She closed her eyes as a breeze swept past, searching for what he meant. She smelled smoke and pine on the cool wind. The skin along her arms tightened.

“How are your feet?” he asked.

“They’re still a little sore, but much better,” she said, moved by the simple question. With him, it wasn’t small talk. He was always looking after people. “Talon’s lucky to have an uncle like you,” she said.

He shook his head. “No. It’s my fault he was taken. I’m just trying to fix it. I’ve got no choice.”

“Why?”

“We’re rendered. There’s a bond between us through our tempers. I feel what he feels. I don’t just scent it. Same for him.”

She couldn’t imagine being linked with a person that way. She thought of what both Roar and Rose had said about Scires keeping to their kind.

Perry leaned forward, crossing his arms over the rail. “Being away from him, it’s like part of me is gone.”

“We’ll find him, Perry.”

He rested his chin on the rail. “Thanks,” he said, his eyes fixed on the courtyard below.

Aria’s gaze moved to his arm. He’d pushed his sleeves up above his elbows because of the cast. A strong vein laced the swell of his bicep. One of his Markings was a band of angled slashes. The other was made of flowing lines like waves. She had the urge to touch them. Her eyes trailed up to his profile, following the small rise at the top of his nose, finding the thin scar at the edge of his lip. Maybe she wanted to touch more than his arm.

Perry’s head snapped over to her and she realized he knew. Heat bloomed across her cheeks. He’d scent her embarrassment, too.

She scooted to the edge and swung her legs over the side of the roof like him and tried to look interested in the goings-on below. The courtyard showed more signs of life. People were moving here and there. A man split firewood with practiced thwacks of an ax. A dog barked at a young girl who held something high, out of its reach. As much as she concentrated on what she saw, she still felt Perry’s attention on her.

“What are you going to do after you find Talon?” she asked, switching tactics.

He relaxed over the rail again. “I’ll get him home, then form my own tribe.”

“How?”

“It’s a matter of winning men. You get one who’s either willing or forced to follow your lead. Then another and so on. Until you have a group big enough to stake out some land. Fight for it, if need be.”

“How are they forced?”

“In a challenge. Winner either spares the loser’s life and earns fealty that way, or . . . what you’d imagine.”