“Yeah,” I second.

“She looks . . . good.”

“Yeah.” Pale as an icicle.

“Spending a lot of time with Cassian,” Mom adds, watching me closely to see how this affects me. “She seems happy.”

I merely nod, unable to deny that. Tamra did look happy. But then she had Cassian now. Why wouldn’t she be?

After a moment, Mom adds, “I had a slow day at the clinic.”

“Well, that’s always a good thing,” I murmur, glad Mom didn’t lose her duty at the clinic. As a verda draki—or a former verda draki—her skills are best suited to working with the ill or injured, making the poultices and medicines that have kept our kind in good shape for generations. I don’t see them reassigning her just out of spite. Doing so would be a disservice to the pride.

“Reorganized the meds,” she volunteers, her voice a numbing monotone. “I don’t think anyone’s done that since I left.”

I nod slowly, gathering my nerve to confess: “I was reassigned.” Hopefully my voice sounds as unaffected as hers. I have to tell her. She’d find out eventually. If not from me, then someone else.

I wait for the raised eyebrow, the sharp tone that will demand why they did that. Basically, I wait for the protective, vigilant mother she’s always been.

Instead her voice sounds hollow. “You’re not in the library anymore?”

“No.” I take a bite and chew quickly, dreading the next words. “I’m with the gutting crew.”

She looks up. “The gutting crew?”

“Yeah.” I tear at the verdaberry bread until it’s only crumbs. “They needed some extra hands.”

“And who reassigned you to the gutting crew?” she asks quietly.

I give half a shrug, certain this is when she will lose her cool. “Jabel gave me the assignment.”

Nothing.

Mom’s quiet for a long moment, staring down at her plate before pushing up from the table and taking her dishes into the kitchen. I cringe as she drops them in the sink with a clatter. Still, I wait. Ready for her to say something, do something. March across the street and light into Jabel, her old friend. I can almost imagine the shouting, hear my mom demanding why her daughter was given such a lowly duty reserved for those training to be part of the pride’s hunting crew.

That would be familiar. That would be typical.

Nothing. I strain for a sound and detect the uncorking of a bottle, the faint slosh of wine into a glass.

After a moment, she reemerges, stops at the table with a glass in hand, the deep green liquid dangerously close to the edge. She stares at me over the rim as she pulls a deep swallow of verda wine.

“Everything will be okay,” I say because I don’t know what to say to her. She’s not acting like Mom at all. “I screwed up and they have to punish me. It will all blow over.”

She takes a slow sip, her eyes dull. “Yeah. Guess you’re right.” She disappears back into the kitchen again. When she returns it’s with a full bottle of verda wine tucked between her arm and body. My gaze trails her as she walks down the hallway to her bedroom. The door clicks shut after her. A moment passes and I hear the low drone of the television from her room.

I sit at the table for a moment and glance around. At three empty chairs. I quickly stand, unable to sit there another moment.

Gathering the dishes, I take them to the sink. The silence in the kitchen is thick, Mom’s television a distant hum. As I wash, my stare drifts up to the kitchen window and I bite back a gasp. A bowl slips from my hand, bounces off the edge of the sink, and shatters on the floor. Still, I don’t move, don’t even look to investigate the searing pain at the side of my foot.

My gaze fixes unblinking at the far side of Mom’s withered-dead garden. A shape stands in the gloom. The eyes watching me seem to glow, to cut through the evening mist to my house. To me.

The mist swirls, drifts like smoke from a peat fire around him. It parts to reveal a face—Corbin’s curling smile. He looks smug, pleased with himself as he stands there brazenly.

My skin snaps, lungs contract and swell, vibrating with warmth as my gaze narrows, reading perfectly into that smile.

He thinks I’m his for the taking. Tamra and Cassian have each other, and I’m out of favor with the pride—what else should I do but embrace the one draki who looks at me? Who wants me? Right? Wrong.

Smolder builds in my chest. He probably thinks I’ll fall to my knees before him, grateful for whatever crumb he casts my way, salvation in this new friendless, lightless existence among my own kind.

Glaring at the shrouded figure, I snatch at the cord and the blinds fall into place with a noisy rattle. But still I imagine him there, see him staring back at me, watching, waiting.

It’s strange. I’m back in the home I’ve longed for, in cool mists and air that weeps kisses over my thirsting flesh. But dead desert might as well surround me. Again. And this time there is no Will to revive me. There is nothing.

That night I make sure my window is locked. A precaution I never took before, even when I was in Chaparral, but for some reason I feel the need to do it tonight, with Corbin’s glowing eyes imprinted on my mind.

Chapter 8

Days pass quietly, like pages turning in a book, one after the other. As my life sinks into a routine, the loneliness bears deep, gnawing at me. Dusk settles as I walk home from work. The mist rides thick and the fading sunlight struggles to penetrate the opaque air, breaking through in patches here and there, staving off the night.

I hear him before I spot him. Cassian materializes in the mist before me, his tread soft on the path. We both stop and face each other. He lives on the other side of the township. I can guess the reason he’s this far south. I know where he’s coming from, where he’s been. The same place he’s been spending most of his time.

