Perry straightened in time to see Willow blow past Gren and Twig with a hasty greeting; then she jumped into his arms the same way she’d done since she was three. At thirteen she was getting too big for that, but it made him laugh, so Willow kept doing it.

“You told me you’d only be a few days,” she said as soon as Perry set her down. She was in her usual outfit—dusty pants, dusty boots, dusty shirt, and red strips of fabric braided through her dark hair, made from pieces of the skirt her mother had sewn for her over the winter but that she’d taken apart.

Perry smiled. “It was only a few days.”

“Felt like forever,” Willow said, and then she peered at Aria, her dark brown eyes suspicious.

When she’d first been cast out of Reverie, Aria had been hard to miss as a Dweller. She’d spoken in sharp, clipped sounds, her skin had been pale as milk, and her scent had been rancy and off. Those differences had faded away. She was noticeable for another reason now—the same reason Twig and Gren had stared at her for the past two days when she wasn’t looking.

“Roar told me a Dweller was coming,” Willow said finally. “He said I’d like you.”

“I hope he’s right,” Aria said, petting Flea on the head. The dog now sat against her leg, panting happily.

Willow lifted her chin. “Well, Flea likes you, so maybe I will too.” She looked up at Perry, frowning, and he scented her temper. Usually it was a bright citrus scent, but now a dark tinge blurred into the edges of his vision, telling him something wasn’t right.

“What’s happened, Will?” he asked.

“All I know is Bear and Wylan have been waiting for you, and they don’t look happy. I thought you’d want to know.” Willow’s narrow shoulders lifted in a shrug; then she sped off, with Flea loping beside her.

Perry made for the compound, wondering what he’d find. Bear, a wall of a man with a gentle heart and hands permanently stained from working the earth, was lead on anything related to farming. Slight and surly, Wylan was the Tides’ head fisherman. The two bickered constantly about where the Tides’ resources belonged, in a never-ending battle between earth and sea. Perry hoped that it was nothing more.

Aria strode beside him with confidence as they passed through the main gates and stepped into the clearing at the center of the compound, but he scented the cool tone of her fear. He saw his home through her eyes then—a circle of cottages made of wood and stone and weathered by the salt air—and wondered again what she was thinking. It was nowhere as comfortable as Marron’s, and there’d be no comparison at all to what she was used to in the Pods.