Page 72

SOFIA

For the second time in so many days, Sofia woke up curled against Fox. This time, she couldn’t claim it was his fault, though. He’d fallen asleep while they’d been talking around the fire. Clarita had offered her a bedroll and a room, but she hadn’t wanted to leave the fire, and a part of her hadn’t wanted to leave Fox. Not that she thought he’d get very far if he ran in the night, but she didn’t like taking her eyes off him.

So, she’d taken the bedroll and laid it out a few feet from him, and in the middle of the night, when he’d woken up after the fire had gone cold, she’d moved to the edge and let him join her. At least they had separate blankets this time around.

Instead of throwing him off the pad, as a biting voice in the back of her mind suggested, she pushed herself up and moved away from where he was still softly snoring. She only stopped for a moment to notice the softness of his face like this, asleep and vulnerable.

The sun had just crested the horizon, a pink glow in the east painting the cenote and rainforest in soft pastels. It was relatively quiet, but people were moving around, relighting fires and setting about various tasks. Sofia wrapped her blanket around her shoulders as she went in search of the washroom she’d used the night before to change and dry off.

After she was done relieving herself, she went to the edge of the cenote’s lake and splashed cold water across her face. The sensation made her heart skip, but it restarted her brain. She hadn’t slept as much as she should have, but the day before had made it difficult for her mind to shut off, and she didn’t want to miss anything this morning. There were some smaller non-citizened tribes around the southern rainforest that the rebels had run across before. But usually it was one or two families who were scrounging their way through life. Here, she felt like she was given a small glimpse of what life would be without the first king or the wars that had followed.

She heard whispering behind her and looked up to see a small group, staring at her. Never one for subtlety, she stared back. There were four of them, and she saw they were all wearing weapons. Three looked her own age, while the other looked barely older than ten. She recognized the trapping ropes hanging off one’s belt and the darts on another’s. It was a small hunting party.

Keeping her footsteps unhurried, she approached them.

“Good morning.” The dragon-tongue came a bit smoother this morning after hours of hearing it spoken last night. Their accents were different than the Dragonborn of Suvi, but she’d been around the language most her life in one way or another, even if her family never spoke it.

One of them stepped forward.

“Lumi,” they said, holding out their hand. Deep brown hair hung in waves around their face, one side brushing against their shoulder and the other cropped tightly. “This is Nino, Verano and Paz. I heard you knew some dragon-tongue.”

“Not perfect, but okay,” she said, knowing her accent probably sounded as strange as theirs did. “Are you going hunting?”

The youngest, Paz, nodded, her tight curls bouncing as she did. At the same time, Verano and Nino said, “No.”

Lumi gave a snort of laughter but turned to Sofia. “Do you know how to hunt?”

“I do,” Sofia said. “I’d love to join. I taught myself, but I’m sure you know better than me.”

Verano and Nino exchanged a look, and Lumi smiled. “Perhaps.”

They pulled the dart gun from their belt and handed it to Sofia. “Do you know how to use this?”

“Yes,” she said, excited that Lumi was willing to give her a weapon. She felt safer with the weight of it in her hands. Their few remaining supplies had been confiscated the night before. The group took the narrow staircase up the side of the cenote and into the rainforest above.

The sun was a little higher now and the forest seemed to have woken from its slumber. The small group moved quieter than she expected, Verano and Nino moving with such fluidity that their feet didn’t even break the dry leaves beneath them. Sofia watched with keen eyes as Lumi jumped over a particularly large root.

She kept quiet, despite the questions forming in her mind. They were officially on the hunt and Sofia wasn’t going to be the reason the prey was scared away, but her suspicions were answered a few minutes later when Lumi gave another jump, twisting their body as they did so. In the blink of an eye, a hawk shot off between the trees. The other three stared at Sofia, waiting for her reaction as Lumi flew back with a rabbit between their beak before sweeping off once more.

Sofia wasn’t sure what her reaction was, but it seemed to satisfy whatever they were worried about. A moment later, Verano and Nino slipped out of their human forms, leaving their clothes behind, and bounded as one into the forest, black fox tails poised and ready for whatever they smelled.

And then it was just Paz and Sofia left. The girl collected the rabbit off the ground, slicing its throat before hanging it on her belt.

“They hunt,” she said, words a soft whisper, “I collect.”

“Are you also—?” Sofia started, unsure of how to finish the question in dragon-tongue.

“Acambiato?”

“Cambiato,” Sofia repeated, slowly. Unsure of what the word meant.

Paz gave a smile before jumping into a crouch and pretending to howl silently. She jumped back up. “Cambiato.”

Sofia nodded. “Yes.”

“I’m not.”

“But they all are?”