My mind raced, searching for an advantage, a way to use the land against them—the dogs. We had to break our scent trail. I scanned the darkness, my eyes searching for a sign, and then I heard it—the faint but steady sound of falling water. Water washes away scent. It masks sound. Driven by that single, desperate thought, I changed our direction, dragging Caio toward the sound. It led us to a wall of rock slick with moisture, almost completely hidden behind a curtain of thick, hangingmoss that thrives in perpetual damp. A small fissure came into sight.
I pushed him inside, into the damp, earthy darkness, before collapsing at the entrance, listening. My whole body trembled, not from cold but from the adrenaline that had nowhere left to go. I held my breath, straining to hear past the drumming of the nearby waterfall. For a full minute, there was nothing but water and the frantic thumping of my blood in my ears. Then, faintly, I heard them—the shouts of the men, farther away now, moving past our position. The dogs sounded confused, their barks receding down the ravine. They had missed us.
Only then did I allow myself a single, shuddering breath. The immediate danger had passed, but the silence it left behind was somehow heavier.
I crawled back into the cramped space. In the gloom, I could just make out his face, pale and slick with sweat.
“We did it,” Caio whispered, his voice hoarse with a mixture of disbelief and triumph. “Luzia, we actually did it.”
His words, meant to be a comfort, were a spark on dry tinder. I stared at theSussuron, its ornate carvings mocking me.
“No,” I said, the word hollow. “We failed.”
“What are you talking about? We have theSussuron!”
“The full moon,” I choked out, the reality crashing down on me with the force of a physical blow. “It’s gone. We missed it. The flower… the ritual… it’s useless now.”
The failure was absolute. I could never go home. I was an exile. In a single night, I had lost my sister’s only hope and my entire world.
All of this had been for nothing. I looked at the useless wooden box. It didn’t feel like a prize. It felt like a tombstone, marking the death of all my hope. And it was the heaviest thing I had ever carried.
CHAPTER 27
Caio
My thoughts, usually a comfort, were a chaotic swamp. I tried to focus on botany, on the potential alkaloid properties of theFlor da Lua,but the logic dissolved into waves of nausea. TheSussuron—a hollow prize now that we had missed the full moon.
A single, deliberate footstep sounded on wet leaves nearby, and I inhaled sharply. Someone was moving with a hunter’s patience, someone who knew how to walk in the jungle without announcing their presence.
Luzia’s body went rigid. Her hand crept to a loose, heavy rock at her side.
A silhouette blotted out the faint light from the entrance. He didn’t storm in. He ducked under the hanging moss with an air of theatrical triumph. It was Silva. His clothes were torn and mud-stained, but his smug smile was perfectly intact. He held a pistol, and it was aimed squarely at my chest.
“A commendable effort,” he said, his voice smooth and utterly out of place. “Truly. I almost admire the tenacity.” Hegestured with the pistol towards theSussuron. “But the game is over. Hand it to me.”
Luzia didn’t move. “You are trespassing on sacred land,” she said, her voice a low growl.
Silva laughed a short, ugly bark. “Sacred? It’s a patch of dirt with overgrown weeds. A resource. And you are a trespasser in my operation.” His eyes flicked to her, dismissing her. “Now, theSussuron. Before my patience wears thin.”
That was his mistake. He saw her as an obstacle. He didn’t see the centuries of rage she was channeling, the fury of a people whose home had been violated one too many times.
She moved in an explosive motion with a speed that defied the cramped space. Silva, so confident, was caught completely off guard. He squeezed off a shot, but she was already on him. The bullet went wide, the report deafening in the enclosed cave. The rock in her hand came down hard on his wrist, and he cried out as the pistol clattered to the floor.
She was on top of him, a whirlwind of righteous fury. Her hands were at his throat, her thumbs pressing down. Silva’s face began to turn a dark, mottled red, his eyes bulging with shock and terror. She was going to kill him. She was going to crush his windpipe and leave him here to rot. And a dark part of me, the part that had just fought for breath on a muddy riverbank, thought.Good. He deserves it.
But that wasn’t who we were. It couldn’t be.
“Luzia!” I yelled, my voice cracking. I pushed myself forward. “Don’t! Don’t kill him! You’ll be no better than he is!”
She looked at me, her face a mask of pure, undiluted hatred. For a second, I thought she hadn’t heard me, that she was too far gone. Silva’s legs kicked feebly.
“We survive,” I gasped, repeating my own words back to her. “That’s how we win. Not like this.”
Her grip loosened but only slightly. The dilemma hung in the air, thick and suffocating. We couldn’t kill him, but we couldn’t let him go.
“He’s right. Killing him here is messy.”
The voice came from the entrance—calm, steady, and full of authority. We both looked up. Zé stood there, flanked by two of the local guards. He wasn’t looking at us. His eyes were fixed on the sputtering, gasping form of Silva on the cave floor.
