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have to go,” she told Jory. “There was a girl unconscious in the caravan wreck. I brought her back with Micah and left her at my house. I need to check on her.”
    Jory nodded. He looked like he was still in shock. “Does she need a healer?” he asked.
    “I don’t think so,” Piper said. “But … will you tell me if Micah—if anything changes?” She didn’t want to think the worst and tried to block the thought that Micah could die from her mind.
    “I will.” Jory had already turned away, his attention fixed on his brother.
    Piper wiped her face. There was nothing more she could do. Reluctantly, she slipped out the door.
    Piper’s steps got heavier as she trudged back to her house. Her ankle still ached, but she didn’t think it was a bad sprain. When she was finally home, she locked and barred the door behind her, pressed her back against it, and slid to the floor in a quivering heap. Through her tears, she saw that the girl was still asleep by the stove, her chest rising and falling in a regular rhythm.
    Exhausted, Piper curled up on her side, burying herself deep in her dad’s coat. The worn fabric used to smell like him, his warmth, but now all she smelled was her own sweat and sour echoes of the green dust. She closedher eyes and tried to shut it all out, to bring back her father. Eventually, she fell asleep.
    She woke to a mewling cry. Piper sat up stiffly, her back against the door, hand reaching instinctively for her knife. Her mind was still fuzzy, but through the haze, she saw the girl thrashing and twisting under the blanket. Her eyes were closed. She must have been having a nightmare.
    “No! No, keep it away!” she cried. Her voice was terribly hoarse—Piper barely understood the words. The girl pawed the air frantically, reaching toward the hot stove.
    Piper scrambled across the floor and got hold of the girl’s hands. That only made things worse. The girl fought back with wild punches. Piper took a hit to the eye and saw stars. All the while, the girl’s cries grew louder. The house had thin walls; Piper was glad all the townspeople were out in the fields. If they’d been at home, someone was bound to think she was beating the girl.
    “Stop it!” Piper hissed as the girl continued to thrash in her sleep. “You’re safe, do you hear me? Listen, the scrapper you’re punching is the one who saved you!” She dodged another blow. “One more like that and I swear—” Flailing knuckles glanced off her jaw. “I should have left you in that field!” Piper was too tired and worried to deal with this mess.
    For all her wild terror, the girl was still weak and Piper finally got a secure hold on her. With soothing motions, she rubbed the girl’s trembling hands, trying to show her that she wasn’t dangerous. Gradually, her cries grew fainter, and Piper began to relax her hold. She pushed up the sleeve of the girl’s dress, intending to check her pulse, and gasped.
    Inked on the girl’s forearm was a tattoo roughly the size of a matchbook. The design was a dragonfly, but instead of a normal insect, this one was made of mechanical parts. Transparent wings veined with iridescent wires and minuscule springs curled around the girl’s arm. Gears and cogs composed its multifaceted eyes, and the dragonfly’s metallic green body was a piston that tapered toward the bend of her elbow. A skilled artist had painted the dark-haired woman on Micah’s music box, but whoever had done the dragonfly design was a true master. The inks alone had to have cost a fortune.
    It was the mark of the Dragonfly.
    Piper had never seen one, but she’d heard of the famous tattoos. The mechanical dragonfly was the symbol of Aron, the king of the Dragonfly territories, which lay directly to the south of the Merrow Kingdom.
    The two powers had been rivals for as long as anyone could remember, competing over resources and land, with the Merrow Kingdom usually being the more aggressive. In fact, rumor had it the