Head full to the brim with disquieting thoughts, Erin heard very little of the rest of the lesson. When it was over, she nearly missed spotting Leslyn as he fled from the room before anyone else had scarcely risen from their straw bale seats.
Patting her thigh to invite her keet to follow, she went after him. As she headed toward the kitchen, a familiar soldier crossed her path and stopped with a look of recognition on his face. It was Liren.
“I remember you,” he said. “You were with my brother on the ship.”
“That’s right,” she said. “You rode the gray griffin when we caught Wrath.”
He was looking down at the little gray ball of fluff at her feet, eyes wide with surprise. “You have a keet? I mean, weren’t you a foreign, shipwrecked orphan just the other day?”
She stared blankly for a moment before remembering her own cover story. The past couple of days had been… rather busy. “I was, but Wrath wanted to thank me. I guess she skipped a couple of steps, or something.”
“I see. I heard through the grapevine that Leslie somehow got himself a keet too, but I’ve looked all over the barracks and canteen and he’s nowhere to be found. Any idea where he is?”
It felt like a stroke of luck. That was how she’d be useful, by bringing Leslyn’s brother to him. “Yeah, I’m heading there now. It’s just this way to the kitchen.”
Desmond doesn’t have a brother. He had a sister. Archer. My mom.
Erin wanted to tell herself to shut up. Not only did thinking about her own mother make her chest heavy and her eyes sting, but the ultimate conclusion of those thoughts frightened her. Even now, when she had full function in her legs again, she still needed her uncle Desmond, and maybe more than ever before. His character, Leslyn, was her only real friend in that world. Facing the future alone—being drafted into a literal military where people actually died—she just couldn’t do it.
She bore down on that last note, trying to convince herself that she was just being stupid, reading too much into things and making them more complicated than they needed to be. If this was a dream world made permanent, maybe having a new family had somehow been made part of Desmond’s reality now. Or maybe Desmond desperately wished to have a sibling again, so he was telling himself the same kinds of things that Erin was telling herself.
Of course, she probably wouldn’t actually ask him. She totally knew she was right, so why waste breath and time?
When she walked into the Aerie kitchen and waved shyly, Leslyn looked up from where he sat on some coverlets on the floor next to the oven with the yellow keet, relief washing over his face. “Oh good, you’re here,” he sighed. “I’m starting to feel like I’m losing my mind, sitting here by myself all day.”
The sight of the limp creature, of its gunky, terribly matted fuzz, its gaping mouth and staring, blind-looking light blue eyes made Erin’s stomach twinge with pity and horror, but Des—Leslyn’s unusually welcoming demeanor still managed to bring on a flush of warm affection for her uncle, which only increased as she pictured his joy at seeing his brother.
Instead, as his brother entered the room behind her, Leslyn’s faint smile faded completely, and he seemed suddenly ashamed as he turned away to look at the limp little keet on the floor beside him.
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“Leslie, what…?” the soldier breathed. “Is that your…? Fur and feathers, what happened?”
“It’s dying, Liren.” His miserable gaze hadn’t left the awful-looking keet. “I could only get it to take a little water today. Won’t even try the meat juice.”
“It’s not your fault,” was his brother’s emphatic response.
“It’s not your fault,” Erin blurted just a beat later. “Wrath did it on purpose just to get back at you for cracking her egg. It’s not your fault she doesn’t understand what an accident is.”
Her attempt at comforting him immediately backfired.
“Who told you that?” His tone was harsh, and his look equally so.
“It’s… It’s just what everyone’s saying,” she said, suddenly wishing she could disappear. “You did trip over them while you were running from her.”
“I did no such thing. I never even touched the eggs." He gave her that look that she hated. The grossed-out, judging stare. “Are you trying to tell me that you can’t even remember that you got closer to the nest than I ever did?”
“I swear, I saw you…” Erin tried to remember the events of that encounter, but all that came back was a flurry of running, shouting, and flapping blue wings. “Maybe not. I don’t know. It’s all such a blur now.”
Liren crossed his arms and observed the sickly keet with a furrowed brow. “Is there any truth to the rumor?”
“Wrath did do it on purpose, but not the way the rumor claims.” Leslyn sighed heavily. “I was the one who discovered her nest, which led to her capture. If not for me, she thinks that she would have never been caught. The day we brought her to Nilvar, she promised she’d get back at me for that. Giving me this keet was how she kept her promise.”
“With respect, little brother—a griffin promised you? They’re very smart, but not that smart, and they certainly don’t speak.”
Leslyn shrugged, gaze going distant as if he were looking at something in his mind. “She said it to me with her eyes. She talks to people. Something about her face, and the way she moves. I saw her carry on a whole conversation with Kaleit at the assigning, right before she gave him his keet. They understood each other as well as if they were both talking out loud.”
Erin had seen Kaleit’s lips moving as he reacted to Wrath’s behavior that night after Arlis got his red keet, but she hadn’t realized that there was any meaning to the griffin’s actions other than to test his courage. She was no animal expert, that was for sure.
“If she’s really that smart, then she’ll recognize it when you’ve bested her at her own game,” Liren said firmly. “She tried to win by giving you a good-as-dead keet. Show her that she made a mistake by underestimating you.”
“And how should I do that? Pray to Ardor for a miracle healing and a ridiculous growth spurt to catch it up with the other keets? Hate to break it to you, Liren, but we willfully withdrew from him hundreds of years ago. He’s not going to answer me.”
“Listen, Leslie.” He crouched and took his frowning younger brother by the shoulders, looking him right in the eye. “Don’t give up on that keet. If you do, you might miss the moment when it decides it wants to live, after all.”
“I don’t think it’s going to—“
Liren cut him off. “It’ll be counting on you. If you miss that one moment, it’ll be too late.”
“If you’re wrong, Liren…”
“But what if I’m right?”
The two brothers held a silent staring match until finally, Leslyn sighed and broke it off. Liren smiled and patted his shoulder. “I’ve got to get back to work, but it was good to see you.”
“You too, Liren. Be careful out there.”
“And you be careful in here. Don’t let the rumors get to you.”
Liren nodded to Erin on his way out, and she made as if to follow, hoping to sneak away before she put her other foot in her mouth. Leslyn stopped her with, “Erin, stay. Just for a bit. Please.”
So he wasn’t mad at her, after all. In fact, his voice was small, bordering on childlike. With his brother gone, he’d let the exhaustion hang out again, shoulders and eyelids both sagging. Warmed again by affection for her uncle, Erin went and sat on the coverlets with him in companionable silence.
Her keet chose to lay by its tiny sibling, perturbed by neither its appearance nor smell. With a trilling, musical purr, it laid its head on the coverlet and fell asleep, gently resting its thrice-larger beak against the little one’s.