This is getting ridiculous. The thought formed before anything else as Lilau fought back to consciousness. Do the Fokla want me dead, or not?

Unsurprisingly, no answer came as the rest of her surroundings filtered in. The low hum of voices, distant and dull. The sour smell of sweat, the sharp scent of medicine. A rough-threaded rug scratched at her back where she lay. Heat pushed against her body, but it didn’t burn as it did before.

A weight lay over her eyes. She tried to bring her hand to her face. Her arm trembled, rising a few inches before dropping back to the rug. She knew this feeling. A paste made by grinding Spirit Flesh seeds and Moonglow leaves would thicken the flow between mind and body, leaving a person nearly incapable of moving.

Someone had drugged her.

The revelation ran as sluggishly as her body. Where it should have brought a rush of panic, only detached interest crawled.

She focused on her arm and tried again. Move. Her arm wobbled, but obeyed, slowly making its way to her eyes as every muscle in her arm and shoulder cried out in protest. Her fingers brushed smooth cloth. A bandage meant something was wrong with her eyes. Either that, or the hunters had captured and blindfolded her. Her mouth went dry. Makotae!

Warm weightlessness flooded in. A shuffling to her left, rustling as leather was shoved aside, then Makotae’s wet tongue rolling down her face.

Lilau sputtered and tried to flail, her arms barely registering the command as they flopped a few inches from the rug.

You’re awake. Makotae’s tongue continued to work feverishly at Lilau’s face, wolf spit soaking into her hair and blindfold.

And alive, but not for long if you keep drowning me.

The tongue halted mid-slide, then recoiled with a smack.

Makotae pushed up against her. His fur prickled across the skin of her arm, far less soft than she remembered. Lilau urged her other arm up, working it across her chest to reach Makotae. A somewhat scratchy, thin material met her fingertips. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the clothes she’d been wearing. Her chest tightened. Makotae, what happened? Where are we?

Safe.

The idea hit Lilau with conviction, but she needed more. Someone changed my clothes, bound my eyes, and drugged me. How am I safe? Heat bloomed in her core.

I wouldn’t lie to you.

The hurt in Makotae’s thoughts caused her fear to stutter.

The Cat Tribe healer did what she needed to, to keep you alive.

Heat turned to ice. Tell me what happened. Please.

Images flowed into her mind. Lilau stared from an odd vantage point, glaring at a huge, white-tan cat bearing a person draped head-to-toe in pale cloth. A deep growl rumbled in her chest. No. Not hers, but Makotae’s. This was what he’d seen while the pervasive light had blinded her.

As if strengthened by her acknowledgment of it, a glow flashed in Makotae’s peripheral vision, engulfing the area before he could blink. The cat and rider blew backward as Makotae’s feet were lifted off the ground. The light burned, burrowing under Makotae’s skin with a sensation Lilau was all too familiar with.

“No!” Her cry ripped out of her throat, coarse and painful, but no match for the ache in her chest. Makotae hadn’t seen the source of the blast, but he’d felt it. It had come from her.

Makotae cut her connection to the memory. After that, the hunters brought us to their encampment, and the healer treated us, treated you. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for a quarter moon. The healer wasn’t sure you’d make it. Makotae let out a shuddering breath. I felt you fade when—

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That’s enough. Lilau tried to roll, to throw her arms around Makotae, but her traitorous body remained glued to her resting place. I’m sorry. It was a pitiful condolence compared to the harm she’d caused her dearest friend. Yet, it was all she could muster. She hated that fact almost as much as what she’d done.

Leather rustled again, along with the soft sound of cloth against cloth. “It is good to see you awake. How do you feel?”

A woman’s voice, soft as the rest, and warm. Lilau grimaced. As with the man on the cat, she spoke perfect Wolf Tribe tongue. “Who are you, and why have you helped me?”

“A question with a question.” The woman laughed, her tone free and relaxed. It put Lilau further on edge. “You must be feeling as well as one could hope, then. I am Inalia, healer of this band of misfits. I have seen many things in my years, but nothing quite like you.”

In her years? Lilau hesitated. Inalia sounded young and hale, yet spoke as if she’d lived two lifetimes. “Few others seem to have, either, so forgive me if I don’t simply accept your good will. What is it you want?”

