The Refuge Song Read Online Free

pale grass stretching for miles, and the sky so big that it seemed to have encroached on the earth itself. “Space? There’s nothing here but space. She doesn’t have to be in my face every moment.”
    I got no answer but the rasping of the grass in the wind, scratching at the underside of the sky, and the moistened scrape of Piper’s knife on the rabbit’s flesh as he finished the skinning.
    Zoe didn’t come back until after dawn. She ate in silence and slept on the far side of Piper, instead of her usual spot between us.
    I thought of what she’d said earlier: Once they’d made it to the island, most people never came back. Is it Piper she’s thinking of, I wondered, when the sea floods her sleeping mind? The sea that he crossed for the island, leaving her on her own, after all that she’d given up to be with him.

chapter 3
    I’d first heard Piper and Zoe mention Sally, and the Sunken Shore, when we were still in the deadlands. They were meant to be resting, but I could hear their raised voices from the lookout spot. It was dawn; I’d volunteered to take the first watch, but when I heard them arguing I left the lookout post and headed back to the fire.
    â€œI never wanted to drag Sally into this,” Zoe said.
    â€œWho?” I said.
    They both turned to face me. It was the same movement, doubled. And the same expression: the same angle to their eyebrows, the same appraising eyes. Even when they were arguing I felt like an intruder.
    Piper answered me. “We need a base, with someone we can trust. The safe-house network’s crumbling. Sally will give us shelter, so we can start to muster the resistance and send people to Cape Bleak to seek the ships. Outfit new ships, if we need.”
    â€œI’ve told you before,” said Zoe, still ignoring me and addressingonly Piper. “We can’t get Sally involved. We can’t ask her. It’s too dangerous.”
    â€œWho is she?” I asked.
    â€œZoe told you about how we got by, as kids, after we were split?”
    I nodded. They’d been raised in the east, where people used to let twins stay together a little longer. Piper had been ten when he’d been branded and exiled. She’d run away to follow him. The two of them had survived by stealing, working, and hiding, with some help from sympathetic Omegas along the way, before they’d finally joined the resistance.
    â€œSally was one of the people who helped us,” he said. “The first one. When we were really young, and needed it most.”
    It was hard to imagine Zoe and Piper needing help. But I reminded myself of how young they’d been—even younger than I’d been when my family sent me away.
    â€œShe took us in,” said Zoe. “Taught us everything. And she had a lot to teach. She was old when we found our way to her, but years before that she’d been one of the resistance’s best agents, working in Wyndham.”
    â€œIn Wyndham?” I thought I must have misheard. No Omegas were allowed to live in an Alpha town—let alone in Wyndham, the Council’s hub.
    â€œShe was an infiltrator,” said Piper.
    I looked from Zoe to Piper, and back again. “I’ve never heard of them,” I said.
    â€œThat was the idea,” Zoe said impatiently.
    â€œIt was the resistance’s most covert project,” Piper said. “It wouldn’t be possible these days. This was back when the Council was less strict about branding, especially out east. We’re talking about fifty years ago, at least. The resistance had managed to recruit a few unbranded Omegas, with deformations minor enough that they could be disguised, or hidden. For Sally, it was a malformed foot. She could jam it into a normal shoe, and she trained herself to walk straight on it. It hurt her like crazy, but she got away with it for more than two years. There were three infiltrators, right inside the Council