Author: Jodi Meadows

I checked on my SED. The earthquakes had been large, but not as massive as that first one.

“It’s getting bad there,” Whit muttered.

“Anything from Orrin?” Stef asked.

“I got a message from him earlier. He said there’s a fever going around, and they’ve had to stop traveling. Rin is treating everyone as best as she can, but it’s difficult without access to the medicine she’s used to.”

“Are the newsouls okay?” The question was out before I realized.

Whit and Stef both looked up at me, as though they’d forgotten I was here. Sam sat near them, but not with; he just stared at his hands, miserable.

“The newsouls don’t have the fever,” Whit said after a hesitation. “They’ll be fine. They’re hard to hurt, like you.”

He was wrong. All I did anymore was hurt.

Whit handed out bowls of soup. I took mine without comment, eating while I listened to Stef and Whit speculate about what kind of fever the others might have. And I watched Sam, hunched over his bowl and seeming deep in thought. When he contributed to the conversation, he seemed only half there.

Five minutes before Sarit usually called, I ducked outside and hid behind an evergreen tree. Through the sharp-smelling needles, I could see the tent and the light creeping around the edges of it, but I had a little privacy.

Snow drifted between the trees, making me shiver, but I didn’t want to talk inside the tent. If I did, the others would be awkward and I’d just . . . I’d fall apart.

Her call came ten minutes late.

“Sarit.” I sounded maybe a little too relieved. “I was worried you wouldn’t be able to call. We’re at the edge of the signal now. Tomorrow I won’t be able to get you.”

“Ana.” Her voice was oddly low, sober. “Ana, what is everyone doing right now?”

“I—” I glanced through the veil of pine needles, but the tent flap was closed. I couldn’t see anything. “Talking, I guess. I’m outside. They’re inside. What’s wrong?”

Her voice caught, as though she was trying not to cry. “Okay, I need you to go in there. I need you to talk to them for a minute.”

“What’s going on?” My chest constricted with worry. But I stood, shivering in the snowfall and clenching my mittened hand around my SED.

“Please. So I can tell you all at once.”

“Okay.” My dread for her news outweighed my dread of going into the tent again. Even so, the way Stef and Whit looked at me as I entered—and the way Sam didn’t look at me—stung so much I wanted to turn and run back out. I closed the flap behind me and knelt. Cris shifted nearer to me. “Sarit needs to tell everyone something.”

They looked at me now. Even Sam.

I balanced my SED on my knee and tapped the speaker function so they could all hear the way her breath caught and trembled. She was crying. “All right, Sarit.” My voice was deeper now, too, filled with foreboding. “Go ahead.”

“It’s Armande,” she said. “Deborl caught him after one of the earthquakes today. Armande is dead.”

16

TOWER

THERE WASN’T MUCH to say after that. Stef and Whit asked a few questions, which Sarit answered as best she could. Sam just buried his face in his hands, motionless during the entire conversation.

I wanted to hold him, but when I touched his shoulder, he slumped as though the weight of my hand was too much.

“He’s not coming back,” Sam said. “He’s gone forever.”

He was right. For Armande, it no longer mattered whether we stopped Janan. Either way, Armande was a darksoul now.

“We learned what Deborl is having people build, though.” Grief choked Sarit’s voice. “It’s a cage. An enormous cage, big enough to fit a baby troll inside.”

“That’s it?” Stef shook her head. “There were more parts than just a floor, ceiling, and bars. That can’t be all he’s building.”

“More importantly,” Whit said, “what is he building it for?”

“I don’t know.” Sarit sounded young and alone and frightened. Armande had been like a father to all of us. He was Sam’s father in this life.

When Stef and Whit were finished talking, Sarit said good-bye to them, and I sneaked outside once more with my SED. I didn’t make it back to the tree, though. Just stopped halfway there, unable to control the tears coursing down my cheeks.

Armande was gone. I’d never again see him, hug him. He’d never again open his pastry stall in the market field and feed me muffin after muffin, as though terrified I wouldn’t eat enough without his constant vigilance.

“What are you going to do?” My voice shook with grief and winter.

“I don’t know.” Our connection crackled, reminding me of the distance between us, reminding me we wouldn’t be able to talk after tonight. “I don’t know. A few people have tried standing up to Deborl, but most of them get put in prison. Maybe I can get them out. Or maybe . . . I don’t know. I’ll keep hiding. Keep up with what they’re building. Maybe I can figure out what the rest of the parts are for. I just have no clue.”

Everything in me ached for her. She was alone, hiding in Heart without anyone to console her or help her through this grief. “Just be safe,” I whispered. “Do whatever it takes to be safe.”

“I wish I were with you.” Her voice trembled. “I wish I’d gone with you.”

“Me too.”

I’ll call you every night.” Her voice caught on the words. She was trying to sound strong. “I’ll call every night until you come back.”

“And then you’ll stop calling?”

She let out a strangled laugh. “Yeah, then I’ll stop calling.”

A few minutes later, we clicked off.

I stood outside, weeping in the snow until I heard everyone in the tent climb into their sleeping bags. Only when I was certain they were asleep did I sneak back in and shiver myself warm.

