1•
I yank my bow off the porch rail before the sun clears the canyon wall.
The wood is warm already.
That’s wrong.
Morning is supposed to give us a break. Even in dry season. Even on Xylos Prime, which is basically a whole planet with anger issues and a personal mission to turn human skin into jerky.
There should be a little cool left in the shadows.
A little mercy.
Not today.
Today, Riverfall wakes hot. Mean hot. The kind that crawls out of the red rock early and settles on your shoulders like it owns you. Dust pushes through the thin soles of my boots before I even step off the porch.
The village is awake too.
Not loud.
Not normal.
Just awake.
Smoke threads from a few low chimneys. Stingy smoke. Breakfast smoke without breakfast behind it. A dog stands in the lane with its ears pricked toward the trade road, not barking, not moving, just watching like something might come over the rise and he wants to be the first one to know.
Two huts over, Miss Dinah has her door open.
She never opens before full sun.
She stands in the frame, gray hair loose around her shoulders, one hand tight on the post, eyes fixed on the cliffs.
Listening.
Counting.
Waiting.
Yeah.
That.
I sling the bow over my shoulder and reach for my quiver.
Behind me, Dad’s voice scrapes out of the doorway.
“Morning already?”
I look back.
He fills the frame in a half-buttoned shirt, hair shoved wild from sleep, jaw dark with stubble. He looks like he just rolled out of bed, but his eyes give him away. Too sharp. Too tired. Too awake.
He hasn’t slept right in weeks.
Maybe longer.
Maybe since the first whisper came up from the trade post that Rook’s men were riding heavier this season.
I give him a grin anyway. Automatic. The kind I use when I need him to breathe.
“You know me,” I say. “Can’t sit still when the meat caves are coughing dust.”
He steps onto the porch.
Then he does what he always does before I leave.
He scans the cliffs.
Not like a hunter looking for movement.
Like a man looking for the thing that already took too much from him and might be coming back for seconds.
My grin gets harder to hold.
“Jace took the east ridge yesterday,” I say, because talking is easier than standing in that look. “Came back with nothing. Eli’s traps are empty. Toby’s ribs are starting to look like a washboard.”
Dad drags a hand over his mouth. “I know.”
“Sarah’s stretching grain cakes so thin they’re basically a rumor.”
“I know, Kira.”
His voice is quiet.
Not angry.
Worse.
Tired.
The kind of tired that sits deep in the bones and refuses to leave.
I bite down on the next thing I almost say.
Hunger does that. Makes words sharp. Makes people sharp. Makes a whole village walk around with its teeth showing even when nobody wants to bite.
The door creaks again, and Grandma Marla shuffles out with her faded shawl dragging dust behind her.
She’s small. Bent. All elbows and bones and silver braid.
She is also the scariest person in our house, which is saying something because Dad once gutted a frost-rak with a broken spear and came home annoyed about losing the spear.
Grandma presses a small leather pouch into my palm.
“Wrists and neck before draws.”
I open it.
Mint hits first, sharp enough to wake my eyes. Then bitter root. Then that thick sun resin she swears keeps the heat from getting into your blood.
“Keeps insides from cooking,” she says.
“Pretty sure if my insides cook, we have bigger problems than herb placement.”
Her eyes snap to mine. “Don’t get clever when I’m keeping you alive.”
I shut my mouth.
Dad makes a low sound. Almost a laugh. Not quite. These days, we take what we can get.
Grandma catches my wrist before I tuck the pouch into my belt. Her fingers are thin, freckled, knotted with age, and strong enough to make me feel eight years old again.
She lifts her other hand and presses her thumb to the center of my brow.
Not hard.
Just there.
Old comfort.
Old warning.
Her gaze slides past me to the canyon mouth, and her shoulders tighten under the shawl.
“Wind tastes wrong.”
Dad’s jaw flexes. “Marla.”
She cuts him a look. “Too hot for this hour. Birds too quiet. Dust sitting strange.”
I glance toward the cliffs before I can stop myself.
So does Dad.
So does the dog in the lane.
Honestly, fantastic. Love a morning where even the dust has bad intentions.
I lean in and kiss Grandma’s cheek before the fear on the porch grows legs and starts walking around.
She smells like woodsmoke, dried mint, and the little clay pots in our window, all of them growing stubborn green things that should have died months ago.
“I’ll be back before moonrise,” I tell her.
“Better be.”
Dad picks up my quiver from where he leaned it against the wall. He repaired half the fletching last night because store-bought arrows are trash and trade is too tight to waste.
When he hands it over, our fingers brush.
He hesitates.
Tiny.
Barely anything.
Enough.
His gaze drops to my boot, where the worn hilt of Mom’s knife peeks above the leather.
There it is.
