. Calling. Searching.
No rider answering.
Soâlekâs chest went cold.
The image changed before he could stop itânot the sky. Ground.
A body in the undergrowth. Blue skin gone still. A braid cut clean. The forest too quiet around what had been left behind.
He pushed the thought aside, and another rose in its place.
The white roomâmetal bars, sky People lights, the smell of blood on cold air. A human woman on her knees with death already in her body.
He had told himself he would speak of it when he returned from the Spires. He had told himself he would find words worthy of what they would open. Honest ones. True ones. Not perfect, because perfection did not exist for a wound of that shape.
Later, when he returnedâ
If later existed.
The thought landed like a blade.
His hand moved to the pouch at his belt. The bracelet went back inside, carefully now, as if careless movement might break something more fragile than beads.
His fingers brushed the dog tags there too.
Cold metal. Her name carved in a language he could not read.
The dead womanâs name.
The living womanâs name.
His breath left him slowly.
Robin was alive.
The thought came with such force it was nearly command.
She was alive because she had survived impossible things before. Because she was not easy to kill, that was her nature. The RDA had failed to keep her dead.
Because Pandora itself, in some way even he did not understand, had returned something of her that no machine should have been able to touch.
She was alive because he had not yet told her the truth. Because he had promised himself he would.
Because he had looked at her in the morning light and said only, âBe careful,â when there had been so much more pressing against his teeth.
She had nodded.
âYou too.â
Two words, given softly.
Not command. Not farewell.
Something worse.
Trust.
Soâlek turned towards the outside. His stride was steady before he had fully decided to move.
Someone called his name behind him, but he did not stop.
The distance formed itself in his mind with the clean precision of a hunt.
From the Spires to Kinglor Forest, three days at ordinary pace. Less if the good weather held. Less if Iley flew hard. Two days if he pushed through dusk and found only short rests on stone. One and a half if he flew through the night and accepted what it would cost them both.
He would accept it.
Iley would be angry.
He would forgive him laterâor he would not. Still, he would understand.
The Spires opened before him in sudden air and height. Wind moved through the stone, carrying the scent of cloud and old ash. Iley waited on a ledge above, head lifting the moment Soâlek approached. The ikranâs pupils narrowed, reading the change in him before any word was given.
Soâlek placed one hand against Ileyâs neck.
The ikran rumbled low, not soothed. Neither was Soâlek.
âWe fly,â he said.
Iley shifted, wings flexing.
There were questions he should answer before leaving. People he should tell. Plans that should be made with more care. Riânela would understand the need for information. Teylan would need reassurance he could not give. Tamtey, if she heard of Mangkwan in Kinglor, would want to come, and that would waste time in refusal.
Time was the only thing he could not spare.
He mounted.
Iley launched from the ledge in one powerful motion, wings catching the wind hard enough to pull the world away beneath them. Stone dropped. Air opened. The Spires spread outward in ridges and cloud-wrapped peaks, beautiful and indifferent to the chaos building in his mind.
Soâlek leaned low against Ileyâs neck.
Southeast, towards the Kinglor Forest. Toward where Mangkwan had been seen.
Toward the woman who was not his responsibility, not his to command, not his to keep, and yet had become the first place his mind went when danger found a name.
The wind struck his face. He welcomed the sting. It gave the body something clear to understand.
Below, the Spires began to fall behind.
Ahead, distance waited.
Soâlek fixed his eyes on the horizon.
Robin was alive.
He knew she was.
He hoped she was.
For the first time in many cycles, hope felt less like weakness than a blade held too tightly in the hand.
Robin was alive.
â
Robin wanted to die.
No, not reallyâshe was being dramatic, she knew it.
Her wrists hurt.
That was the main problem. Or one of the main problems. There were several, actually, and she was beginning to resent the universe for it.
The leather binding around her wrists had been tight when the Mangkwan tied it. It had become cruel after the flight. Every shift of Nikaâs body, every hard beat of her wings, every instinctive tightening of Robinâs hands had dragged the cord deeper into already-broken skin.
At first, the pain had been sharp. Now it had gone strange. Numb at the edges. Hot underneath. Tingling in her fingers in a way she didnât love and had no interest in examining too closely.
She had spent the last several minutes trying to work the knife into position between her handsâSoâlekâs knife.
The one she had nearly lost to them.