“Cassian,” I greet, twisting my fingers until they ache, rubbing at the flesh, as though the blood were still there from all the fish I cleaned today.

“Jacinda. How are you?” He asks this like we’re polite acquaintances. And I guess we are in a way. We’ve become that. Since he decided to focus on my sister. Suddenly I loathe the sight of him. I feel used, lied to. He never wanted me. Never really liked me for me.

The mist strokes my face as I glare up at Cassian, something inside me unraveling, like ribbons on a package coming undone.

Cassian stares down at me, his arms behind his back. Like Severin or another elder glowering down at me, and I guess he’s on his way to being one of them.

My skin prickles with resentment. I hate it when he reminds me of them—of his father. It’s a bitter pill after he almost convinced me he was different. I wanted to believe him. The words he told me in Chaparral when he was trying to get me to come home with him echo in my head.

There’s something in you . . . you’re the only thing real for me there, the only thing remotely interesting.

Lies to get me to trust him. Or he changed his mind. Either way, I don’t interest him anymore. Not as Tamra does.

Finally, when I don’t answer, he says, “You’ve got to stop this.”

“Stop what?”

He dips his head, looks at me through shadowed eyes. “Stop making it so damn hard on yourself. Pining for some—”

“I don’t want to hear this.” I shake my head. “Not that you really care, but I’ve let it go.” It’s easier saying it. Even though we both know I mean Will.

“Then why do I still see him in your eyes?”

A hiss of pain escapes me.

I lash out with one knotted fist against his dense-muscled chest, taking out every frustration, every pain on him.

He doesn’t move. I hit him again. Still nothing. He takes it. Stares at me from the impenetrable black of his eyes. With a strangled cry, I hit him again and again. Landing blows anywhere I can reach. My vision blurs, and I realize I’m crying.

This only infuriates me more. Breaking down in front of Cassian, losing control, succumbing to weakness as he stands witness . . .

“Jacinda,” he says, then again, louder, because I don’t stop, can’t stop the flurry of my fists on the solid wall of him. “Enough!”

He stops me. I guess he always could have, but now he actually does it. He hauls me close, not so much a hug as a body lock, both arms wrapped around me.

It’s disconcerting, our bodies so close, pressed tightly together. Our breaths fall in a fast, matching rhythm.

I pull back my head, look into his face. See him as I never have.

He’s no longer looking at me. It feels like he’s looking inside me, his gaze probing. Accepting me for me. A closeness I haven’t felt with anyone since I arrived here sweeps through me. And it’s a promise of an end to my numbing loneliness. If I let it happen. Let this happen.

I panic again. Because it’s Cassian.

A sob strangles in my throat and spills raggedly from my lips. I close my eyes in a long and miserable blink and pull myself together again. Wrenching from his warm embrace, I barrel past him.

He grabs my arm as I pass and swings me around like we’re doing a dance move.

I glare at that hand on my arm. “Let me go.”

He’s quiet for a moment, his chest rising and falling with breath. “What’s this really about? Why are you running from me?”

I say nothing at first, the only noise the crashing of my ragged breath. Then, I burst. “You lied to me!”

He cuts the murky air with one of his big, crushing hands. “When have I lied to you?”

I continue as if I don’t hear him. And I don’t. Not really. It’s finally gotten to me—how quickly he dropped me once Tamra manifested. “I wasn’t special to you. You just saw the fire-breather. Like everyone else. It was never me.” And now it’s Tamra. Only it’s not her either. She’s only one thing to him, and everyone else—the pride’s precious shader.

Now I know. Now I see him for what he is.

“I’ve only ever been honest with you.” His nostrils flare, ridges popping up on the bridge of his nose, rising in and out with the surge of his temper. I should back down at the sight, but then I’ve never been one to do what I should.

“Right,” I spit out.

He’s shaking now, his eyes more purple than black. “You want to hear some truth, Jacinda? How about this? I can’t stand the sight of you. Not when you’re moping around here like someone who needs to be on a suicide watch . . . all for a guy who’s probably already forgotten about you and moved on to the next hunt.”

My fingers curl into fists, cutting into my palms. I want to say so much right then—mostly that Will hasn’t forgotten me. But I shouldn’t argue this point. I should hope it’s true. I’ve vowed to let Will go, but a desperate hunger for him still twists through me—a viper writhing through my body, working its poison.

I don’t have Will. I have nothing. Nothing but a frantic need to grab on to something, anything to keep me afloat in the desert of my existence.

Instead, I say, “And me dead would just break you up, wouldn’t it?”

He stares at me so starkly, incredulous. “You think I’d want you dead?” His eyes are wide and searching. They make me start to doubt myself, that maybe he does care about me. I begin to shake as confusing thoughts and feelings whirl through me. “What do you want from me, Jacinda?”

I glance at his hand still on my arm. My skin swims with heat, especially where he touches me.

“Let me go.” He stands so close, towering over me, making me feel small when I’m not. “I have to go,” I say louder. And I do. I have to go. Now.

In answer, his skin blurs, his darker draki flesh flashing in and out beneath his human skin, reminding me of what he is. What I am. And I can’t help remembering how everyone always thought we were perfectly matched. Now they think that about him and Tamra.