Always there.
The thing we don’t talk about unless we have to.
“Stay low in the draws,” he says. His voice drops. “No open flats. No chasing kills past the salt caves. Sun-cats hungry and stupid this year.”
I lift my brows. “Brand-new speech, Dad. Really fresh. Next you’ll tell me the sky is hot and dust is red.”
Most mornings, that gets something.
A twitch of his mouth.
One breath through his nose.
A crumb.
Not today.
His hand tightens on the quiver strap. “This isn’t a joke.”
The grin slips off my face.
My mother went into the draws with a bow on her back and that knife in her boot.
The sun-cat came back fed.
She did not.
Dad found what was left.
He never tells the story.
He doesn’t need to.
Every warning he has given me since has her ghost tucked inside it.
I nudge the knife hilt with the side of my boot. The grip is smooth from hands I barely remember and hands I know too well. Dad keeps the edge vicious. So do I.
It’s the only thing of hers I carry.
Not a necklace. Not a pretty scrap of cloth. Not some soft little memory to tuck under my pillow.
Steel.
“Not a joke to me either,” I say.
Some of the hard leaves his shoulders.
Not all of it.
Enough.
He looks toward the trade road like he can’t help himself.
“The South King’s men were at the post two days ago.”
My stomach tightens.
Rook’s men.
Nobody says that name casual. Not in Riverfall. Not where his mark is carved into our gate and his riders know exactly how many girls are old enough to bleed.
“What were they doing?” I ask.
Dad’s mouth goes flat. “Watching. Counting. Asking questions they already knew answers to.”
Yeah.
There it is.
The thing sitting under the whole morning.
Bride Hunt season.
You don’t live in the South without knowing when it comes. People pretend. They sweep porches. Hang laundry. Stretch grain. Tell children thunder sounds like drums.
But everybody knows.
Human villages give up women.
Some step forward.
Some get pushed.
Some run hard enough to make the Horde work for it.
Either way, the Horde hunts.
The Horde takes.
“Could be nothing,” I say.
Dad looks at me.
Right.
Stupid sentence.
Grandma squeezes my forearm hard enough to pinch. “Remember who you are, Kira-girl.”
I look at her.
Her eyes have gone distant, which means she is talking to me and maybe to Mom and maybe to every dead woman who ever stood on this porch and tried to be brave.
“We came from water and green once,” she says. “Don’t matter if you seen it. It’s in your blood. Red dust tries to dry everything down to bone and stone. You don’t let it take you too.”
A picture flashes in my head.
Dark water moving forever.
Cold rain needling my cheeks.
A sky that isn’t burned white.
Not my memory.
Still mine somehow.
I swallow. “I won’t.”
Then I move before anyone says something that makes staying sound possible.
Riverfall drags itself awake around me.
The huts crouch against the canyon wall, red clay and patched roofs and doors cracked just wide enough for people to watch without admitting they’re watching. Smoke lifts thin. A woman scrapes the bottom of a blackened pot with a wooden spoon, and the sound is too close to bone.
Near the well, three elders go quiet when I pass.
I pretend not to notice.
Everyone does that here.
Pretending is practically a village skill.
Sarah is two huts down, wrestling a basket of wet laundry onto one hip. It is almost as big as she is, and she is losing badly.
I cross over and hook my fingers under the other handle.
“You planning to carry the whole river?”
She blows a strand of hair out of her face. “You planning to feed the whole village?”
“That’s the idea.”
We haul the basket to the line strung between two crooked posts. Wet cloth slaps my thigh. Soaproot and muddy river water drip into the dust.
Sarah’s dress hangs loose where it fit fine a month ago. Her cheeks are too sharp. Shadows sit under her eyes like bruises.
“Toby still coughing?” I ask.
“A little.” She wrings a shirt harder than necessary. “Dust gets in his chest when it stays this dry.”
I dig into Grandma’s pouch, pinch out a bit of herb, and fold it into her palm.
“Steep this tonight. Tell him it’s hunter medicine so he thinks it’s important.”
Her smile shows up small, soft, and gone too quick. “You’re too good to us.”
“Family,” I say. “We try not to let each other drop dead. It’s a whole thing.”
Her fingers close around the herbs, but her eyes flick to the gate.
Then away.
Then back.
“You going far?”
“Far enough.”
“Kira.”
There’s a warning in my name. Not from her. From the day. From the road. From every woman in Riverfall who has been walking different since Rook’s banners started showing up too often.
I keep my voice light. “I know.”
“People say his riders passed before sunrise.”
I go still. “People?”
She huffs a laugh that isn’t funny. “Everybody. So nobody.”
Of course.
Riverfall runs on rumor and stubbornness.
