Page 26 of The Weaver

Lacey chuckled. “Well, if it’d make you feel better, you could join us. We could use a translator, anyway.”

Rekosh straightened, mandibles rising in a vrix smile as he nodded. “Yes. I will come. Tell Garahk wait.”

“To wait?” Ahmya asked.

Stepping backward, Rekosh waved toward his den. “I will get my things.”

“Oh! Right.”

He extended a foreleg and brushed it over her bare calf, making her skin tingle. “Wait for me, a small time.”

Ahmya smiled. “I’ll wait.”

Even when Rekosh withdrew his leg, she could still feel his touch. Could still feel those soft, tiny hairs against her skin.

“We’llwait.” Lacey gave the back knot of Ahmya’s top a tug. “Come on.”

The women continued across the bridge to join the thornskulls, who greeted them cheerfully in a mix of vrix and English. None of the thornskulls could carry on a conversation in the humans’ language, but most of them had learnedhello, and used it with genuine enthusiasm. The sense of community in this place, even with the existing language barriers, was unlike anything Ahmya had experienced before leaving Earth. The thornskulls were kind and helpful. They teased sometimes, but there was always a good-naturedness to their teasing.

“Ah, Lacey,Ahnya,” Garahk said as the women approached him. Though Nalaki was essentially the queen of Kaldarak,Garahk was looked upon as a leader in his own right. His compassion and understanding had likely been the only reason Ahmya and her companions had survived their journey to escape Queen Zurvashi. “We…go?”

Ahmya smiled. Garahk was big and stocky, with hard, spiky protrusions on his head and shoulders and black spots scattered across his pure white hide. Yet despite his intimidating appearance, his friendly demeanor and natural warmth always put her at ease. He spoke very little English, but he’d made efforts to learn, and that meant a lot to the humans.

“Rekosh’ur ikar, uh”—Ahmya waved her hands down toward the platform—“akkan.He asked us to wait for him.”

“Et rayathahl’al saavix?” Garahk asked. “Rekosh go?”

Smile widening, Ahmya nodded. She grasped the strap of her backpack and lifted it off her shoulder. “He is getting his things.”

“Rekosh’al saavix saal tavit,” the thornskull announced to his companions, who responded with excitement.

Despite the thornskulls’ dialect being a bit different from the shadowstalkers’—and thus being harder for her to follow—she understood his words.

Rekosh will come to hunt.

But she knew that wasn’t quite right. He wasn’t coming to hunt, he was coming to protect her.

Or maybe he is hunting, and I’m the prey?

That thought and its implications set her cheeks ablaze.

“You okay?” Lacey asked.

“Huh?” Ahmya barely resisted the urge to cover her cheeks with her hands. Instead, she grasped the other strap of her backpack and pulled them closer together, as though the bag were a shell in which she could hide. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“All right,” Lacey replied skeptically. “You looked pretty red there for a second. I thought maybe the heat was getting to you…”

It is. Oh God, it is.

“Nope, all good.” Ahmya rocked on her heels, fighting a new urge—this one to look back and seek out Rekosh. “Just excited to get out there, you know?”

“Me too. Nice as things are up here, it feels good to have my feet on the ground sometimes.”

“It does. We’ve been kind of cooped up here for a while.”

The thornskulls chatted amongst themselves as everyone awaited Rekosh, whose arrival was met with a chorus of cheers from the gathered hunters. It meant the wait was over. The excursion could begin.

Unsurprisingly, Rekosh walked directly to Ahmya. He had a bag of his own strapped across his back, and a spear with an obsidian head in hand. The sash across his chest, which usually held his sewing tools, seemed only to hold knives now, including one that was human-made, smaller than the rest but exceptionally sharp and durable. Ahmya had one just like it in her own bag, one of the few items still in her possession from theSomnium.

---