Everything had become an ugly sequence of images too loud to hold in proper order.
Knife.
Cord.
Blood.
Nikaâs scream.
Wukulaâs hand over her mouth.
The severed kuru on the ground.
Robin swallowed hard and pushed the last image away.
Not now.
She turned the knife again, trying to find the angle. Her fingers barely obeyed. The leather slipped against the blade. The harness shifted under her knees as Nika banked with a dissatisfied shriek, and Robin froze.
She pictured the knife slipping from her clumsy hands and falling into open air, lost foreverâSoâlekâs knife, vanishing into the forest beneath her because she had decided to perform emergency surgery on her own restraints while flying on the back of an irritable ikran.
Absolutely not.
âNope,â she muttered, voice rough from wind and panic. âNot doing that.â
She stopped trying.
The knife remained awkwardly trapped between both hands, blade turned away from her wrists now. Saferâuseless, but safer. Her fingers throbbed. Blood, some dried and some still fresh, had tracked in thin red lines down her forearms.
Below, the forest rolled endlessly beneath them.
Too green. Too dense. Too full of things that wanted her dead.
Some minutes earlier, she had seen Nawkâtanâs ikran flying low through an opening between the trees. She had pulled Nika towards him, or tried to. Nika had responded with the approximate enthusiasm of someone being asked to attend a meeting she had already decided was beneath her.
Still, she went.
Nawkâtan had turned sharply the moment he sensed another ikran drawing close. His hand went to his bow before his eyes caught the shape of her, and even when he had recognized her, his posture only relaxed by a fraction.
Robin didnât blame him. She, too, was too shaken still.
She was also very aware of how she must have looked.
Hair wind-tangled. Coat pulled wrong at one shoulder. Face still aching where the man had gripped her jaw. Bound wrists held awkwardly in front of her, smeared with enough blood to make the situation look worse than it probably was.
âRobin!â Nawkâtan called through the air.
Not through the radioâof course not. The man had used the thing once and apparently decided that was enough technological cooperation for a lifetime.
Stubborn.
âLand!â he called.
Robin stared at him as if he had lost his mind.
Land?
With the painted nightmare people somewhere beneath them and a thanator tearing through the forest?
âAre you suicidal?â She wanted to ask.
Then she saw where his eyes had gone.
Her hands.
Robin looked down too.
The cord had bitten deep. Blood had dried dark along the leather and across her skin, while new blood still welled in thin places where the movement had reopened the cuts. Her fingers looked stiff. The knuckles paling beneath blue skin.
That was probably bad.
The place of the attack was far behind them now. Far enough that landing might not be the stupidest idea anyone had ever had. Far enough that Nawkâtan seemed willing to risk it, which meant the danger had changed shape, if not disappeared.
Still, Robin felt her whole body resist the thought of touching ground again. Ground had not gone well today. For once, in a very long time, the sky seemed the safest.
She was left with no real option when Nawkâtan banked and lowered his ikran toward a small opening in the forest below.
Robin cursed under her breath and followed. Reluctantly. Very reluctantly.
Nika landed first, because apparently even when irritated she enjoyed proving she could do things better than everyone else. Her talons struck the ground, wings flaring once before folding back with a sharp rustle. Robin stayed mounted for half a second longer than necessary, scanning the tree line.
Leaves.
Roots.
Deep shadows.
Nothing movingâapparently.
Nawkâtan had already dismounted by the time she slid down. He crossed to her quickly, eyes flicking over the surrounding forest as he moved, alert, and controlled, fully aware that distance from danger didnât necessarily mean safety.
That, at least, made Robin trust him more.
He caught her by the arm when her feet hit the ground and steadied her in one quick, practical motion. No fuss. No comment. No dramatic concern. Just one hand bracing her until the slight wobble in her knees passed.
Robin pretended not to need it. He pretended not to notice that she did.
Nawkâtan took the knife from her numb fingers.
For one second, Robinâs hand twitched after itânot because she thought he would keep it, but because letting go of it felt like losing something she had no right to miss yet.
His gaze flicked to her face, then back to the cord.
He said nothing. He simply turned the blade and cut.
The binding snapped apart with a soft, vicious sound.
Robin inhaled through her teeth as the pressure released.