Toby rounds the side of the hut, dragging a stick through the dust. All elbows, knees, dirt-smudged cheeks, and a shirt hanging loose enough that I can count ribs without trying.
I hate that.
I hate that so much I almost miss his grin.
“You heading out?” he asks.
“Yep.”
“For thorn-stag?”
“Biggest dumb bastard I can find.”
His grin gets bright. Gap-toothed. Perfect.
Then it slips.
“I heard drums last night.”
Sarah’s head snaps around. “You heard thunder.”
He scowls at his stick. “Ain’t been thunder in months.”
Kid has a point.
I crouch until we’re eye-level. Dust smells like hot metal this close to the ground.
“Probably somebody beating a wash rug.”
“At night?”
Again.
Point.
I ruffle his hair until he squeaks and shoves at my hand. “You keep an eye on the meat caves while I’m gone, yeah? Make sure nothing walks off by itself.”
That brings him back. “Deal.”
“Deal.”
I stand.
Sarah watches me like she wants to say ten things and knows none of them will help.
“Be back before dark.”
Not please.
Not if you can.
A command pretending to be a request.
I nod. “That’s the plan.”
Then I leave before her fear sticks to me.
The path to the gate winds between huts baked the same color as the canyon, like Riverfall clawed itself out of the rock and decided to stay out of spite.
A girl my age passes with two sloshing buckets from the river. Her eyes flick to my bow, my boots, my body.
Then away.
Fast.
Not from me.
From the season.
Every fertile woman in Riverfall walks different when Rook’s men ride close. Shoulders tighter. Chin higher. Steps careful, like the ground is counting.
I hate it.
The air changes around us. Men go quiet. Women get sharp. Every laugh sounds like it might break if you touch it wrong.
At the gate, I stop.
A fresh mark cuts deep into the outer beam.
Three slashes crossed by a hooked line.
Rook’s tally.
The old one had gone pale under wind and sun. This one is new. Edges sharp. Grooves dark. Carved deep enough to throw little shadows.
Protection isn’t free.
Dad says that whenever someone gets stupid and calls the South safe.
Rook lets us live on his land. Lets us hunt what the planet doesn’t kill first. Lets us build our huts under his cliffs and pretend any of it belongs to us.
In return, he takes.
Food.
Labor.
Obedience.
And when the drums say so, women.
My fingers twitch toward the mark.
I stop them.
No.
I’m not touching it.
I’m not giving it that.
I adjust the quiver strap on my shoulder and step through the gate.
The Lower Draws open ahead, all narrow gullies, salt caves, split stone, and scrub mean enough to stab anything breathing. I rub Grandma’s herb oil onto my wrists and neck as I walk. Mint cools my skin for half a second before the heat eats it alive.
This part makes sense.
Not whispers.
Not tallies.
Not kings.
This.
The village falls behind me, and my body shifts without asking permission.
Breath slower.
Steps lighter.
Eyes open.
Ears sharper.
Hunting isn’t running.
Anybody desperate can run. Anybody stupid can stomp around and pray something edible gets confused.
Hunting is disappearing while you’re still standing right there.
I find the first thorn-stag prints near the cliff base.
Fresh.
Edges crisp. Dust not slumped in. A small group passed at dawn, heading toward the salt caves.
Good.
I move.
The canyon narrows, then splits. Red walls rise on both sides, rust and ochre and old storm scars. A shadow-lizard darts between stones, belly flashing pale. Needle-grass scratches my calves. Somewhere deeper in the draws, a bird screams once, then apparently thinks better of having opinions.
Sweat slicks my back.
Dust climbs my legs.
My stomach twists, empty and mean.
I ignore it.
Grandma tells stories sometimes when the nights cool enough to let people talk. Earth stories. Oceans big enough to eat the horizon. Rain that falls for days. Trees so green your eyes hurt. Birds like dropped paint.
I don’t know if I believe her.
I don’t know if I want to.
Because if Earth was ever that soft, that full, what kind of people shoved families like ours into ships and called this mercy?
Sent us here.
To red dust.
To Horde kings.
To a planet that eats women and calls it weather.
My jaw tightens.
Doesn’t matter.
Anger doesn’t smoke meat.
I keep tracking.
An hour turns into grit, sweat, and the scrape of breath in my throat. I check shallow basins, strips of shade, salt breaks, and the narrow places where thorn-stag like to scrape their antlers. Twice, I find old scat. Once, a broken branch. Nothing worth an arrow.
Then the trail hooks left around a low rise, and one set of prints deepens.
Bigger.
Heavier.
A male trailing the group.
Maybe luck finally got bored of ignoring me.
I climb low, keeping my body close to the rock, and slide behind a boulder at the ridge.
There.
