Brooke

2

With the hours I spent helping Molly, I missed supper with my sister. That streaks me more than anything else has today.

My stomach rumbles loudly with hunger, like it’s demanding to be heard. I imagine it taunting me: You thought vomit and brokenheartedness was all? Foolish of you.

I want to find Clara, but first I make a quick detour to the cluttered cavern that serves as our kitchen, grateful to find a leftover piece of bread. It’s burnt and so hard it feels like a log, but it’s food. I pull the dagger from my belt and cut the center, then wedge a thick slice of goat cheese inside. I head for the main cavern, managing not to chip any teeth as I wolf down my meager meal.

When we found out we’d be moving from the Tide compound to this cave, Marron took it upon himself to make it as livable as possible. He had a wooden platform installed at the center of the main cavern—a raised dais, about a foot and a half tall and forty feet square. His idea was that people needed a smooth place to sit and eat.

It seemed like a lot of trouble to go to at the time, but he was right to have it built. It’s the area where the tribe gathers now. The platform always has at least a dozen people sitting on it and along its perimeter. It’s where we socialize and spend our free time—what little we have of it.

The platform is my first stop in my search to find Clara, and I’m smiling before I even get there. Just thinking about my sister makes me forget Perry’s you’re one of the best people comment.

“Brooke!” Gren calls out. He stands to the left of the platform. Gren is one of the Six. The three Seer brothers are with him as well. Twig isn’t here—he’s away with Roar—and Reef is absent too, probably off growling at someone about something. So at this very moment, the Six are actually the Four.

Despite being relatively young, the Six are harder-edged than the men born into my tribe. “Borderland tough,” my father says of them. Fighters to the core. They used to be a wandering pack that had no allegiance to a Blood Lord. They’d still be in the borderlands if it weren’t for Perry, who won their loyalty and brought them into the Tides.

Perry is like that. Always gathering strays. I see evidence of it everywhere. In Marron and the Six. In the Dwellers. Even in a mutt like Flea. Perry never turns anyone away.

Only me.

“Hey.” I walk up to them, resting a hand on my hip. From the corner of my eye, I see bread crumbs on my chest, so I brush them off.

Hyde’s cheeks turn radish red as a blush creeps over them. Hayden and Straggler start elbowing each other. Gren’s smile widens, his eyes leaving my face and straying downward.

I roll my eyes. Gren and Hayden are in their twenties, unlike Hyde and Straggler, who are closer to my age of nineteen, but they all behave as though they are twelve. Collectively. “What do you need?” I ask Gren.

“You, Brooke,” he says immediately. “I need you.”

I shake my head. Here we go.

“I do too,” says Hayden. “I’m desperate for you.”

“Don’t listen to them, Brooke,” says Hyde. “I need you.”

“I need you the most,” says Straggler, the youngest brother.

“Keep out of this, boy-man. You don’t know anything about women.”

“That’s why I need her the most! Teach me, Brooke!”

I let them go on for a little while. I like the Six. I’ve known every male in the Tides since I was born, and I’m related to almost half of them, so it’s fun having new boys around. They joke constantly, but I’ve fought alongside them and I trust them. They might be a little crass, but they respect me. I’d beat them blue if they didn’t.

“Have you seen my sister?” I say, cutting them off.

Silence falls over them. Their smiles fade, and they look at one another like I’ve just given them a complicated problem to solve. Thankfully, Bear, who is sitting nearby, overhears.

“With your parents,” he calls over. “They’ve taken her to bed.”

“See you,” I say to the Six. I head to the tucked-away section of the main cavern where we have tents set up, hoping I’ll catch Clara before she falls asleep.

Gren jogs up beside me, so silent he’s almost at my side before I notice him. His ruddy, wavy hair looks like hammered copper in the dimness. He is the biggest joker of the Six. When there’s mischief happening, he’s usually at the helm, so I’m almost smiling before he speaks.

“Something came up on the afternoon patrol. Intruders were spotted.”

A little surge of adrenaline shoots through me. I stop. “Intruders?”

Gren’s mouth is set in a grim line. He nods. “A small group of people. Well inside the northeast border.”

“Who? How many?”

“Don’t know for sure. Maybe three or four. Morgan and Pierce were out there. They didn’t get a good look.”

Morgan and Pierce aren’t Seers. Their vision is half as powerful as mine. I would have seen everything. I should have been there this afternoon instead of serving water to Moles.

When we moved to this cave, we gave up the Tide compound, but this is still our territory. We still protect our land. We have to defend our food and our shelter; we can’t afford to lose either. Gren’s news could mean real trouble. Strangers on Tide land could mean a raid.

“Does Perry know?” I ask.

“Reef’s telling him now. We’re going out for a closer look tonight. You free?”

There’s a big part of me that wants nothing more than to curl up next to my sister and fall asleep. But I’m a Tider. This tribe is my family, and I’ll do anything to protect it. “Give me a little time to see Clara, but I’ll be there.”

Gren smiles. “Great.” He walks away, then pauses and turns back. “I told you we needed you.”

Slipping through the heavy canvas flaps of our family’s tent, I find my mother and sister sitting on bed pads on the floor. Mother is brushing Clara’s hair, and they’re both facing me, their faces glowing with light from the lamp that rests on the small crate beside them.

Though they look alike, like mother and daughter, like me, with large blue Seer’s eyes and heart-shaped faces, their expressions couldn’t be more different.