Pain came back all at onceâof course it did. Her hands had apparently been waiting for the cord to come off before reminding her that they existed and were extremely unhappy with the recent hypoxic conditions.
Nawkâtan pulled the leather away in one quick motion and tossed it aside. Then he returned to his ikran, unfastened a waterskin from the saddle, and came back without wasting a breath.
âHold still,â he said.
Robin did, mostly because she was too tired to argue.
The water was cold when he poured it over her wrists. She hissed.
The cuts were not terrible once the worst of the blood washed away. Ugly, yes. Shallow in most places. Deeper where the cord had sawed against her during the flight, especially near the inside of her right wrist. The kind of wound that looked dramatic and would heal if cleaned, wrapped, and given a few days without anyone tying her up again.
Low bar.
Apparently, that was the standard now.
âCan you move your hands?â Nawkâtan asked.
He took one of them before she answered, turning it over with careful efficiency. Then the other.
Robin braced herself for the pause. For the look. The tiny catch of attention most people tried to hide and failed anywayâfive fingers, human in shape, wrongness arranged neatly at the end of each arm.
But Nawkâtanâs gaze didnât linger. He checked swelling, blood flow, the bite of the cord, the movement of her fingers. Nothing else.
Robin found herself oddly grateful for that.
She opened and closed both hands in front of him. Once. Twice. Her fingers tingled hard enough to make her stomach turn slightly, but they moved.
âStill attached,â she said, voice dry.
Nawkâtan gave her a look that suggested he didnât find this as charming as she had hoped.
âGood,â he said.
Then he returned the knife.
Robin took it carefully.
She looked down at the blade instead of at him. âThanks.â
Nawkâtan inclined his head once. Then his gaze lifted toward Nika. âBack to the air. We will get you treated when we get back to Hometree.â
Robin almost said there was no âgetting back to Hometree.â
Not for her.
Nawkâtan was Aranahe. He had been at the Heart of the Plains for the Games, had learned of the lost hunters, and had gathered people who were strong enough to help and not too broken by recent tragedy to leave the search to someone else.
Robin had never been to their homeânever stood under their Hometree. She had wandered the forest, yes, after leaving the RDA months ago, but she had never entered that space with invitation, recognition, or anyone familiar at her side.
Reaching the Plains had been difficult enough, and there she had arrived with Soâlek, with Riânela, with Tamtey, with enough context around her to make her presence something other than an immediate crisis.
Now? Now she had just been chased through Kinglor by a feral thanator and a clan of painted murderers who collected extensions of other peopleâs nervous systems, with an old hunter who glared at radios for a companion.
Not exactly a diplomatic arrival.
Still, it was not as if she had better options.
Returning to the Plains injured and alone would be difficult. Staying in the forest would be stupid. Trying to reach the Hollows from here with no clear route and Mangkwan somewhere below would be the kind of decision people made shortly before being used as a cautionary tale.
So.
Hometree it was.
âGreat.â Robin thought, humorlessly. âLove that.â
Robin looked once towards the trees. The forest gave nothing back. No movement. No painted faces. No flash of white skull-paint between trunks. No thanator moving like living wrath through the undergrowth.
That did not help.
Her jaw ached where the Mangkwanâs fingers had dug into the bone. When she swallowed, she could still feel the moment he had stolen breath and sound from her at once.
No one will come for you.
Her grip tightened around the knife.
Then she made herself loosen it.
Not here.
Not now.
She mounted Nika in silence.
It was easier this time with her hands free, though the cuts pulled sharply when she gripped the harness. Nika turned her head far enough to look back at her, pupils wide with attention.
âYes, I know,â Robin muttered. âI look terrible. Thank you.â
Nika huffed. Robin chose to believe that meant agreement.
Nawkâtan watched long enough to make sure she would not immediately fall off, then returned to his own ikran and mounted. A moment later, he launched into the sky.
Robin followed.
Air rushed over her face, cold against the sweat still drying at her temples. The forest spread beneath them in layers of green and shadow, beautiful in the way a knife could be beautiful when held to the light.
Her wrists pulsed with each beat of Nikaâs wings.
Slowly, her right hand rose towards the comm at her neck. Her fingers hovered there.
The radio was warm from her skin. Useless at this distance.
Even if the signal somehow carried, even if some impossible line opened through Pandora out of pure desperation, what then?
What would she say?