In the basin below, a thorn-stag grazes near the dark mouth of a salt cave. Big shoulders. Thick neck. Coat the same dusty rust as the rock. Antlers like a crown of knives catching stray light.
He is beautiful.
He is also dinner.
Sorry, gorgeous.
Priorities.
One kill like that feeds every pot in Riverfall tonight.
I drop to my belly and start the stalk.
Step.
Freeze.
Wait.
Step.
Freeze.
The wind stays in my face. The stag flicks one ear, nose working slow, tongue dragging over salt-streaked stone. Twenty yards. Fifteen. Ten.
Sweat crawls down my spine.
A scrub branch scratches my forearm.
I ignore it.
This is the clean part.
The honest part.
No drums. No tallies. No men with banners counting girls at a trade post. No Dad standing on the porch with Mom’s ghost in his hands.
Just distance.
Breath.
Timing.
I ease an arrow free.
A growl rolls over the ridge behind me.
Low.
Close.
My blood goes cold.
I turn, already lifting the bow.
The sun-cat crouches on the rock above me, golden hide stretched over long muscle, black-tipped tail lashing slow. Its ears lie flat against its skull. Its mouth parts just enough to show fangs.
Its yellow eyes track the stag first.
Then slide to me.
And change.
Not prey.
Problem.
“Back off,” I hiss.
The cat launches.
I loose on instinct.
The arrow slices across its shoulder instead of punching into its chest. Blood sprays bright. The cat screams, crashes down the slope, rolls, catches itself, and comes again.
Too fast.
No second shot.
I drop the bow.
Mom’s knife is in my hand before the thought finishes forming.
Claws rake the air where my face was a heartbeat ago. I throw myself sideways. Dust explodes. The cat hits ground, pivots, and comes low this time because apparently the murderous bastard learns.
I slash.
Steel kisses foreleg.
Hot blood slicks my wrist.
The cat roars and barrels into me.
We slam into rock.
Pain bursts through my shoulder, white and vicious. Its breath floods my face, rot and meat and heat. I jam my forearm under its throat, locking my elbow, fighting to keep those fangs away from my skin, my eyes, my life.
My other hand drives the knife up.
Bone.
Not deep enough.
The cat thrashes. A claw rakes down my upper arm, fire and wet. I choke on the cry, kick hard, twist harder. The knife almost slips.
No.
Absolutely not.
Not today.
“Come on,” I snarl through my teeth.
It comes out half rage, half terror, all ugly.
The cat rears for my neck.
There.
I shove the blade under its ribs and drive up with everything I have. In and up. The way Dad taught me. No hesitation once metal is in.
The sun-cat convulses.
Once.
Twice.
Then all that wild, terrifying power goes slack.
It drops on top of me.
For one horrible second, I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t move. I’m trapped under muscle and fur and blood and the same kind of creature that took my mother.
My hand locks around her knife.
This is how close death gets.
No warning.
No ceremony.
Just one bad second under a sky that does not care.
Move.
The word hits hard enough to break something loose.
I shove, curse, and wriggle out from under the cat. My knees hit dirt. Air scrapes into my throat. Blood and dust fill my nose, thick and hot.
My arm burns.
Four claw lines score the outside, red and ugly, bleeding steady but not gushing.
Could be worse.
Which is a stupid thing to think while kneeling next to a dead sun-cat with your mother’s knife in your fist.
But also true.
I wipe the blade on the cat’s flank, then my pants, and shove it back into my boot. My fingers shake once.
Only once.
My bow lies three feet away, half buried in dust.
Uncracked.
String taut.
Lucky.
Or stubborn.
Same thing some days.
Below, the thorn-stag bolts at the scream.
Then stops near the far edge of the basin because some animals are pretty, powerful, and apparently dumb as a bag of rocks.
Perfect.
My shoulder throbs. My arm burns. Sweat stings every claw mark. My pulse hammers in my throat, my wrist, my teeth.
Doesn’t matter.
Riverfall still needs meat.
I slide behind the last boulder between us and force my breathing smooth.
My hands remember before the rest of me does.
Hunter.
Not scared girl.
Not future tally mark.
Not a body waiting for drums.
Hunter.
The stag angles broadside.
I nock a fresh arrow.
Draw.
Pain flashes down my arm, sharp enough to make my vision spark. I hold anyway. The string comes back to my ear with that soft, familiar groan.
Across the basin, the thorn-stag goes still.
Wind slips between us, hot and thin, carrying copper blood, salt dust, and the strange heavy quiet that has been pressing on this day since before sunrise.
Toby’s ribs flash in my mind.
Sarah’s tired eyes.
Dad watching the road.
Grandma’s thumb on my brow.
The whole village sits under my ribs.
Hungry.
Waiting.
I don’t think.
I don’t breathe.
I let the arrow fly.
