Astral Tide (The Otherborn Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

around to face him. She wanted him to see how emphatic she was, how sincere.
    “I get it,” he said, nodding. “Did she…did she say why?” he asked now, his voice cracking.
    London’s heart broke for the giant boy with the poet’s soul. “Something about not being able to live like that anymore. She said coming here was a mistake.”
    “She can say that again,” he muttered. “This whole thing is a joke. We’re trapped, that’s all. We can’t help these people. We can’t save this place. We left everything behind—everything we knew, everything we were. And for nothing.”
    Zen and Kim had been piecing more and more of their Others’ memories together over the past several months. They were both struggling lately to make heads or tails of who they were in the Astral versus who they were here, and how any of it could make a difference.
    London took Zen’s hands in her own. “Don’t say that. Don’t give up, Zen. We were too wise, too powerful, as shamans to have made a decision we didn’t believe could work. We wouldn’t have left our own kind for nothing. Would Geode really do that? Would he have left his people and his world to come here on a whim?”
    Zen’s Other, Geode, was a feline humanoid who showed up in the Astral covered in white fur and wearing a blue hooded robe. He was statuesque and unlike anything London had seen in this world or the Astral before. She didn’t think it a coincidence that both Zen and his Other had such powerful physiques.
    Zen looked at London. “No. He wouldn’t. But you know as well as I do that they never anticipated how difficult this transition would be.”
    He was right, of course. Si’dah herself had admitted how much they had miscalculated. It had taken them too long to rediscover their true selves, and they were nearly as new to the Astral now as the kids in the camps who were dreaming for the first time. They’d only just remembered their purpose here within the last year.
    Still, all of that would have been a cake walk if it hadn’t been for one thing: Avery. Her betrayal was the only miscalculation that had really cost them. Because of Avery, they were exposed, hunted. Because of Avery, everything—their plans, their cover, their relationships, were ruined.
    “I know,” London told him. “But look at it this way—we’ve already accomplished half of what they set out to do simply by being here. Because of us, people are dreaming again, even if they do think it’s a disease. That’ll change with time. It’s a beginning. And if we don’t do this, if we don’t at least give those Tycoon bastards a run for their rations, then we make her right. We justify what Avery did. Is that what you want?”
    London couldn’t believe her own ears as she recited her pep talk. Wasn’t she the one who was always disgusted by what they were? Wasn’t she the one who had been beating herself over the head for more than a year with the notion that she was some kind of pariah infecting innocent people? But she knew as she said the words to Zen, they were true. This needed to happen. The dreaming needed to come back. The Astral needed a way back into this world, and they had been it. At least that much had been accomplished.
    Zen lifted a hand to London’s face, rubbing her cheek with his thumb. The intimacy in the gesture made her a little uncomfortable, but a fire was burning in his eyes that she’d never seen and she didn’t want to be responsible for putting that out.
    “Hell no,” he said.

Chapter 4
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    Secrets
     
    LONDON WAS BEGINNING to hate the dark. With a Tycoon convoy searching for them, they’d decided against a fire. A few howls and yips pierced the night in the distance. Even without the light, dogs could scent them. The Houselands that surrounded the walled cities were populated by packs of feral dogs, and in New Eden the Tycoons had bred some kind of guard dog as living weapons, but these sounded like the wild whines of ordinary coyotes.