Ryala arrived back at base first. Her route was the second longest but she wasn’t weighed down by crates, making her arrive sooner than Everyn anticipated.

  She slid the scrap of dirty fabric that acted their door shut, carefully tucking the edges into the small stone cracks to make sure it was secure, that their room was hidden before she pulled off her dark head wrap and peeled the damp black hair from her neck.

  Most people didn’t get the luxury of privacy, it was one of the many benefits of having an East Aldiran woman as a bunkmate.

  Ryala didn’t often take off her headwrap, even when she was only in Everyn’s company. She didn’t care to show off the marriage rods sticking from her delicately pointed ears. There were five, each a shaft of a different precious mineral bored into holes the size of the tip of Everyn’s pinky. There was one for each of Ryala’s wives, but she didn’t talk about them much.

  Truthfully Ryala didn’t talk about anything much. Everyn wasn’t even sure she knew her full surname. Each of her wife's names attached after her own, making Ryala’s last name longer than Everyn’s entire given name.

  Ryala took a silent seat on her bed and pulled out her worn horsehair brush and began brushing the sea-air stuck knots from her waist length waves.

  “The boys should be back soon,” Everyn commented, more to herself than Ryala, her heel bouncing nervously against the worn stone floor as she sat on her own bed.

  Ryala nodded once, not stopping her task.

  Everyn really had no reason to be this nervous. They’d had far worse trouble than this before and made it out. But something about a Faedemon attack always made her far more tense than even the Fae themselves.

  “Did you get medical attention?" Ryala’s soft melodic voice nearly started Everyn off the bed.

  “What for?” Everyn felt her cheeks redden with embarrassments and she righted herself.

  Ryala’s eye glanced up from the bundle of hair she was working through with her brush, as she nodded at Everyn’s arms.

  The bleeding had long stopped, but a few pieces of glass still stuck out from the flesh. Everyn had made an attempt to remove them but her hands shook so greatly with nerves that it only served to drive them further in.

  “Oh, no. It’s not that bad. I can deal with them in the morning.”

  Ryala set her brush down and reached across the small gap to grab Everyn’s arm with more force than Everyn expected. Ryala was much stronger than she looked. Aldiran women always were, but it was still always startling. The glass stung as the force of Ryala’s grip pulled at her skin.

  “Hey!” Everyn protested, trying to pull her arm away without angering the irritated flesh further.

  “Hold still, veha.” Ryala’s voice was firm.

  Everyn didn’t know much of the Aldrian language but she knew that word. Ryala often used it when the boys injured themselves. It was an insult, meaning ‘helpless infant’.

  Everyn stopped struggling, letting Ryala’s long nails pluck the shards from her flesh, “Rude.”

  “Ibé veha.” Ryala muttered under her breath. Everyn didn’t know that first word, but she suspected it was something equally insulting.

  Ryala plucked out the last bloodied shard, setting on the wooden crate that served as their storage and bedroom surface alongside her brush before pulling out a water skin from her small satchel and pulling open the cap.

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “You’re going to need some--” Everyn’s thought was interrupted as something decidedly not water spilled over her cuts burning like the hells.”Hells flame, Ryala!” She screamed, shaking the liquid off her arm as the burning persisted.

  The room filled with the strong scent of evaporating hard liquor.

  Ryala took a sip from the same waterskin, before replacing the stop, “It’s clean.” She announced before setting the waterskin next to her and picking up her brush to resume detangling her hair.

  “Since when have you had alcohol?" Everyn demanded, blotting at her bleeding arm with the hem of her shirt.

  Ryala flipped over the waterskin, revealing a distillation Rune long burnt into the bottom of the flesh. So long as the skin had liquor once, it could turn any water added into the same concentration. That rune was intended to purify bad water, not get one buzzed.

  “You’ve been drinking on every mission?” Everyn hissed, keeping her voice low for prying ears.

  Ryala looked up from her hair, “It is why I don't share my skin.”

  “Hells Ryala! Do you know how much danger you put us in?” her voice raised to a volume even she couldn’t quiet. “I can not believe you would do that to us!”

  Ryala slammed her brush down on her bed with a muted thump, “I do not get drunk, Everyn.” her accent thickened with her incredulity. “I can not get drunk, if that is what you accuse me of.”

  “What do you mean you can’t get drunk?”

  “I am Belhana. A Mother of All. Do you know what that is, jela?”

  Everyn’s anger vanished, “I do.”

  “Then you know you have nothing to fear.” Ryala picked up her brush once again, returning to her work.

  After a long tense moment Everyn finally asked the question she knew better than to, “How many children do you have back home?”

  She didn’t expect an answer but one came, barely audible, even in the quiet room, “Three with Nadira, Three with Fatima, Two with Iris, One with Belita, and Vera carries my tenth.”

  “Do you miss them?”

  “Not a day goes by that I do not,” she replied without looking up from her hair. “But I'm here for them, to make sure their lives don’t turn out like those here.”

  “What if you get sick? What will they do without you?”

  Belhana were particularly susceptible to foreign illness so they very rarely left Aldir. Their immune systems were ill equipped for travel and their metabolism was too fast to go without food for very long, which also made it impossible for alcohol to have any effect. This continent was no place for a Belhana.

  “That is why I drink. The liquor kills your parasites. I will not get sick from your water or food.”

  “Ryala…” Everyn didn’t have words.

  Ryala had been here almost a year and she had never been injured, had never been sick. She was always so careful, so well hidden.

  Her secretive nature wasn’t cowardice, it was survival. Every mission was more of a risk for Ryala than it was the rest of them.

  So, that’s why she had chosen the Bind she had. Being invisible was safer.

  “Do not share this information with the others. I do not wish for them to treat me as fragile.” She returned her brush to its storage bin and began meticulously rewrapping her head, covering her hair and ears once again.

  “I won’t.”

  Ryala’s dark eyes locked with her own, “Don't you treat me as fragile either.”

  Everyn was about to tentatively agree when she was interrupted.

  “Ev,” Valan’s voice came clearly through their thin privacy curtain.

  Much of the tension released painfully from Everyn’s shoulders. Valan was back, safe, which meant so were the supplies.

  Ryala stood up, crossing the small room to pull away the curtain before Everyn even had a chance to move, “Don’t worry, I am leaving.”

  Had Everyn over reached? She knew she should have stayed quiet, “Ryala!”

  A humorous smirk curled the edge of Ryala lips, "It is fine, Everyn. Besides, I’m not leaving for me.” She slid around Valan’s large form, “Glad to see you made it back safely.” She said before disappearing down the tunnel.