Chapter 1

ONE

Turi didn’t mind night patrol duty. The sogfrut fields were quiet. The air was cool. She could walk between the rows of thorny, fruit-bearing vines and be alone with her thoughts. Turi had no shortage of thoughts about life in Settlement 112-1. Every time she looked up at the sky and saw the swirling, ever-present vortex that was the home of the Axis—their supreme rulers, their gods, their masters —she wondered why they had to answer to these cruel beings whom they never saw, but who controlled them through an overseer who resided in a black fortress on cliffs overlooking the settlement. All the Axis did was take their food and make demands.

She had learned to keep most of her critical thoughts to herself. Nothing good came from voicing them. All she got was punishments and extra duties. But night patrol was never a burden, even when she was made to do it in the name of discipline. Her only job was to keep cibrats away from the sogfrut . The only hard part of that was staying awake the whole night. Cibrats were small and harmless. They scampered away at the sound of footsteps, but left to run amok, they could severely damage crops.

Her stomach dropped at the sight of one of the traps her brother set. It had been set off and huddled inside the small cage were two juvenile cibrats . The small, furry creatures pinned their huge ears to the backs of their heads as Turi approached the trap. They huddled together, faces smeared with the red juice of the sogfrut they were gorging themselves on.

She crouched before the cage, slapping a bug that came to sting her neck where her designation number, 224-E, which had been imprinted on her skin shortly after birth, read in blue ink below her ear.

“What were you two thinking?” she asked the little creatures in a chiding voice. They couldn’t understand her, but they let out whimpers and gazed up at her with huge dark eyes. She’d seen these two before. She’d released them from this very trap the week before. A mournful whine came from the dead brush beside the field. The little ones’ mother crouched there, staring helplessly as her babies quivered in the trap.

Turi’s brother and father would kill these two immediately, if they were on patrol, but she never had the heart to do it. The cibrats were just trying to survive, like her own people were. Like all the living things in these miserable settlements were. She lifted the cage and shook her head. “Stay out of these things,” she scolded. “You won’t be so lucky if my brother finds you in here.”

The two little ones bolted for the brush where their mother waited. Turi gathered up the partly eaten sogfrut that the babies had left and tossed them into the brush with the little cibrat family. The mother gathered them up and stuffed them in her pouch as her babies burrowed their little heads under her fur. “Keep them out of the traps,” Turi said to the mother, wishing the creature could understand her. The mother cibrat let out a quiet, relieved coo and melted into the shadows with her little ones.

Turi sighed and carefully plucked two ripe sogfrut from the vines, pricking herself in the process, to reset the trap. Her brother and father couldn’t know that she had spared the two “pests.” She’d be forced to kill one as punishment and that was an experience she didn’t want to repeat. According to her father, Turi was too soft, too curious, and questioned the way things were way too much.

Still, living on her family’s farm was better than what would be coming for her in a few short years. Once she came of fertile age, her father would choose a betrothed from another settlement and she’d be sent there to live, work, and breed for the rest of her life. At the age of twenty-two, her time was running short. Every day she inspected her hair for signs of color. When the black strands changed to a different color—probably blue, like her mother’s—and gold spots appeared on her forehead and spine, her time here would come to an end. She’d be considered ready to mate and produce offspring. Her two sisters were already gone. Turi was the last female.

After cursing and sucking on her pricked finger for a moment, she rose to continue her patrol, confident that those cibrats wouldn’t venture out into the fields any more that night. There were still filbats and irgs to keep an eye out for, and they could be quite nasty sometimes. But nothing stirred in the fields. Not a sound. Not a rustle. Not even the wind dared to blow.

The quiet of it all put Turi’s senses on alert. Then, she heard the flapping of great wings. She looked up to see a dark shape temporarily blot out the light of two of the planet’s three moons. Massive wings spread out impossibly wide, carrying a long, powerful body overhead. It was the overseer, flying quietly above her. She ducked on instinct, dropping into a crouch and covering her head with her arms. Had he seen that she’d given precious sogfrut to cibrats and spared their little lives? Would she face punishment?

The overseer glided by without pausing and disappeared from sight. Turi wanted to run back to the house, which was quite far away, but she’d get no comfort from her father. He would send her right back out to finish her shift, so she waited. Listening. Every sense attuned to the possibility of the overseer’s return.

Instead of the heavy beat of wings, the sounds of the field gradually returned to normal. The breeze picked up. The creatures that roamed at night resumed their nocturnal noises. Turi uncurled and rose, looking warily up, not at the Axis’ vortex, which curled around the sky even now, but for the overseer and his ever-watchful eye. He came to the settlement infrequently, but each time he did it was as memorable and terrifying as the scaled being’s appearance.

The rest of the night passed without incident. Morning came with red and purple streaks across the horizon, turning the Axis’ vortex into a dark, foreboding blemish on the otherwise beautiful sky. Turi returned home, tired. Her feet hurt. Her belly ached with emptiness. As she trudged up to her family’s home, she saw her father and brother standing before the door. Their heads were tilted. Arms were crossed. With them stood two Riests, the holy men of the settlement. One of them held a book filled with images and they turned the pages slowly and carefully, examining each one. All four males heard her approach and turned to her, brows low.

Turi’s stomach turned to ice. “Father?”

