Tribe: The Red Hand (Tribe Series Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

her achievement seemed trivial. Worse still, if he was here, then that meant he was the observer and….
    And he helped me , she thought, sick with understanding. Aiden, who had never believed she should become a Red Hand, who had done all he could to discourage her, would never allow her to stand beneath the Bone Tree, and he would make no argument to keep her from being sent into the Dead Lands.
    Aiden’s broad-shouldered shape did not move and did not speak.
    Numb of body and mind, Kestrel began a hasty search for the bundle. It made no sense to do so, with the way things had turned out, but she could not stop herself. Some part of her simply refused to accept that all her efforts had been wasted.
    With her brother staring at her, judging her as he always did, her fingers were clumsy, and it seemed to take forever. Eventually she found the sodden hide up under a bush farther down the slope. The skull had fallen out, and she had to wrap it all up again.
    As she stood up, she thought about her lost knife, but Aiden had already donned his knapsack and was making his way down into the black throat of the ravine. He had turned his back on her, as would her tribe when he told what had happened on the mountain.
    Not knowing what else to do, feeling more lost and discouraged about her life and future than she could ever remember, she followed him.

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Tripping and sliding down the steep ravine, soaked to the skin from the drumming rain, Kestrel struggled through the stormy darkness to keep up with her brother.
    Now that the threat of becoming a prisoner was no longer spurring her on, the debilitating weakness of blood loss had once more settled into her limbs. Worse than that was Aiden’s presence.
    She wanted to believe she was on her way home to become a Red Hand, but Aiden had shown up and ruined everything by slaughtering the men who had chased her. Observers were not supposed to help Potentials, yet he had done so. He despised her, and always had, so she could find no reason that would have compelled him to give her aid … unless his only purpose had been to shatter her dream.
    A violent shiver rattled Kestrel’s teeth and shook away her unsettling thoughts. She had been caught in the rain plenty of times while hunting, and knew what it was to be cold, even in the middle of summer, but the chill she felt now was closer to the bone-breaking frigidness felt on the frostiest nights of winter.
    Only the deep lacerations she had taken from the lion’s claws held any warmth at all—across her belly, her hip and shoulder, and more on her calf—but that warmth was a sharp, cruel heat that promised the looming sickness of flesh-rot.
    The night seemed to go on forever. As she hobbled along after Aiden, feeling sick and dizzy, she forced her sluggish mind to reconsider the idea of being cast from the village and cursed to seek solace, brief as it would be, in the Dead Lands. Was her chance to become a Red Hand really gone? Aiden had helped her, it was true, but he had not helped with the Kill—that seemed crucial to her—and she had no intention of letting him help her get home. That she was following him meant nothing and broke no rules. They were just two people taking the same path to the same place. The final judgment, of course, rested with the Elders. It gave her a little hope.
    She held the bundled lion skin wrapped tight around the beast’s head to her chest with shaking hands. She licked rainwater off her lips to wet her parched tongue, but that only made her thirstier. Her waterskin hung at her elbow, but she did not have the strength to lift it.
    Up ahead, Aiden said something over his shoulder.
    “What?” Kestrel croaked. It seemed impossible that only a few short hours ago she had been running up a ridgeline, tempting the lion to chase her to its doom.
    Aiden halted and spoke again.
    To Kestrel, it sounded as if he were underwater. Too weak to slow herself, she tottered