“Cautious. I’d expect nothing less from someone who came to me with fresh scars and Spirit Fire in her eyes. When Allak lay you on that rug, I only wished to ease your passage back to the land. I’ve seen hardened warriors four times your size die from a fraction of the poisoning.”

Inalia’s words sailed around Lilau. Perhaps it was the drugs, but half of them made no sense.

“Now that you’ve risen again like some sort of fire bird, is it wrong of me to hope you’ll stay and share some of your strength with us? We could use a miracle, and you found one. Not the first, from the look of you.”

Lilau tried to snort, but only managed a dull huff. “Sweet words from Wolf Tribe. Did beating people into submission get old?”

“Wolf?” Inalia paused. “Ah, you mean the language you hear. Of course. It’s been so long since anyone in these lands spoke a different language, I’d forgotten. What you hear is the language of your birth land. This…wolf. Is that what your Great Beast is called? I’ve never seen one before. They’re quite beautiful, if unsuited to the desert.”

Desert. The new word embedded into Lilau’s mind, bringing with it the memory of Makotae’s view of the dry land. Lilau frowned, forcing her thoughts back on track. Inalia still hadn’t answered her question. “If you don’t know what a wolf is, why are you speaking Wolf Tribe tongue?”

“Because I am Cat Tribe. Narasten granted our ancestors Allspeak, that we may use it to gather the world’s knowledge for the good of all. Anyone speaking to us will hear the language of their birth, and we hear the language of ours.”

Lilau had to admit, Inalia seemed forthcoming, if a little roundabout, with her information. The question of whether she could trust such information remained.

She treated both of us with as much care as her own people. She could have killed us, or let us die, but she didn’t.

Lilau’s hand twitched at Makotae’s thoughts, a finger brushing his thinned coat. Is that trust I hear?

Makotae snuffed at the side of her head. The healer protected you, saved you where I could not, a failure which has become more common lately. After what happened to you in the mountains… perhaps it’s time to take a chance with the Cat Tribe.

She pushed the memories of Chief Zulni’s hateful eyes after she’d seen the parasite affecting Anli, the yells of the other Horse Tribe as they blamed her for the dying of their land, their flight from the maddened forest Guardian. Trusting other tribes hasn’t worked out in the past.

No, but this is the first time we haven’t been met with hostility, even after the hunters were injured.

By me. Lilau sighed. It wasn’t like she could get up and run in her current condition, anyway. She shifted her attention back to Inalia, who’d gone strangely quiet during her and Makotae’s conversation. “If all you’re doing is to help, why am I drugged and blindfolded?”

“Blood Poisoning,” Inalia said without hesitation. “The amount of essence you’ve absorbed is astounding. The amount of damage it did… you should be dead.”

Lilau’s heart skipped a beat at ‘damage’. It reminded her of Raval trying to downplay the injuries the other whelps had caused her.

“The blindfold blocks Spirit Sight. Blessed threads run through it. Since your… outburst with Allak’s group seemed to be caused by Spirit Sight, I’d hoped blocking it would prevent more.”

After seeing through Makotae’s eyes what one of her ‘outbursts’ could do, removing her blindfold suddenly sounded far less appealing. “Did it help?”

“No.”

A weight descended on Lilau’s chest, distinct from that caused by the medicine. Inalia’s response held a tightness to it. Had she hurt others while she was unconscious?

“That’s what the medicine is for. Keeping your body slowed down seems to slow the buildup of essence, but it still increases. Once it builds up far beyond what a body should be able to endure, it bursts out, injuring every living thing nearby.”

The more explanation Inalia gave, the more nauseous Lilau became. “Then why? Why keep me alive at all?” A dark hole opened up in her mind, threatening to pull her in and never let her out. To spend her life barely able to move as an ever-present danger to all who dared get close. It was as if all the Wolf Tribe’s fear had gained palpable form. As if, despite all her efforts to prove them wrong, she’d merely proven them right.

A cold flame lit in her core. Prickles rushed across her skin. The chill hit her heart, increasing its rhythm two-fold, and as it hit its peak, the cold folded in on itself, coming alive in raw fury.

Familiarity tickled the edge of Lilau’s consciousness as yells and yelps sounded at the furthest corner of her senses. Movement, out-of-sync with the pounding in her veins. Shards underneath her flesh. A release, then darkness.