Astral Tide (The Otherborn Series) Read Online Free PDF

They weren’t half so aggressive as the feral dog packs, but they could still be trouble. After what happened to Rye, London wasn’t fond of any kind of canine.
    “I hate dogs,” she muttered.
    “I’ve always been fonder of cats myself,” Zen said with a chuckle. His spirits had improved considerably since that morning.
    “You would, Geode,” London teased. She wondered if there were dogs in Geode’s world.
    “We’ll be safe sleeping in the truck,” he reassured her. They’d copped a squat under the stars for a while to give Tora and Kim a little privacy.
    “What do you think they’re doing in there?” London asked. “They take forever.”
    “Well, if it’s anything like what Maggs and I did last week, we’re in for a long night.”
    “Gross, Zen!” London pretended to barf. “Spare me the details.”
    “Fine,” he agreed, “but only if you tell me something in exchange.”
    “Anything.” London grinned at him. His profile was pale and magical in the moonlight. Zen had always been a looker.
    “What’s her world like?” he asked, suddenly serious.
    “Si’dah’s?” London didn’t like where this was going. It was a conversation just like this one that had led to her and Rye’s first kiss.
    “No, the Queen of Old-England’s.” Zen cut his eyes at her. “Of course, Si’dah’s.”
    A year ago, this subject was taboo. But by now, they’d all had long looks at one another’s Others. There weren’t many nights that went by that didn’t find them in the Astral, training with Hantu-Degan and puzzling over how they could overpower the Tycoons. It was a slow, halting process. They hadn’t made much progress, not nearly as much as they needed in order to face the Tycoons. After Avery’s defection was made public Astral knowledge, they’d decided against meeting with the rest of the Circle again. Instead of visiting the safe and sacred space of the grove, Hantu was training them alone in the abandoned meadows and misty Astral plains. But Hantu was limited himself. There were a few well-placed holes in his own memory and being trapped there made him only half the teacher they needed. Everything was grand in the Astral. They felt infinite and strong, but as soon as they woke up here, the reality slipped and they were just a bunch of human kids with little to no control. Pulling the Astral into this world was proving harder than they ever thought.
    London took a deep, conceding breath. She was trying to keep Zen stable after the shock he’d faced that morning. And she had nothing to hide. Not anymore. “It was beautiful. Verdant,” London told him.
    “Green,” he said dreamily.
    “Yes.”
    “Like the Outroads?”
    “Different,” she said. “Thicker. Wetter. More vivid. There was no distinction. No walls anywhere. We had our territory, but really, the whole place—it was our home.”
    Zen rolled to his side and propped his head on an elbow, facing her. “What else?”
    “There were no wars.”
    “There are no wars now,” he said. “No one to fight when the Tycoons own everything.”
    “There was no ‘own’,” London told him. “We didn’t have concepts like that.
Mine
.
Yours
. Everything was shared. Everything was
ours
.”
    “Sounds perfect,” he said with a sigh.
    “Not at all. But it was a heap better than this mess.” She shrugged.
    “Were they all like Si’dah?” he asked her.
    “No. Only a Si’dah can travel. Only those born with the black eyes.”
    “You mean, there’s more than one Si’dah?” Zen sat up.
    London tugged a curl. “It’s a title, not a name. It means
Traveler
. Every clan or tribe, whatever you want to call it, had their own. Always born among the females.”
    “So what was your real name then, when you were there, before you became the Si’dah for your tribe?”
    Uh-oh.
Now this was encroaching on forbidden territory. London had never told anyone her name before she became known simply as Si’dah. Not even Rye. She remembered, in