Stian's Mistake

Chapter One

I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.

Genesis 28: 15

The Holy Bible, saved from before the Cleansing

"How many red hashes this time?" Thadd asks me, his eyes narrowed in a challenge of expectation. The number needs to be close to his own recent tally, but not more, or I risk a fight.

"Three," I counter, sitting on the ground next to him. I fill my lungs with the familiar scents of Hebron's summer camp - home at last.

He grunts, but lifts his chin in a show of approval. Show is all Thadd ever cares about. He readies his tattoo materials, and I clench my jaw against the pain that I hope I never get used to.

Pain earned by spilling other people's blood.

He carefully pushes the needle into my skin, inserting the red dye in tiny, careful jabs. As the hashes take shape, they cross the slim black line I finished during the long nights of my mission, without his official touch. For once, he doesn't remark on my disregard for Tribal customs.

Instead, "Have you seen Zarea yet?" His voice is too casual.

"No."

"You need to check Caine, my brother."

I snap my head up and Thadd's eyes flash above a humorless smirk. "Why?"

"I heard that our honorable Leader is lining it up for her to marry Caine - him being her second cousin and all. Thought you should know." He snorts a little. Both of us know Abraham is far from honorable when it comes to his daughter.

"Thanks." I know this information will cost me. Maybe not today, but Thadd doesn't give anything for free.

"Family means a lot around here," he adds, as though I could somehow forget that I'm still an outsider here in Hebron. Always on the fringe. We stay silent until he finishes. I wipe away the dots of blood with a clean rag and smear the healing salve on my new tattoos.

Marks of all the things I've done for my adopted Tribe, but still not enough. Seeing as family has always meant a lot around here, I'm not sure anything would be enough.

After leaving Thadd, I enter the tent I used to share with three other misfit boys - all of whom are gone now. Married and moved out. Dead, last summer on a mission. On a trek through the desert to Tartarus.

The silence might be soothing to some, but I've been alone for too many weeks. Thankfully, there's work to be done. I grab my sack of dirty clothes and a cake of soap and head for the river.

The water is warm and dark in the deepening sunset. A pair of younger girls is finishing their family's washing, and they give me a wide berth, giggling when I wade into the water to do the work women do. But everyone in this Tribe knows I'm both man and woman - the plight of an orphaned, unmarried warrior.

I scrub the stains on my shirts a little harder, pausing when the water splashes soap into my eye. I'm rubbing at it angrily when I hear a different sort of splash behind me.

"No need to cry about it. Just dirty laundry."

Her voice instantly soothes that bristling feeling that was building across my shoulders. I turn and grin at Zarea, the weight of my little world feeling so much lighter now that she's back in it.

The younger girls have scattered, but still I glance around before pulling her close to me, my fingers slippery wet on her smooth, dry skin. I rest my mouth on her collarbone, inhaling deeply. Always...wild roses and earth, like someone has pulled up the whole plant, roots and all.