When Rex came flying into the bedroom, I practically jumped out of my skin. He flew around in a frenzy, grabbing the pile of clothes Beni and I had made and even snatching up the burnt, ripped clothes I’d worn when the Paragon had crashed. I was so stunned I wasn’t even able to move from where I sat on the bed. I just watched him race around, gathering all my things and not saying a word.

“Rex,” I said tearfully after a minute of no conversation or acknowledgment. “What’s going on?”

“We have to get you out of here immediately,” he said. He didn’t look at me as he spoke.

“Why?” I asked, sliding off the bed.

He didn’t answer me, but the look on his face told me not to ask again. I just started grabbing the few things I’d accumulated since arriving that he’d missed. When we had everything, he jerked his head to motion for me to exit the room first. I did, hurrying down the stairs, where I found his mother and father in a tizzy as well. Beni was hovering over the two little ones and putting away the furs we had been working on while Rex’s father trotted up to me with a huge bag made of sabrecat skin. He held it out, and I dumped the things in my arms into it. Rex came up behind me and dropped his gatherings into it as well. Then, he took the bag from his father and slung it over his shoulder.

“Be safe,” his father whispered, giving him a quick, one-armed hug.

Beni bustled over to him as well and threw her arms around his neck, murmuring, “I love you, my son.”

Rex opened the door, and I started to walk through it, but, before I could, Beni threw her arms around me as well. She pulled me to her warm body, and I could feel her trembling slightly.

“Take care of yourself,” she whispered in my ear as she hugged me.

I felt tears prick in my eyes, and I felt a heavy weight of sorrow in my chest even though I didn’t know what was happening. “I love you, Beni.”

“I love you too, sweet girl,” she said softly. She kissed me delicately on the cheek, and then she let me go. Rex’s father stepped forward and hugged me briefly as well, but he didn’t say a word. It looked like speaking would cause him pain. When he released me, Rex nudged my arm with his knuckles, and I walked out of the house into the sunset.

We hurried silently down the walk. When we reached the fencepost where I’d sat on my first day here, Rex stopped talking. He turned to me, and his face was grave.

“What I have to do is against A’li-uud law,” he said without preface. “I don’t know if it will even work, but we have to try.”

“What are we doing?” I asked nervously.

He looked out over the landscape as though ensuring nobody was within earshot, despite there not being another tribal home for miles, and then turned back to me and said, “We are going to fly on the winds.”

“That’s not against the law. You do that to get to the Forum.”

“It is against the law to take someone with me,” he said. “And I assume the law is especially unkind to taking humans.”

I swallowed hard. “Does it—will it hurt?”

“It doesn’t hurt me, but I don’t know what it will do to you,” he replied. He was sincere, but the answer frightened me anyway.

I gritted my teeth and nodded. He held out his hand to me, and I took it. The feeling of his skin against mine was divine, even in the uncertain and terrifying circumstances, and I recalled the sensation of having his palm pressed against my cheek. I closed my eyes and took in a breath.

And then I was flying.

I heard everything and nothing at the same time. It was like having wind rushing in my ears and complete silence all at once. Bird chirps, rustling grass and prairie stallions galloping all seemed to sound repeatedly, but the sounds disappeared the moment I heard them and left me wondering if I even heard anything at all. I could still feel Rex’s hand in mine, but it had no pressure or temperature. It just existed. I was too scared to open my eyes, and even when everything suddenly came to a halt, and I was jolted to a stop, I kept my eyes closed.

“Come,” Rex murmured. I could feel his body up against mine now, pressed so closely that the heat of his front radiated up and down my back. Slowly, anxiously, I parted my eyelids.

We were in front of a house constructed of the same things like his parents’, but it was much larger and grandiose in its size and architecture. My jaw actually fell open as I took in the burbling fountain before us, made of something like marble but much more exquisite and standing well over ten feet tall. The house itself was palatial, with massive, extravagant windows and beautiful balconies strung with strange, glittering lights.

I didn’t have time to take in any more than that, though, before Rex ushered me forward. He was walking quickly but quietly, and I wondered if we were breaking into someone’s home. He silently opened one of the double doors which served as an entrance. They were large enough to have been the doors of an old English abbey.

It was dark inside, but I was able to see there was a staircase before us so grand that I felt unworthy to step up on it. I didn’t have a choice, though. He grabbed my hand and ran up the steps with me in tow. Once we reached the landing, he looked each and every way—for what, or whom, I didn’t know—before tugging me to the right. We raced down a long, wide corridor with portraits of A’li-uud lining the walls before coming to another set of huge double doors. He opened them, practically shoved me through, and shut them behind us. I heard the click of a lock before he turned to face me.

“What’s going on?” I asked him again for the first time since in the bedroom at his parents’ home.

“I’m keeping you safe,” he replied. He grabbed onto an armoire so big I could probably stand inside and twirl and started to pull. It moved an inch, and he yanked again. I hurried to the other side and pushed, and it began to give. I kept quiet until he straightened up again, and I realized we had moved the armoire in front of the doors.