The next week was a thousand times lonelier than those before it.

Thunder cracked, startling everyone awake.

We hurried out of our sleeping bags and scrambled for the door to the tent, but the sky was clear and deep blue with coming dawn. Sylph hovered around our campsite, warming the air.

The thunder didn’t return. Whit and Stef pushed back inside the tent to start breakfast, but Sam remained by the door, glaring at the sky as if his life depended on it. The thunder hadn’t been real thunder.

I wanted to reassure him somehow, but I had no words. Only the same awkwardness we’d carried since my birthday.

“Go inside with the others. I’ll fill up the water bottles.” Apparently, I couldn’t manage reassurance. Just instructions and letting someone know where I’d be. After I’d wandered out on my birthday and Cris had come after me, Whit had pulled me aside and lectured me about telling people where I was going. If I insisted on going after dragons, then I’d best not get myself killed out of stupidity.

Sam looked at me. Sort of through me. He nodded. “If you see anything, come right back.” There was a note of concern in his voice, but mostly he sounded hollow. He’d been worse since Armande died.

I put on my coat and boots and headed into the woods with an armful of empty water bottles. A few sylph trailed after me and hung close as I broke ice and filled the bottles in a fast-moving creek. While I worked, sylph dipped tendrils of shadow into the full bottles and boiled the water clean.

We were almost finished when thunder cracked again.

I glanced at Cris, my eyebrow raised, but he didn’t move. The other sylph, too, remained motionless as the snap of leather wings came again.

Above, I saw only pine boughs, stark against the infinite blue.

And then, just to the east, a sinuous body flitted above the trees, darkening the fragmented sky.

I placed the last water bottle on the snowy ground. “Will one of you take me to see it?”

Cris dithered, and the other sylph hung back awkwardly.

“If you won’t take me, I’ll just go see it myself and possibly get lost again.” I started walking, but after only a few steps, I turned and pointed at Cris. “Don’t tell the others. I don’t want them to scold me when I’m not even getting into trouble.”

Sullenly, the sylph trailed after me as I followed the occasional crack of wings.

Cris sidled up next to me. -Consider yourself scolded.-

I smirked and swatted at him, but a knot in my chest loosened a little. Whether or not he agreed with my plan, Cris still liked me. He and the other sylph stuck closer to me than my real shadow.

At last, we came to a break in the woods, and a cliff overlooking a white valley. Trees huddled under the weight of snow, majestic and silent. Above the valley, three dragons flew.

Their serpentine bodies slithered through the air, gliding without sound until they flapped their wings, which stretched as wide as their bodies were long. A deceptively delicate network of bones and scales shone translucent when a dragon veered and twisted toward the rising sun.

I gasped and took a step back into the woods. The dragons were so huge. After a year, I’d forgotten how big they were. But seeing them fill the sky as they flew through the air, my heart stumbled on itself. Templedark was not far behind us. I’d seen too many dragons then, seen the way they spit acid on the fields of the agricultural quarter or tried to land atop the city wall. One had been leaning over Sam and Stef to kill them when I arrived.

I’d almost seen a dragon kill Sam.

My heart ached as I stared at the sky and lowered myself to my knees. I couldn’t stand anymore. I couldn’t think anymore. I could only watch as a dragon switched course and dove into the valley, its wings folded along its sides. The immense golden beast disappeared into the forest for a heartbeat, then erupted a short ways beyond with a deer in its jaws. Ice and snow and branches sprayed behind it, having been caught up in the dragon’s path.

“Oh, Cris.” My words were hardly a breath. Just mist on the frigid air. “How am I supposed to even get close enough to one to speak to it?”

Cris curled around me, warm but silent. He offered no advice.

I couldn’t bring myself to move from this spot. Snow soaked through my layers of clothes, but Cris and the other sylph stuck close, keeping me from shivering.

Soon I’d have to go back to camp. To Sam, Stef, and Whit. And I would have to tell them that I’d seen dragons and I had no idea what to do now. The dragons were hunting in the forest below. They must have had keen eyes to see that deer. And unlike the roc, they had no trouble diving into the forest.

They could snatch us up, too.

“We’re going to need extra cover,” I whispered. “We definitely don’t want to be caught in the open. Even in the forest, we’ll need to avoid looking like food.”

Cris nodded, trilling softly by my ear. -We will protect you.-

“Thank you.” I lowered my eyes and didn’t try to stop the tears, but what should have been a torrent came as only a trickle. I’d trekked through the cold woods before, gone hungry, been beaten, but I’d never felt like this. I’d never felt broken, like my spirit had split in two.

What hope was there? Stef had been right about the dragons. There was no chance of talking to them. They weren’t people. They weren’t sylph, who needed something from me, or centaurs, who’d been satisfied to have their children returned unharmed, and cowed by the presence of the sylph.

No, now we were in a huge winter forest, far, far from home and anything familiar. We’d taken weeks to get here, and for what purpose? There was no way I’d be able to convince the dragons to help us. What was I going to do? Shout from the cliff and ask for their assistance? Ask if I could borrow this mysterious weapon they had? They’d swoop in and eat me whole before I finished introducing myself.