“Why won’t you tell me what they want with him?” I demanded.

Zuran leaned against the colony wall with his arms crossed over his chest and a look of pure unconcern on his face. It was infuriating. “It is not your business what they want with him,” he replied.

I crossed my arms too and jutted out a hip. “So, you don’t know.”

He smirked. He always smirked. Zuran had an unyielding arrogance that left him in a constant state of sarcasm, always smirking or snickering or grinning devilishly. Many of the women around the colony were enamored with him, subscribing to the stereotype of bad boys being the attractive type of the species probably, but I found him irritating. What floored me was that he was the A’li-uud head of the colony, the one in charge of everything from comfort and convenience to education and healthcare. There was a term for it, but I couldn’t remember and Khrel tended to call him things that were far from titular.

“Yes,” he admitted nonchalantly. “I do not know.”

“Then, why didn’t you just say that?” I cried in frustration, throwing my hands up into the air.

He grazed his fingers over his scalp, shaking out his perfect white mane, and looked at me like I had STUPID written on my forehead. “Perhaps humans have a tendency to overshare, but A’li-uud do not,” was his explanation.

I couldn’t even wrap my head around his response, and I closed my eyes to keep myself in check. When I opened them again, he was still watching me. The joy he received for antagonizing me was evident in the way his lips were twitching, and eyes were sparkling. “Telling me what is happening with my boyfriend is not oversharing,” I flared. “It’s just common decency.”

Zuran said nothing, and his continued stare was beginning to irritate me just as much as his snarky smirks and cryptic answers. I groaned aloud and sank against the wall, taking care to keep several feet of space between us. I was worried. Khrel had been behaving so strangely since we’d come to Dhal’at, and it had occurred to me once or twice that there may have been something he wasn’t telling me. Now, having him called off so suddenly, especially immediately following the outburst from his ex-girlfriend, I couldn’t set my fears aside.

“Why haven’t you talked to your sister?” I asked out of the blue.

There was a beat of silence, and I turned my head to look at Zuran. His eyebrows had fallen, hanging over his eyes as he studied me, and his expression was completely serious. “What inspires you to ask such a question?”

“Your sister—Ola—she just attacked Khrel in the square,” I said, pointing noncommittally toward the road leading out of the colony into Ka-li’ket. “She was speaking in A’li-uud, so I couldn’t understand her, but Khrel spoke English, and I was able to put the pieces together. You haven’t spoken to her?”

“No,” he answered shortly. “I have not.”

“Why?”

He kicked a foot up to rest flush against the wall behind him and rolled his head back, no longer looking at me. With his arms still crossed over his chest, he looked like one of those greasers from movies about the 1950s. All he needed was a cigarette and a coiffed hairdo. “I do not respect what she did to Khrel and how she ended the relationship. It is an embarrassment to call someone like that family.”

His answer stunned me literally into speechlessness. To hear such morality coming from Zuran was completely unexpected. It was so unexpected, in fact, that I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t heard seen his mouth move. I hadn’t thought of him as a lowlife, exactly, but when Khrel said that Dhal’at was full of thieves and hustlers, I was certain Zuran fit well into that category based on his attitude alone. And perhaps he did, but there was clearly a modicum of ethical right and wrong within him.

“But…” I faltered. “I thought you hated Khrel.”

“I have never said I hated Khrel,” he contradicted.

“Well, you don’t seem to like him,” I pointed out, recalling his behavior when we had visited Vi’den those months before.

Zuran smiled, though it was a wry smile. “Khrel and I were once very close. Our friendship ended only because he ended it. I do not pander to those who do not desire my company, and Khrel is no exception. If he needs to believe I am to blame for Ola’s wrongdoings to be at peace, I will be that scapegoat.”

I didn’t know how to process the emotions that were rolling through me. Part of me wanted to believe Zuran was putting on a show because he was just so irritating and frustrating, but the other part of me knew better. This was a side of him that existed, whether I wanted to admit it or not. He was capable of sensitivity, sacrifice, and selflessness.

“That’s touching,” I murmured. “That you would let Khrel’s perception of you be so darkened because it was what he needed.”

“It is what one does for a friend,” Zuran replied with a shrug. He attempted to sound careless, but I could hear the lilt of sadness at the root of his tone. He turned his head to look at me once more, and the shadow of his familiar smirk lingered on his lips. “If I am to be truthful, I did not expect his resentment to last so long.”

I smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I’m starting to realize that Khrel takes things a lot harder than he’d like to pretend.”

“Oh?” He pushed himself off of the wall and uncrossed his arms, turning to face me fully.

“Yeah,” I said with a second nod. “He hasn’t been the same since the trial. Quieter, you know. A lot less approachable, and that’s saying something. It’s like he’s hiding something…or not necessarily hiding something but dealing with something, and he won’t let me in to help him. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

“It does,” Zuran assured.

I sighed and tilted my head back against the hard clay wall, my hair catching on the small, protruding bumps and ridges. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you all this, seeing as he does despise you.”

He took a few steps toward me, and a sudden burst of wind caught several strands of his hair. They whipped in front of his face, snapping against his cheeks. He brushed them aside in annoyance and said, “There is something you need to understand about Khrel, Lena. He needs a calling, a purpose. Simply being somewhere or doing something is not enough for him; he needs a reason.”

Zuran’s words flowed into my ears, sank into my mind, and resonated into my soul. I gaped at him as realization dawned on me. It was as if my entire career had been building to this moment.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to go figure out how to get to Pentaba,” I sputtered in a rush. “I need to speak with Sevani.”