He wasn’t done, though. He went to a vanity of matching wood and pattern as the armoire and started to shove it toward the doors, too. I didn’t help with this one. Instead, I pushed for answers.

“What do you mean, keeping me safe?” I asked. “From what?”

“Pugna’ta saw you,” he grunted, shoving his shoulder up against the vanity as it eased its way across the floor.

“Who?”

He huffed as he got the piece of furniture in front of the doors as he wanted and turned to me. “Pugna’ta. She’s one of my warriors, and she saw you today.”

“Oh,” I said slowly, realizing who he was talking about. “The woman that came to your parents’ house.”

“Yes,” he said, walking across the room. I realized for the first time since entering that we were in a bedroom of such a size it would likely hold Beni’s entire house and all of the things in it. He sat on the bed and looked at me, and he had such a defeated expression on his face that my heart actually ached. “She and I have a history she’s always trying to rekindle. That’s why she came by. She saw you in the window, and she’s going to the Council to tell them about you.”

My throat seemed to constrict at the news, but I tried to remain calm as I asked, “Why is that so bad?”

Rex’s eyes narrowed at me through the darkness. “You don’t understand. There are Elders who will have you killed, or will kill you themselves, the minute they hear about you.”

“I thought you have to vote on things like that,” I squeaked.

“There are those who would prefer to do first and pay later,” he said. He got to his feet and walked to me until we were only inches apart. “I won’t let that happen.”

I looked up at him, shaking slightly with a new and powerful burst of adrenaline. “Where are we?”

“This is my house,” he said, waving a hand around. “Well, it’s the house of the kingdom’s Tribe Elder. I don’t own it.”

I nodded in understanding as my mind raced with fears and questions. I could feel his eyes on my face, but I didn’t look up at him until I found the voice to ask my next query. “Couldn’t we just go to the Forum? Together, I mean. I could talk to the other Elders myself.”

His face, somehow, grew even more serious than it had been since he’d burst into the bedroom at his parents’ house. He said, “Tabitha, you would never get out of there alive. Like I said, there are Elders who would kill you the moment they saw you, and, even if they were able to restrain themselves long enough to hear anything you said, they would kill you after that just because you know so much about our kind and our world.”

“So what?” I asked. My voice sounded about an octave higher than normal in my gradually rising panic. “Why does it matter if I know anything about A’li-uud or Albaterra or you or anything? What could I possibly do to hurt anyone?”

He shook his head, and I saw a mournful look take over his face. “It’s not about what threat you pose individually, Tabitha. It’s about what threat you pose as a species.”

I felt as defeated as he had looked just moments before. He had an answer to every single one of my questions, and no answer was something we could work with. There was a dead end no matter which way I spun it. I felt hopeless, helpless, and tired.

“Wait,” I said suddenly. “What does this mean for you?”

“What do you mean?” He asked.

“Won’t you be in trouble for protecting me? I mean, especially if that girl tells the Council about me and they put a—a hit out on me or something. Wouldn’t you be in trouble for, I don’t know, obstructing justice or something like that?”

He looked back at me silently, and I felt my head start to swim. I was right. He was facing serious consequences for what he was doing for me.

“The ones who would kill me,” I whispered, terrified to ask the question I was about to ask but even more terrified to hear the answer. “Would they kill you, too?”

Again, he just looked at me, and it was as if the walls around me were caving in. My heart stopped in my chest, and my breath caught in my throat. Black spots danced in my vision. I couldn’t hear anything except for his breathing.

“No,” I murmured. My voice started growing louder with each word I spoke. “No. You can’t do this. They can’t do this. I won’t let them!”

With a cry of distress, I leaped forward. He caught me in the air, and I threw my arms around his neck. Our lips crushed together in a kiss so deep and so passionate that I realized I had never truly been kissed before. I tasted him, tasted the fruit of Albaterra on his lips, and relished the way his tongue intertwined with mine. My legs curled around his waist, and I felt his hands take hold of my rear end, keeping me held aloft. Suddenly, we were moving, but I knew nothing except for him. Our mouths were fused as one, and I felt his soul meeting mine.

I loved him. I was no longer falling in love with Rex; I loved him, and the very thought of him meeting his end to protect me brought tears to my eyes. They spilled down my cheeks in torrents and made both of our faces slick as we kissed, falling deeper and deeper into one another. I wept against his lips and finally released the fear, the uncertainty, and—above all—the love I’d kept bottled up ever since I’d landed in a fiery heap on Albaterra.

“I can’t let you do this,” I sobbed, breaking the kiss in my failed efforts to restrain myself from saying the words. I became dimly aware he was carrying me across the room toward the bed. “I can’t let you die for me.”

“I have no choice,” he said hoarsely. He wasn’t watching where he was walking. He just kept his eyes pinned to me. “Without you, there’s no life to live anyway.”

I looked back at him, our eyes searching each other, and then I kissed him again with fervor. He kissed me back, his tongue gliding over my lower lip, skimming the path of my teeth, just as we tipped backward onto the bed.