It had been an arranged mating, as was still often practiced in her clan. But she had thought he cared for her. They had shared their home, their bed.
Their children.
Kav had been as excited as she had when she became pregnant, in his cool, distant way. It made no sense to her that he could drop those emotions so completely as soon as they were inconvenient for him.
“How can you do this?” she cried at all three of them. Even in the throes of her fury and pain, she tried not to raise her voice to a scream, cognizant of the children in her arms. “How can you be a party to this? You know why they’re sending me away. How can you do it?”
The female enforcer was the only one who dropped her eyes as if in shame. Perhaps she saw her own possible futurein Cela, if she transgressed against the ironclad Griffin Island rules that she was tasked with enforcing.
“Be well, Cela,” Kav said suddenly. He raised a hand as if to touch her and then dropped it.
He had not touched her with kindness or care since she had announced that, if her babies must go into exile because they were not griffins, then she would go as well.
“Go,” Cela spat at him. “If you won’t help us, then don’t even look at me.”
Kav opened his mouth as if to speak again, then inclined his chin in a sharp nod. The cool mask of the clanlord of Covert Silvershell was back, regal and distant. Oh, how she had admired that proud resolve once—before she found herself on the receiving end of it.
“Let’s go,” the male enforcer said. “We’re done here.”
Kav shifted without another word. Cela couldn’t look at him as he sprang into the air and beat his wings, angling for home. She refused to gaze after him like an abandoned waif as he vanished into the storm.
Instead she looked at the two enforcers, who were clearly preparing to shift and leave as well. It began to sink in that she was about to be abandoned here, on this lonely headland with nothing except the babies in her arms and the small bundle of things she had been allowed to take with her.
“Wait—!” Her angry resolve began to crack into fear. She refused to run after them, crying like a fledgling, even as fear began to swamp her. “What do I do? Where do I go?”
“Do as all the young griffins on walkabout do,” the male enforcer said over his shoulder as he turned away. “There’s a bus stop at the bottom of this hill.”
“A what?” Cela asked in terror and bafflement.
He looked at his partner.
“She is from Covert Silvershell, remember?” the female enforcer said. She sounded sad. “They don’t do walkabout inthe human world like the rest of us. She’s never been off Griffin Island.”
Cela swallowed. She knew that her own covert—her clan—was considered backwards by the others. Most griffins spent a year or two in the human world as young adults, learning things about the outside world that they could bring back to the island to benefit all. Some of them, those who showed a particular aptitude for the outside world, became enforcers, who dealt with outsiders and handled threats to the island.
Cela had always secretly envied those other griffins with their adventures. They came back to the island with amazing new items, books and games and music, and stories of wonderful places and things on the mainland. She had desperately craved such things as tastingcakeand playingvideo gamesand riding on Ferris wheels. She’d read over and over again the handful of human books in her covert, learning about things like school and ice cream and Monopoly games and cars, and wishing she could see them.
Now she was going to have to deal with them, every last one of them, and she was terrified.
“Everyone figures it out,” the male said without sympathy. “Come on, Lirin. The storm is getting worse. We’d best be back to the island before the winds grow too strong.”
Lirin hesitated. The male enforcer sighed impatiently. He shifted back to his tiger-owl form and spread his wings with a great, cracking boom. Without hesitation, he launched himself from the headland, following Kav, who was already invisible in the pouring rain.
But Lirin lingered. Her gaze on Cela was sorrowful. Abruptly, with a quick glance after her partner, she walked over to where Cela stood ankle-deep in the scrubby grass, trying to balance the two wriggling babies.
“Here,” Lirin said. She knelt and picked up the plastic-wrapped bundle. “Take this. I know how you feel?—”
“No, you don’t,” Cela snapped at her. “How could you?”
“You’re right, I can’t understand entirely. But I know a little of what you’re feeling right now. My brother is an exile.”
Cela looked at her curiously. As a human, Lirin was taller than Cela, with the reddish hair that was common among many of the griffins on the island, twisted into a heavy water-damp braid down her back. She looked strong and capable in a way Cela envied. But there was also an old pain in her eyes.
“Do you want anything for your arm?” Lirin asked before Cela could think of what to say.
“No. It’ll heal.” The bleeding had already stopped. If only the bleeding in her heart could be stanched so easily. Cela pulled down her sleeve and shifted the carrier so she could reach out to take what Lirin was trying to give her.
The package was a little larger than a book, wrapped in a wet plastic bag. Cela put it under her cloak without looking at it, tucking it into the shoulder bag that carried the babies’ things.
