49

Black smoke rolling from the fires covers the daystar, and if there wasn’t the glow of orange embers, we wouldn’t know earth from sky. We walk quickly, Philia leading us, pink-skinned and tight-mouthed, her fists gripping the shoulder straps of her satchel.

Jadon walks to my left, his eyes tired, his face marked with scratches and bruises. “You’re making this worse for us,” he whispers. “They were just doing their jobs, following their commander. He ordered them to turn around, so they did.”

“I don’t know where you’re from,” I snap, “but even the glued-together fragmented memory of wherever the fuck I’m from tells me that we don’t kill Renrians.”

Eyes wide, Jadon says, “So you kill the emperor’s son ?”

“Is there any evidence that I did?” I ask, incredulous.

Jadon’s eyes narrow. “No. You burned everything down, and then you burned it again.”

And I’d go back to do it again, but I have no time or desire to move backward, not when there is a colorful string tugging at me, not when there’s a moth fluttering around my head every now and then, telling me, “Come, Lady.”

Every time that happens, Jadon sees me nod to the moth and whisper, “Thank you.” A few times, our eyes meet, and even though he’s angry with me, his open demeanor suggests he believes that I’m communicating with something, that we’re not walking aimlessly around Vallendor, that Olivia just may be at the end of this tugging and these moth-guides.

Nothing stands out in the world around us. Brown. Dry. Dead. Old bird nests, toppled and caught in between branches. Gopher holes pock the dirt road, no gopher’s head poking from them. The sky is the color of foamy dirt, and on the side of the road, boulders the same—

A raven.

My skin chills as the death bird’s obsidian eyes fix on me with an unsettling intelligence. The wind carries a whisper, a faint echo of foreboding that sends shivers down my spine. Anxiety knots in my stomach.

Is this the raven that warned me at the entrance of Caerno Woods?

This raven caws, his cry echoing through the stillness of the forest. “Prepare, Lady . I see death. Close.”

This is not the same raven.

“Is there danger ahead?” I ask.

“Always.” The raven jumps from the boulder and hops along the road in my direction, his beady eyes fixed on me. “There is only death here.”

“For which one of us?” My pulse races. I’ve already lost Veril. Losing another one of my companions—my friends—would destroy me.

“Him. In the end.”

My mouth dries, and my eyebrows crumple. “The end of what? This road? This trip?”

The raven spreads his wings and takes flight.

I track the bird until he disappears into the night sky.

Jadon says, “What’s wrong?” He looks to the sky, too, but the raven is long gone.

“Be on guard,” I say.

Philia says, “Okay.”

Jadon narrows his eyes. “Aren’t I always?”

I swallow, flick my gaze at the sky again. I can’t tell him what the raven said. I find it difficult to believe it myself. I turn back to the road and lose myself in thoughts, trying, though, not to think of the raven’s warning, but to force my mind to rest, force the dull thuds to ease.

Pushing past the food and tonics, I search my bag as I walk, finding the leather journal that Veril left behind. The faded black leather is silky soft, the pages between thick and bleached white. Drawings and sketches of birds—including cardinals, ravens, and daxinea. Recipes to treat melancholy and anxiety, sore throats and toothaches. And several pages dedicated to a poem written in his hand.

In a land where stars make pearls,

A heroine awakens; her soul unfurls.

Through realms unknown, her path lies bare,

A future that she cannot share.

There are four separate poems and fifth he’d just started—a single line on its own page:

In the realm where shadows pale,

I trace my fingers over Veril’s assured handwriting. Even if this is the last of the stanzas, this elegy must be completed.

I’ll do it.

I push my hand through my hair, and my hand comes away with a clump of curls caught between my fingers. I stare at this bundle of dry and loose hair, gulping and shuddering as I let it drift from my hold. My mind stalls, blown out by thinking about all the exertion to come, thinking about what else is dying, not just my hair, but my spine and my heart.

Stop. Don’t think about that.

“Hey,” Jadon says, walking beside me now.

“Hey.” I keep my eyes fixed on the road.

He holds out a small bundle wrapped in cloth. “Here.”

“What is it?” I ask, taking the parcel.

“You like honeycakes,” he says, “but I like these more.”

Philia slows to walk with us, excited to see something besides this dreary landscape.

I unwrap the bundle and press a hand to my cheek in surprise.

Two apricot-cocoa cookies.

“I’d never eaten them until Veril baked them,” Jadon says.

I drop my head. “And now you give them to me?”

“We can’t move ahead,” Jadon says, “if we’re angry at each other. The last thing I want right now is you being angry at me.”

I’m touched by his gesture. I offer a cookie to Philia.

She stares at the sweet treat before taking a bite. “We need each other,” she says, “now more than ever.”

Even though uncertainty still churns in my core, I whisper my thanks to Jadon. The cookie is dry, but that dollop of apricot preserves keeps it sweet, keeps it from becoming sand.

While we stop to eat cookies, Philia unrolls the map and slowly turns around to survey the land. She points to the sky over our left shoulders. “The smoke from the fires is there.”

A smudge of gray sky.

“Before that…” She moves her finger to the left and stops. “That hill in front of the three hills behind it? That’s where we ran from that aburan.” She peers at the stretch of flat land between the woods and the base of those hills on the map and mutters to herself and slowly turns to her left and nods. “We’re going in the right direction.”

Jadon pushes his dark hair from his forehead. “Glad you’re good with maps, Phily.”

“Me, too, Philia.” I keep myself from snorting even though the tug in my core and the moths have already confirmed that we’re going in the right direction. If it makes mortals feel better to see with their own eyes so that it’s really real , then fine, let them.

“If I’d known we’d have to leave Maford so quickly,” Philia says, “I would’ve prepared better and brought my bow and arrow.”

“It’s a good thing your mother taught you a thing or two about knives,” I say. “Girls should know how to put down monsters that walk on two feet and beasts that walk on four.”

Jadon’s brow furrows. “What are we talking about? Monsters on two feet?”

I squinch my nose. “You had to be there.” I smile at Philia. “We’ll find you a bow and arrows in Caburh, then.”

Pleased, Philia smiles, and her eyes crinkle at the corners.

We head out again, and even though I can’t see it in the oppressive darkness, somewhere behind us, black smoke still roils to the sky—the embers from my fire will never be extinguished. Let it serve as a warning: the Lady of the Verdant Realm will not hesitate to mete out punishment for acts of cruelty.

I search the skies for cardinals who serve Elyn. She must’ve seen that blight in the sky. She has to know what I’ve done.

I am not who I used to be.

I hope that is a good thing, especially if the old me has turned on my family and friends, especially if the old me did bring about death and destruction in the way Elyn has charged.

Yes, I killed Sinth and the soldiers who fought for him, but only after they’d killed Veril. I’ve yet to start a fight.

Am I not supposed to win? And if I were such an awful person, Sybel wouldn’t have sought me out to defeat the One and win the game to save the realm.

Then again, I don’t think Elyn wants me to win anything. And really: I don’t care what she wants. I want what I want: to protect those who deserve the chance to grow and learn, to believe what they want and not force others to comply or die. I want to save those creatures that were born to order—like the horses, the ravens, and Milo. I want to return creatures who are otherworldly here—the battabies and battawhale—and transport them to the places they belong. I will save Vallendor for each of them.

No, I am not the same since my arrival in Maford.

And whoever I was before coming to Maford…I am not her, either.