The Sun Dwellers

Ram grunts.

Roc chuckles. “I’m out. You three can settle this on your own.”

“We might just do that,” I murmur, always one for a challenge.

Ahead, Tawni drifts back from Adele’s side, zeroing in on Roc. I take advantage of the opportunity to stride ahead, nonchalantly pulling up next to Adele. “Hey,” I say.

“Hey yourself,” she replies, glancing at me.

“You okay?” I ask.

Staring straight ahead, she says, “What did my mom whisper to you before we left?”

She answers my question with a question of her own, but I don’t mind. I’m just happy to be talking to her after the abrupt end to our previous conversation. “She said that it probably made sense for her to ask me to take care of her daughter, but in your case she knew it wasn’t necessary.”

Adele glances at me again, and this time holds my gaze for a moment. Pride covers her face like a mask. The urge to intertwine my fingers with hers strikes me, but I ignore it, afraid I’ll scare her away again. She’s so unlike the girls in the Sun Realm. The girls up there are weak and wouldn’t last ten minutes in the Moon Realm, and yet they approach guys with a confidence bordering on arrogance. You know you want me, but the question is: Do I want you? Whereas, Adele’s as hard as diamond, and yet, other than when she kissed me, she’s timid when it comes to being close to me.

As if she can read my thoughts, Adele’s face falls. “I can take care of myself, but not my friends and family,” she says.

I try to swallow but a lump congeals in my throat. I have to tell her what I think. “I think my father targeted Ben to get to me.”

“That makes no sense,” Adele says right away. She’s determined to take the blame.

“He’s trying to get to me, to do anything he can to take the fight out of me, so I’ll either turn myself in, kill myself, or do something stupid.”

“Turning yourself in or killing yourself would be something stupid,” Adele replies, not missing a step. “But regardless, attacking my dad and sister has nothing to do with you.”

“It does if he thought…I cared…about your father,” I say, my words sticking to my tongue like underground river leeches on a swimmer’s legs.

“Did you? Care about my father?” There’s an edge to Adele’s voice, which is full of steel and glass.

“You know I did.” My brain struggles to formulate the right words. To make her understand the depth of my admiration for Ben Rose. “I didn’t know him for long, but he treated me like a son—”

“Which would make me your sister,” Adele says, her gritty words replaced with her usual sarcasm once more.

I laugh. “It doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you,” I say.

I’m happy when she smiles. “Sooo, my dad was like a second father to you?”

I shake my head. “No, more than that. For me, a father is just the one whose genes you share. Ben—your dad—was like a mentor to me. He believed in me. Counseled me. Gave me confidence in myself.” Suddenly I remember something important. Something that will matter to Adele. “Can I show you something?”

Adele shrugs. “Sure.”

Without breaking stride, I swing my pack around to access it. Tucked beneath two tunics and a canteen is a book, leather-worn and brittle, its pages yellowed and thi

“Your father gave this to me,” I say, handing it to Adele. “Well, lent it to me, really, but then…” I start to say the wrong thing, but manage to stop myself just in time. Adele doesn’t seem to notice.

“What is it?” she says, holding a flashlight to the cover.

“The diary of a young girl named A

Her eyes are wide open now, as she flips to the first page. For the next hour she walks and reads in silence, holding her flashlight over the pages, not even noticing when I put a nervous arm behind her so she doesn’t walk into the wall.

* * *

It’s a well-constructed tu

Adele reads the diary for a while, and then tries to hand it back to me. “You keep it,” I say. She tucks it in her pack without saying anything, and then takes my hand, sending shivers up my forearm. My hand’s sweaty and I desperately try to think cooling thoughts, but it doesn’t help. Adele, seemingly lost in her own thoughts, doesn’t recoil, so I guess she doesn’t notice. She’s remembering her father, I think.

Although I remained silent while Adele was reading, there were muffled conversations and occasional laughs from the rest of the group behind us. Roc seemed to be doing most of the talking, telling stories and jokes and otherwise making friends with everyone, which is just the kind of thing that he does. It’s fine with me because I’m with Adele.

But eventually everyone goes silent, from exhaustion and fatigue and because the damn tu

The light long-haul tunic I was outfitted with before we left is sticking to my skin, held tight against me by the multiple weapons I’m toting. Against my left calf is a short dagger, sharp and deadly but the least of my weapons. Against the other calf is a shiny new handgun, afforded to me by the star dwellers, who were in turn supplied by my father as part of his ridiculous plan to pit the Lower Realms against each other. My sword is in its scabbard and hangs loosely at my side, occasionally bumping my knee. Tight on my back is a tightly strung bow and a satchel of arrows, hand carved and feathered. The moon dweller weapons maker named Hans who constructed them promised me they’d fly straight and true.

The rest of our group is outfitted similarly, and although I’ve seen the tough side of Adele many times before, there’s something about her getup that I find quite sexy. Her black tunic is a shadow, tight against her curves, serving to enhance her beauty rather than emasculate her. She wears a thick, tight belt, ornamented with various short daggers, as well as a thin, long blade. Like me, she has a bow, but hers hangs from a strap over her shoulder. The hilt of a partly hidden knife protrudes from the bottom of her long tunic, lashed to her calf.

Finally we stop. Someone suggests it, but I’m not sure who, because I’m so tired and my mind is squishier than a bowl of mushy, oversaturated rice. Heck, it might have been me, I’ll never know.

We should have a lookout schedule, but this time there are no volunteers and I don’t think anyone could keep their eyes open anyway, so we take the risk. This is a secret tu

There’s no rhyme or reason to the sleeping arrangements—we just lie where we fall. Which happens to put me next to Adele. It reminds me of back in the Moon Realm, shortly after I first met her, when I was bruised and cut and bleeding from my brother and his thugs. I took a risk then and it was wonderful. We held hands all night, our first physical experience together, i

Despite my exhaustion, I’m determined to make tonight (or is it the day now?) our second.

At first we lie on our backs, using our packs to prop up our heads, but then she turns away, curling up like a ball. I don’t know where the boldness comes from, but I put my arm around her and she stiffens. But then she relaxes, drops her arm over mine, pulls it into her chest. We are so close together it’s as if we are one being, separated by only the thin fabric of our tunics.