My mother is smiling. She was talking, as she pulled the brush through Clara’s long hair, until I entered. Now her hand has stilled, and her excited, joyful face is lifted to me.

For the past year, I listened to her cry every night. I wondered if she’d ever be happy again. I wondered if she’d ever stop.

I won’t be here tonight, but I know she won’t cry.

Her daughter is back. Her little girl. Her sunbeam, as she calls Clara.

And Clara is a sunbeam. Bright and golden and cheerful. The child whose shrieks of laughter could always be heard in the compound. The one who always ran from one place to another, never walking. Never doing anything without an extra kick of energy.

The girl whose hair is being combed doesn’t look golden or cheerful anymore.

Clara’s face still has baby-fat roundness, but her blue eyes are serious, adult eyes. I glimpse the fearful, lost look in them just before she covers up with a smile.

“Hi, Brookie,” she says, a sunbeam again. So bright she is blinding. So bright you can’t even see her.

I cross to my mother and plant a kiss on top of her head.

She laughs. “What’s that for?”

I don’t hand out affection easily. “Just because.” Because I want to keep you happy.

I hold out my hand. “Can I take over?”

“Sure.” My mother gives me the brush and scoots away. “I’m going to get us some water and a few more blankets. It’s going to be cooler tonight.”

It’s not. The temperature in here doesn’t fluctuate. It’s always uncomfortably cool. But I know she wants everything to be perfect for Clara’s first night back.

Mother pauses at the tent flap, looking from me to Clara. The love in her eyes is so strong it feels like an embrace. “My beautiful girls,” she says, and then slips out.

I sit behind Clara and pull the brush through her hair, letting the silence settle. People are bedding down in the tents around us. With each drag of the bristles through my sister’s butter-blond hair, the sounds of footsteps and voices grow quieter.

“Do you miss Liv?” Clara asks. Her voice is so soft I almost can’t hear her.

I don’t know how she learned about Liv. From Talon? From Mother? And what else does she know that will surprise me? Once, I could anticipate everything Clara said and did. A year apart has changed that.

“Yes. I do miss her,” I answer.

“But are you going to be all right? Without her, I mean?”

My eyes well up. Clara is the only one who has asked me that. Everyone else is too worried about the Aether, or about the Dwellers, or about Cinder and Roar. “You’re back, Clara. So, yes. I will be.”

“I should be too. Because I’m back.”

I set the brush down on my lap. What she isn’t saying is much louder than what she is saying. I can’t pretend I don’t know what she means. “But you aren’t, are you?”

Clara shakes her head.

A lump rises in my throat. “Why, sweetie?”

Her narrow little shoulders shrug. It was a stupid question anyway.

Clara wasn’t harmed in Reverie. The Dwellers treated her well enough, it seems. But she was taken away from us for a year and made into a test subject. Now we’ve gotten her back, but the world is burning, the sky is one great blanket of Aether, and we’re living in a rotten, dark, horrible cave.

Clara isn’t the only one who has changed in the past year. The Tides have. Everything has.

She has every reason in the world to be scared and lost.

“Have you told Mom?” I whisper.

Clara shakes her head violently, and I know we’re thinking the same way. The least she can do—the least either of us can do—is spare our parents any more pain. They have suffered enough.

It’s the same reason I haven’t told my mother how I hurt over losing Liv. How I ache whenever I see Perry. How I even miss stupid, irresistible Roar, who should be here. Roar is exasperating, but at least he’d understand what I’m going through. But he’s not here.

My closest friend is dead. Roar is away. Perry has chosen another. There are no other options for me. I can’t turn to anyone else.

We are all hurting and missing people. Everyone is scared, so you can’t talk about your worries because worries are everywhere. When everyone you know is on the verge of drowning, you don’t stop to tell the person next to you that you don’t like swimming.

You just don’t.

I set the brush aside and wrap my arms around Clara. She is bigger than I remember, but she still feels so small. I pull her close and she curls against me, turning so I can see her face. Clara’s wide eyes look up at me. Beautiful Seer eyes. I know what she’s feeling. She’s lost, but I’ll help her. I’ll be anything she needs me to be.

“It’ll be fine, Clara. You’re here. We’re together. I promise nothing will ever happen to you again.”

That seems to calm her, so I keep saying it. Over and over. Gradually, I feel some of the tension seep out of her rigid little back, and she relaxes, her weight settling more fully on me.

I press my nose to her forehead and breathe in her sweet smell. I haven’t seen a strawberry in weeks, but somehow my sister smells of them. It’s her natural fragrance; even Perry and Liv always said so.

She is a sunbeam that smells of strawberries. Everything to me.

I kiss her head and hold her tighter. “I missed you so much.”

Clara doesn’t reply. She has already fallen asleep.

I hold her for a while longer, feeling grateful. So grateful she is here. And then, like a landslide that begins with a small pebble, my mind turns to Perry, and then to Liv, and then to Roar, and finally to how the four of us used to be.

I used to feel so carefree and alive when we were together. Lighter than air. Now when I think of them, I feel only the heavy, hot coals in my stomach.

I have to change this. I can’t do anything about Liv or Roar, but I have to let go of Perry. I don’t want him to take up space in my mind any longer. I need to be strong so I can help Clara.

I decide right then: I’ll do whatever it takes to put Peregrine behind me.

I am moving on.

Starting now.