Against the Wind

18.2 || Raya

Anticipation for it thrummed through Raya, but she still flinched when Amina whirled on her. "You stole me away?" Disbelief wracked the words and shook them until they splintered.

The sting of bile lingered in Raya's throat and nostrils, a slur over her thoughts she could do without. She searched for her voice amid it and found herself hesitating.

When the silence ticked on a beat too long, Amina released a frustrated snarl. Fire flooded her gaze; Raya could've sworn the dry air around them crackled and warmed, lit by the force of her glare. Her fists pounded the air as she threw them down. "This is ridiculous! Why?"

This pause had no room for Raya's voice to hitch, but it did anyway. Amina spat another curse she shouldn't have known at her age. "Answer me!"

Sand spraying from her heels, she lurched into a furious pounce, and fear, if nothing else, spurred Raya into motion. She scrambled to her feet and skittered back, hands thrust defensively in front of her. Her heart beat against her ribs. "I had to," she breathed in a rush.

Amina rolled her eyes. "You just had to. That explains everything." She flung her arms in wide arcs, gesturing to the expansive, empty desert around them. "We're in the middle of godforsaken nowhere, and you nearly got me killed!" Her glare swept towards Meag, a ball of curled-up grey fur in Raya's periphery. "That freakish thing would've murdered us both if I hadn't saved us. What kind of messed-up crazy are you?"

"That wasn't Meag's fault. I didn't know she was injured." Raya's voice drifted, far too soft. She felt more foolish with every word.

Amina blinked, confusion shuttering momentarily over her anger. She scoffed. "You named it?"

Something about her tone rubbed against the hairs on the back of Raya's neck, both eerily normal and unsettlingly wrong. She threaded her fingers through her uneven hair to shift it out of her eyes, trying to hide the slight jolt of surprise when her fingers slid abruptly into empty air rather than a sleek, unending river, and fixed Amina with a proper stare. "Meag had a name already. She's not a monster." Her hand found her pocket and curled around Corvin's flute, assured by the touch of carved wood. Part of her wanted to draw it out and test it against her lips again, though she knew she couldn't play its notes with a fraction of his gentle ease. At Amina's deepening frown, she added, "She's a living being—intelligent, even, maybe. She's a friend."

For a singular moment, hope swelled within her, pushed upward by the confidence the repeated words filled her with. She convinced herself that Amina's expression told that she was mulling it over, processing the new concept, though the delusion ended quickly with the girl's whispered words, thick with shock and then venom. "You seriously believe that?"

"I do." Raya gripped the flute tighter.

Like a cloud had just passed over the sun, Amina's glare returned in full force. "You're mad."

Raya's shoulders sagged. "Maybe." Evading the girl's gaze, she fiddled with the edge of her brother's cloak, adjusting where it sat on her shoulders. She felt overwhelmingly tired all of a sudden. She didn't want to argue her choice, not when the same squabble chased itself in unforgiving loops around her mind.

"I know this is a mess," she admitted. "No-one else was supposed to get involved. But when you followed me—"

"What else was I supposed to do?" Amina bit out.

A sigh billowed out. "Look the other way." She released the cloak, dissatisfied with its unfixable broad frame. Bitterness rose, darkening her tone so that words slipped out on their own, driven by an itch in the pit of her stomach. "That's what people in Tehazihbith do when something goes wrong."