Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
SOFIA
F or 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.
“A cambiato ?”
“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?”
She hummed her agreement as Lumi returned with yet another rabbit in their beak.
“She’s a hawk? And the other two are foxes?”
“They are a hawk,” Paz said as she tied the second rabbit, dead, to her belt.
“They?” she repeated, slowly once more. For a moment, she questioned whether she knew as much dragon-tongue as she thought.
Paz was squinting now at her, as if baffled by her confusion.
“Lumi is neither woman nor man. Or both, perhaps? Like the moss frogs in the eastern springs. They are they, not she.”
Perhaps Sofia should have felt insulted by the simplicity with which Paz explained Lumi’s gender to her, but then again she had only heard of people that fell between woman and man in the books the chief commander had kept hidden in his office. The king had banned such practices as he called them when the first king had first taken power of Wueco.
“But why?” Sofia asked.
Paz laughed. “Why are you a woman?”
“I just am.”
The smaller girl shrugged and Sofia had to acknowledge she had no argument against the logic. She picked up the rabbits and mice that Verano and Nino returned with a few minutes later and tried not to jump out of her skin when Lumi came soaring through the trees and with a twist, landed on the ground in their human form. They were naked, and Sofia took only a brief moment to appreciate their well-toned body before her cheeks went pink and she averted her eyes. She heard Paz’s soft huff of laughter at the reaction.
“There is a herd of deer about a quarter of a mile north of here. I can lead you there if you’re quiet.”
Sofia pulled out her dart gun as Paz nodded. It wouldn’t take any of the adult deer down, but it could slow them down and help quicken the kill from Paz’s arrows. Lumi smiled and then flickered back into their hawk form, darting off the way they’d come.
* * *
Sofia took turns with Lumi and Verano carrying the deer back to the cenote. Paz and Nino had a dozen rabbits and smaller animals tied along their belts. They had picked up their clothing on the way back. Sofia felt an ache of pride at coming back with the others, even if she’d only helped a bit.
She knew what belonging felt like. She knew it from the cycles she’d spent by Javi’s and Flor’s sides, but it was different to feel that sense out here—with strangers. The belonging she felt in that moment didn’t come from cycles of fighting together and trust built, it came from the simple existence of sameness and a shared distant history.
Even as they walked she vowed not to tell Fox what she’d learned of the tribe and the shifters they were staying with. She’d have to tell him eventually, but he’d react poorly and she’d need to explain to him that not all of the non-human creatures in the forest were evil. He was still insisting the dragon had been evil for accidentally hurting them. The Dereyans weren’t apparently taught nuance.
The hunting party made their way down into the shallow cenote, and it took only a moment to find Fox among the others. His borrowed clothing may have blended in, but he couldn’t hide his white-blond hair glinting in the sun, brighter than anyone around him, calling him out as different—the hair of a Falais not a Wuecan. He sat beside a small cook fire, staring in concentration as the old woman next to him spoke in slow deliberate words, using her hands to emphasize what she was saying. As Sofia got closer and heard her words, she wasn’t surprised that it was dragon-tongue. What did surprise her was that Fox was nodding along, as if he understood her.
Not wanting to interrupt the lesson, she stopped a few steps away, out of his eyesight and simply watched. The woman pressed the heel of her hands together, flattening the corn dough between them. She pressed and turned the dough in one motion, over and over again until it made a disk she showed to Fox. He followed her lead, picking up a ball and pressing it between his palms, but before he’d even flattened it, the woman was clucking her tongue and picking up another, showing him carefully how she used the heels of her hands instead of her palms.
“ Quidade, lentenente,” she said and Fox nodded as if he understood the carefully articulated dragon-tongue.
“ Bon ?” he said, holding up his newly flattened dough. The woman’s face broke into a wide smile, showing crooked teeth. Fox’s own face seemed to brighten at the unspoken praise and Sofia looked away. He so rarely smiled like that—genuine and without hesitation. It reminded her of how young he really was. How young they both were. And how very human.
“Come sit with us,” the woman said, noticing Sofia over his shoulder. Before she could refuse, the woman was standing, spry for her age and pulling Sofia over with a warm hand on her elbow. Given little choice, she sat down beside Fox, their arms brushing as the woman handed them each a ball of dough.
