That wasn’t true. They were her daughters, and if the stones led her to me, then it was as if Grutabela herself spoke from the stars to bind them to me.
Starling children, as we called them in the caves.
A strange protectiveness flutters over me, growing in intensity before it settles firmly in my chest and demands my attention.
They are being watched by that woman.
She raises her weapon.
“Wait!” I cry. The woman thrusts the metal rod at me. I reach forward and grab the metal. “Are you all right?”
She spits on me. “I will be fine once you leave us alone.”
“Melisa,” I say again. “Where is she?”
Her sharp gaze dulls. “I have no idea where she’s gone. But we haven’t seen her in days.”
I suck in a deep breath. “But you are her family?”
The woman barks out a bitter laugh. “We are bound by blood, nothing more. She does not live in this house, and I do not care where she is or what she does.”
My gaze scans back over the creaky home, and the girls are confused at my presence. Her daughters. I look back up. Her mother.
The faces of my sister and mother flash before me, and something scratches at my chest, tearing holes. When I look back around, I see little food, but everything else seems to be tended to.
I want to stay.
But the men in the yards need me. If I don’t help chop, I risk them looking for me. They could discover me and ruin the mission. Everyone in Enduvida would suffer, and the men who I’ve helped save would die too.
“I will leave,” I start, and the woman relaxes. “But I will return.”
Melisa’s mother watches me go, and I have to physically pull myself through the door and away from the house.
My thoughts race. Melisa had been telling me all along—she had children. And I’d acted like an idiot.
Tirin. He wanted me to have children. I wanted someone to give his name to… But these girls had names.
Wren. Thea.
I’d heard their voices. Seen their small bodies. They didn’t need someone to tack a dead man’s name onto their heads—they needed a new life. Just like their mother.
Grutabela and Endu as my witnesses, I was going to give them that.
The further away I get, the more that I worry. Something isn’t right.
My senses tingle when the sound of paws pad behind me.
I whip around to see the gray beast. Sharp teeth are bared at me, and I narrow my eyes, only pausing because Melisa cared for the thing.
Frustrated, it catches up and stands at my side.
“What are you doing?” I ask, as if it can understand me.
It doesn’t close its menacing mouth, but it tilts its head to the side and whines. Its ears flatten to the side of its head, and it turns in the opposite direction.
I do not understand its grumbling sounds and continue on my way.
It trots next to me and breaks away as I exit the trees into the lumber yard. I look back at the creature.