Ketty materialized out of the crowd with her burning gaze fixed on her daughter. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at the house.”

“I was the one who discovered him,” Sage said. Her knife was still inches from Jaren’s spine, but he didn’t appear to be in any shape to try to escape. “I deserve this kill.”

“She’s right,” a few people said. “She caught him. She deserves the kill.”

Leelo thought she might be sick. “She wasn’t even a part of the Hunt!”

Some of the Endlans seemed to side with Leelo, but there was so much commotion it was impossible to know which side was winning.

Fiona had found her way to Leelo, and they stood clutching each other. “Mama, say something,” Leelo urged.

“Ketty,” Fiona said, but her voice was too weak to be heard above the excited chatter of the crowd, which was growing more animated by the second.

“Ketty!” Leelo screamed. “You can’t kill him!”

“Why not?” Sage asked. “Because you think you love him?” Anyone else might only have seen the sheer loathing Sage felt for Jaren, but Leelo could tell that beneath her sneer of derision was a hint of sorrow and regret. Choose me, her eyes said. But it was a choice Jaren would never have forced her to make.

Leelo turned to the crowd. “Because he’s an Endlan,” she said, her voice ringing out over the clearing. “And he has as much of a right to be here as the rest of us.”

Sage lowered the knife a fraction of an inch. “What are you talking about?”

Ketty was gripping Jaren’s arm now, and it was clear that their battle lines had been drawn. “Lies,” Ketty said. “We know all Endlans. This boy is a clear outsider.”

Fiona shook her head. “Look again, sister.”

A flicker of doubt crossed Ketty’s face.

“That’s Nadia Gregorson’s child. The child she died trying to save.”

A murmur of disbelief went up amongst the Endlans. “It can’t be,” someone said.

“We saw her drown,” another added.

“Haven’t you noticed that your songs didn’t work on him?” Leelo asked Sage. “He was trying to escape, wasn’t he? He didn’t come to you of his own will. If he was an outsider, he would have run toward you, not away.”

Sage’s vicious scowl started to give way to doubt. “You’re wrong. He can’t be Endlan.”

Leelo stared into Jaren’s gray eyes, letting the rest of the world, his bleeding neck, her cousin’s fury, fade away. She stepped toward him, and this time, no one stopped her. “He is.”

“Is it true?” he asked, taking her hands.

“It’s the only explanation. Does it make any sense, with what you know of your parents? Would they have taken in an abandoned child, even if they knew he was Endlan?”