I ran into the Mangkwan. You were right. They are fucking crazy.
No.
He put his hand over my mouth. I was so scared I thought about you.
Right. Absolutely not.
Robinâs fingers stayed over the comm.
The thought of his voice came to her with such sudden tenderness that it almost hurt more than her wrists.
Just his voice.
Low. Measured. Irritatingly calm. Saying her name like it was something that had weight and place in the world. Looking at her and telling her to not be foolish, not be reckless, as if the words themselves might follow her wherever she went and stand between her and harm.
The wind tore at her hair. Nikaâs wings beat steady beneath her. Ahead, Nawkâtanâs ikran banked towards the distant rise of Aranahe territory.
Robinâs fingers pressed once against the comm.
She didnât speak.
Then she let her hand fall.
No. She would not call into dead air just to hear silence answer.
She adjusted her grip on the harness and focused on the flight.
On Nikaâs breathing beneath her. On the pull of the wind. On the ache in her wrists. On staying seated.
On staying alive.
The sky opened ahead, wide and bright and merciless.
Robin followed Nawkâtan towards the Aranahe Hometree.
â
The night after the Mangkwan, Robin barely slept.
Calling it sleep at all felt generous. It had been more like lying very still in a borrowed corner of Hometree while her body performed the motions of rest and her mind remained wide awake, unpleasantly creative, and committed to making that a problem.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw paint.
White across a shaved skull. Red over a throat. Black down arms that had held a knife with too much patience.
She saw Ăyo on his back beneath the canopy, eyes open to nothing. Saw the clean absence where his kuru should have been. Then she saw the braids the Mangkwan held in their hands as though they were no more meaningful than a strip of hide.
She saw his face, leaning close to hers.
No one will come for you.
Robin opened her eyes after that and kept them open.
The Aranahe had given her a spot near the base of Hometree. Not a room, exactly. Not even a proper alcove.
Not that they had not offeredâthey had. She hadnât accepted, that was all. She didnât want walls. She didnât want closed spaces.
So she had been given a place where one enormous root curved high enough to make a wall at her back and the woven mat beneath her so that the place she slept on didnât feel entirely like the ground.
She had been treated by the TsahĂŹk herselfâEtuwa.
Robin had known who she was before anyone said it. Not because she had met her properly, but because some people carried authority without needing to lift their voicesâthe war Riânela often did, just to mention an example.
Etuwa moved like someone who knew what every hand in a room was doing and why. Her eyes were sharp, but not cruel. Her silence had weight, but not judgment.
âI saw you at the Games,â Etuwa had said while cleaning the blood from Robinâs wrists. âYou stood with the Sarentu.â
Robin had looked down at the bowl of stained water between them.
She hadnât had the heart to say that she hadnât seen Etuwa. Not really. Not because she hadnât cared, but because she had spent most of the Games trying not to visibly look like a stranger standing in the middle of a celebration she didnât understand, surrounded by clans who had every right to stare and every reason not to trust her.
She had been too petrified with nerves to absorb much beyond the shape of the crowd, the sounds, the colors, Soâlek somewhere near and at the same time far enough that she could pretend she wasnât using his presence as a brace.
So Robin only nodded.
Etuwaâs gaze lingered on her for half a second too long, then she returned to the bandage.
The right wrist was worse than the left. The cord had bitten deepest there, cutting half-moons into skin that had gone swollen and tender around the abrasions. Etuwa washed it with something that stung sharply enough to make Robinâs fingers twitch despite every effort not to react.
The TsahĂŹk noticed. Of course she did.
She only wrapped the woven bandage with careful, even pressure and asked about the Mangkwan.
So, Robin told her.
How many she had seen. The paint. The violence. The thanator.
Etuwa had already known part of the threat, Robin realized. Not enough, but more than nothing. Her face didnât change much, but her questions sharpened.
How many?
Were they alone?
Had there been victims?
Who?
Practical questions.
Questions for someone preparing not only to mourn, but to decide what kind of conflict had come walking into her forest.
Their conversation had grown quieter when Etuwaâs father entered.
The Oloâeyktan of the Aranahe had not looked pleased to find Robin there, though whether that was because of Robin herself, the Mangkwan, or the general inconvenience of fresh disaster, she couldnât tell. Possibly all three.
Etuwaâs tone changed around him too. Not weaker. Never that. Only more deliberate.
