Perry shakes his head. “That’s an excuse. A story he came up with to explain why he was here. Wylan knows I’d never forgive him. He wouldn’t have risked coming back unless he needed something.”

I press my lips together. I didn’t consider that Wylan might have trespassed onto our land with another motive in mind.

“Maybe he was trying to get to the compound,” Reef says. “There are still supplies there, and it’s unguarded. We left plenty behind that could be valuable. They could fetch a man some bartering power in the borderlands.”

It’s true. We couldn’t bring all our belongings with us into the cave. Tools. Furniture. Clothing. We had to leave most of our things behind.

Marron shakes his head. “A plausible theory, but unlikely. There were only three men on foot. Carrying away goods would be impractical and difficult. I don’t know that the effort would justify the reward.” He looks at Perry. “You don’t believe he’s motivated by revenge?”

Another long pause as Perry thinks it over. I imagine Perry has a whole host of memories with Wylan. He’s a Seer, like me, so his recollections would be strongly visual. But he’s a Scire as well. Perry would have scent memories—all the tempers he’s scented from Wylan. They would form a pattern, a reliable way to predict behavior. And, by working backward, the root of behavior: motivation.

Finally, he responds. “Wylan loves himself more than he hates me.”

Marron nods, like this statement makes all manner of sense. “Self-preservation, then. He’s driven by visceral, life-sustaining needs.”

“Shelter,” Reef says.

“The cave and the food stores we have here,” Marron says, nodding. “That’s what he’s after.”

I remember the way Wylan’s voice pulled at the word home. He’d made it sound syrupy, and now I recognize that tone as falseness. Home implies an emotional attachment, but that’s not what he wanted. What Wylan wanted was a roof over his head.

“But they were only three,” Hyde says.

“You told me that when they dispersed, they took a third of the tribe,” Marron says to Perry.

“A quarter. Almost a hundred people.”

I can’t help but remember Aria’s Marking ceremony, when Gray slipped hemlock into Aria’s tattoo ink. She almost died. Perry beat Gray to a pulp in front of everyone when he learned what Gray had done.

That attempt to poison Aria fractured my tribe. Some people sided with Perry and his right to defend Aria. Others, led by Wylan, saw it as a betrayal. They viewed Aria as a Mole, an interloper who shouldn’t have been there to begin with.