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

forward. As she came closer to him, he seemed to fragment and puff apart. She tried to stop but could not. Her knees came unhinged, and then she was floating forward into blackness.

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
     
     
     
     
     
    When Kestrel opened her eyes, she felt warm, despite the chill gray light of dawn just beginning to seep through the pines towering above her. The storm had passed, but it would be an hour or more before daylight revealed if the day would be fair or overcast. Being late summer, she guessed the former. It would be a month or more before the frosty mornings around Reaptime began to signal the nearness of coming winter.
    She heard a gurgling stream off to one side, and to the other she saw the fitful light of a fire. The smell of roasting meat filled her nostrils, and she turned her head to find Aiden sitting cross-legged on the far side of the blaze, using his teeth to tear charred flesh off a bone.
    “What happened?” she asked, her throat raw, hoarse. Other than that, she felt better than she had the previous night—not much better, but she would take what the Ancestors gave her. She raised her head a little, noting that he had cooked the rabbits she snared the day before—those she had used to tempt the lion to chase her up the mountain.
    Aiden tossed the bone in the fire and watched it turn black, before raising his eyes. They were gray like hers, and empty of all but a familiar glimmer of scorn. “You fainted.”
    “I didn’t!”
    “Is there another name for falling on your face?”
    As often happened when he criticized her, her tongue froze as hard as her brain. Eventually everything would thaw, and she would find an appropriate answer, hours or days later, but by then it would be too late.
    Shame and anger warred inside her. She hated that he alone could make her feel so useless, foolish, and … unworthy . She hated more, especially right now, that she still loved him. Not just because he was her brother, but also because he was the perfect example of a Red Hand, and all that she had worked so hard to become.
    She struggled to sit up. “The lion fought well, but I defeated it. After the Bone Tree ceremony, I’ll be named a Red Hand.” Still unsure if that day would ever come, she did not say it with as much confidence as she intended.
    Aiden snorted and shook his shaved head. “You call that a victory?” he said, gesturing at her bandages and clothes. It was then that she noticed he had re-bandaged her wounds and applied poultices filled with healing herbs. Splatters of mud, pine needles, and old blood covered the rest of her. Aiden added, “You look like a mountain fell on you.”
    “I fought with only a knife,” she reminded him.
    “Is that a boast, or an excuse for almost getting yourself killed?” He went on, raising his voice over hers when she tried to protest. “Many Potentials have fought lions with knives. Others have fought wolves, and even bears.”
    “And many have died in the attempt.”
    “Those who died were weak. Losing the weak makes the tribe stronger.” Firelight played across Aiden’s angular features, danced in his flat stare. Most backed down from that expression. Only their father did not. If she had not grown up with Aiden, she might have backed down herself. Still, it took all of her courage to hold her ground.
    “What if those who died weren’t weak or foolish, but just unlucky?”
    Aiden leaned closer. “And what if you were just lucky?”
    Kestrel felt her cheeks redden. How could she deny the question? She remembered all too well how she had stumbled the last time she and the lion clashed. If she had not, the beast would have ripped her head off with a powerful swipe of its claws. If that was not luck, then what was?
    Aiden sat back, a smirk twisting his lips at the sight of her doubt and confusion. “Don’t worry, little sister, I won’t tell anyone what I saw in that meadow.”
    Kestrel’s heart sped up a little. If he did not intend to tell