Later, quietly, she told Robin that her father preferred to avoid conflict whenever he could. Etuwa herself, apparently, believed there were times when fighting was the only way forward.
Funny family dynamic.
Robin didnât say that out loud. She had learned, at least occasionally, not to make things worse for herself.
The day after the first night, Robin went to a nearby lake to wash.
The water had been cold enough to bite, clear enough to see through it, and still enough to show her reflection before she could prepare herself for it.
Some of the Mangkwan paint had remained on her face.
Not much.
Enough.
A faint smear near her jaw. A white and black dragged too close to one cheekbone. Some paint was caught at the edge of her hairline where someoneâs hand must have touched during the struggle.
For a moment she had only stared at herself.
Then the urge to punch the water had risen so strongly that her hand actually curled. As if the reflection had personally offended her on a spiritual level.
She didnât punch it.
Growth, maybe.
She scrubbed until her skin hurt and the marks dissolved into the lake, black and white breaking apart over the surface before vanishing completely.
After, when she entered Hometree once more, someone brought food.
A young Aranahe woman, maybe close to Tamteyâs age, or maybe younger. Robin could never tell as easily as she wanted to. The woman offered the bowl with careful politeness and did not linger once Robin accepted it.
Robin ate little. Enough not to insult anyone. Not enough to satisfy the hollow place in her stomach.
Then she went to find a place near the base of Hometree, inside but close enough to the entrance that she could see the night beyond it. That mattered for reasons she was too tired to explain to herself.
Walls had never been her favorite thing. Neither had open forest. Apparently, the ideal solution was sitting exactly between the two and being unhappy with both.
She lowered herself onto the borrowed mat, back pressed to the high root behind her.
Grounded.
That was the word her body seemed to want.
Something solid against her spine. Something older than the panic. Something that had been there before she was met with violence and would remain after the memory finally stopped trying to crawl under her skin.
Robin adjusted her bandaged wrist against her stomach.
The wrapped skin pulled. Her jaw ached. Her side, traitorous and dramatic, throbbed where the scars had been pressed against bone.
She closed her eyes. Just for a second. Only resting them, nothing more.
The first night, Robin barely slept.
The second night, exhaustion won.
It didnât win gracefully. Nothing in Robin ever seemed to. It dragged her down by inches while she fought it, as if refusing sleep on principle would somehow prove she was still in control of the body currently trembling from stress and the aftermath of not dying.
Then sleep took her hard. Deeply enough that the world vanished without negotiation.
The exhaustion had been heavy enough that when hands closed around her shoulders, she didnât wake all at once.
That was the frightening part.
She came up slowly, through layers of dark and weight and the distant awareness of touch. Firm, not harsh. Fingers at her shoulders. A voice saying something she was not able to catch. The pressure of another body close above her.
For one stupid, suspended moment, her mind didnât understand where she was.
Then it did.
Robin jolted upright.
A scream died somewhere in her throat, cut off before it could become sound. Her back hit the root behind her, and her hands came up too late, one catching uselessly against the root behind her, the other pressing to the mat as if she could push herself through wood and earth by force alone.
Her heart went wild. Too fast. Too loud.
The world blurred at the edgesâroot, shadow, woven mat, dim bioluminescence, a shape crouched over her.
Tall. Close. Still holding her shoulders.
Robin blinked hard, forcing the drowsy smear from her eyes.
Then she saw him.
Her breath caught so sharply it hurt.
For half a second, she could not make him fit into the space she sat in.
He belonged to the Spires, to distance, to first light and leaving.
He belonged to the place she hadnât been able to call.
And yet he was there, crouched in front of her, travel-worn and still, his hands on her shoulders like he had reached for her before he had remembered whether he was allowed.
His eyes moved over her face. Her jaw. Her wrists, and the bandage.
Something in him changed.
Not visibly enough for anyone else, maybe. Enough for her.
âSoâlek?â she said. Whispered. No, not whispered. Shouted. Whisper-shouted?
His hands tightened once on her shoulders. Only once. As if proving she was there. As if proving he was there, too.
Robin stared at him, still half inside sleep and fear, staring at the impossible relief of his face.
For the first time since stepping into the Kinglor Forest, the panic in her body forgot what it was doing.