As they worked, the woman chattered endlessly, excited to have Sofia there to translate now for her. Her hands moved through the air like wings, the small chain along her wrist slipping up and down with every flourish. She was able to give them more detailed instructions until Fox’s tortillas were nearly indistinguishable from her own.
The air around them filled with the rich scent of woodsmoke and corn as they cooked, people from all over the cenote coming to snag the tortillas as they finished. She couldn’t help but watch Fox as he smiled—genuine and open—happy with the nods of approval from the others as they ate.
“I didn’t take you for someone who liked cooking for others,” she said, satisfied to see the smallest flinch as if he’d forgotten she was beside him.
He shrugged. “I think everyone enjoys when their work is appreciated.”
“Even by feral Dragonborn?”
He had the decency to blush, but his chin tilted up as he turned to her. “I’m sorry I implied all Dragonborn are feral. I meant only to imply that you were.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she bit back the smile that threatened to slip out.
“One of these days, it’ll work,” he said.
“What?” she asked, frowning.
“Making you smile.”
She leaned forward until their faces were a mere inch apart and she smelled the subtle salt on his skin.
“Give the Dragonborn back their land and I’ll smile all you want.”
The blush was a violent shade of red as it crept from his neck to his cheeks.
“You know I can’t do that. You should have kidnapped the king if you wanted that kind of power.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.”
He frowned and she let her satisfaction show.
“Tía Muela is one of the best teachers we have,” Clarita said, sitting down beside Fox, a half-eaten tortilla in her hand. “She adds magic to her food, I swear.”
“How do you have corn meal out here?” Fox asked. Clarita froze and Sofia choked on the bit of tortilla she’d been chewing. He must have realized the implications of the question because he blanched and shrugged. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to question…”
Clarita was looking at him carefully. “We have connections with the city still. There are some things we can’t grow in this part of the rainforest.”
“That’s how you learned king’s tongue,” Sofia said. “Your accent is near flawless.”
The woman smiled, eyes sparkling with mischief. “I would hope so. It was my first language.”
Fox’s eyes went wide
“I was born in Suvi. I lived there until I was a teenager.”
“You ran away?” Fox asked, as if the idea baffled him.
“My mother smuggled us out after my father was sent to the farms on false charges.”
“We don’t send people to the farms over false claims.”
He understood what he’d said in the same moment Clarita did, her eyes narrowing and swinging to Sofia.
“Who is your companion, exactly?”
Sofia bit her lip, wondering how far honesty would take her.
“He’s new to the resistance,” she said, at last, happy Fox was smart enough not to double down on his slip up.
The woman gave a stiff nod at this before getting up and moving away, cutting any further conversation short. The cenote itself seemed to be emptying out as the others finished their morning meals and left to do whatever they did with their time. They were still far enough from Suvi that they had no fears of being caught.
Muela had gone, too, somewhere during their conversation, and Sofia and Fox were left alone next to the now smoldering cook fire. The tortillas were gone except for the ones they had in their own hands.
They sat in silence for a while longer, finishing the last bites and, at least for Sofia’s part, savoring the sense of being full and warm.
“When do we leave?” Fox broke the silence first.
“Is that my decision?”
“It is, oh captor of mine,” he said, smirking.
She rolled her eyes. “The day after tomorrow? I still need to take them to the cenote to show them the altars, but we can leave after I return.”
“You’re going to the cenote without me?” he said, voice doing little to hide his anxiety.
“Lia said you can’t travel yet. It will be better to give yourself another day of rest before you move too much.”
Fox couldn’t argue with the logic although his furrowed eyebrows told her that he wanted to. They fell back into silence, and Sofia allowed the dancing flames to draw her attention.
His question had made her think about tomorrow and the next day, and such thoughts came with too many questions.
No .
There were no questions. She needed to bring Fox back to the base so Micael and others could finish their negotiations. If Dia was still alive. And then—well, they couldn’t let him go immediately. He knew too much. But they wouldn’t kill him. Micael had always avoided such things as best he could. Unless his hand was forced.
Though, he had killed before to protect the resistance.
She’d always appreciated that about Micael, but for some reason, now the thought made her stomach twist and something unpleasant settled in the pit of her stomach.
But there was no room for doubt or second guesses. She needed to get back to the cenote and prove to Micael she was still useful to the resistance. If her time in the forest had taught her anything it was that she belonged out here—not in the city. She couldn’t go back to begging on the streets. And bringing Fox back to them was the only thing that would ensure she wouldn’t.