“Do you know anything about this?” her father asked, pointing to a symbol burned into the wood of the front door. As her attention had been on the group congregated in front of the door, she hadn’t seen it until now. The air still held the faint smell of burned wood. Her knees almost gave out in fear. It was an elegant-looking mark, like a stylized dragon head in a circle, seared precisely in the center of the door.

The blood drained from her head. “N-no. What is it?”

He didn’t believe her. She could see that plain enough. “The Riests are trying to decipher its meaning,” her father replied. “It was put here by the overseer last night.”

“Oh?” Sweet fek , he’d seen her. The overseer knew what she had done and—and cursed her home, or something like that. Her mouth turned dry as dust. “That’s…strange.”

Her brother, Seggiat, advanced on her. “What happened in the fields last night, Turi?”

“N-nothing,” she stammered out. “It was a calm night. No problems. Nothing to report.”

Seggiat’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You’d better not be lying, or I’ll advise Father to marry you off before you’ve reached maturity. You’re always causing problems.”

Turi backed away. “I did nothing,” she said weakly. “There was nothing to see. I don’t know—”

“Leave the girl be,” said a new voice. Her tall, blue-haired mother came around from the side of the house, basket in hand. “Wait for the Riests to make their inspection.”

“Silence, female,” snarled Turi’s father. “Your word is meaningless here.”

Her mother stood taller, well used to being dismissed by her harsh mate. She placed a hand on Turi’s back. “It will be okay, child,” she whispered.

Turi leaned into her mother’s strength and straightened her spine. “I did nothing wrong.”

“We’ll see,” snapped Seggiat as he turned toward the Riests, who murmured excitedly over one particular page in the book they pored over.

One of the Riests straightened his red hat and turned to her father. His robes swished with the force of his movement. “Excellent news, Tregit. This is a symbol of protection, bestowed on the land you farm.”

“Protection from the overseer himself,” added the other Riest. “It means you won’t be troubled by pests who would come to bother your crops.”

Her father stared at the Riests in disbelief. “Protection? Why would he bestow such an honor upon us?”

The first Riest closed the book and held it against his fine white robes. “Only the overseer knows why.” But he turned his gaze to Turi. “Are you sure you saw nothing unusual last night, girl?”

She shook her head. “I saw the overseer fly overhead, but that was all.”

The Riests stared at her hard. “He didn’t speak to you? He didn’t come down from the sky and…dally with you?”

Turi knew what the Riest was implying and her entire being shook at the thought. “No,” she replied with force. “He flew overhead. That was all.”

“Funny you didn’t mention that when Seggiat asked you if anything happened last night,” her father said. “Makes me wonder what else you’re not being honest about.”

Her body began to shake—from frustration, exhaustion, hunger, and outrage. “The overseer didn’t speak to me. He didn’t do anything to me,” she all but shouted. “I don’t know why he put that mark on the door.”

“That’s that, then,” said her mother, whose hand closed around Turi’s wrist. “The girl needs a meal and sleep after a long night.”

Tregit’s face darkened with anger. “Female, know your place.”

“Instead of interrogating her, perhaps we should be thanking her for making a good impression on the overseer. Perhaps he saw her work through the night and is rewarding the hard work of this family to keep the farm running well for the glory of the Axis.”

Her father let out a snort, but nodded grudgingly. “Perhaps.”

“Thanks to Turi, we need not worry about cibrats , filbats or irgs ,” her mother said. “Now, we let the girl rest.”

Her father didn’t say anything as her mother guided her through the knot of males and into the house, but his face made it clear how much he disliked being spoken to like that by a female. Turi knew exactly where she’d gotten her tenacity from. It never served her well. It hadn’t served her mother well, either. “He’ll punish you for standing up for me,” she said quietly when they were inside.

Her mother shrugged. “I know my life,” she said, guiding Turi to the table and pushing a bowl of mashed knogrot in front of her. “I know the male I’m bound to.”

Turi winced and devoured the food. “It’s not right that they treat us like spoiled sogfrut . We deserve to be treated as well as the males and not just as…breeders.”

The weariness in her mother’s eyes was always there, but so was a sharpness that Turi always saw as hopeful. Her father had not squashed her mother’s spirit. It burned as bright as ever, but just then, there was a particular intensity to the pale gold gaze that focused on her. “My daughter, be very careful with the overseer. There is no more dangerous game than gaining the attention of the Axis.”

Turi sighed and closed her eyes. “I had no interaction with the overseer. I am telling you the truth, Mother. He flew overhead. Didn’t stop or even pause. I crouched in fear until he left. That is all that happened.”

The expression on her mother’s face turned sad. She ran a hand gently down Turi’s black hair. “You made an impression on him, somehow. Let us hope the blessing he bestowed on our home does not turn into a tragedy for you, Turi.”

Turi ate the rest of her meal and went to bed, but sleep came slow and unsteadily. The worry and foreboding in her mother’s voice haunted her. The overseer had seen her spare the cibrats . She had no doubt about that, now. But instead of punishing her for it, he’d rewarded her. It made her wonder if perhaps the overseer was not as coldhearted as he seemed. She dreamed about a dark, winged male flying overhead, but instead of cowering in fear, she lifted her arms and was pulled up into the sky.