Author: Jodi Meadows

And worse, I’d pushed away Sam with my secrets. It drove me crazy when he hid things from me and didn’t tell me what was going on, so I should have known. Instead, I’d become a hypocrite. I’d hurt his feelings and dragged him into the land of his nightmares because I had a plan.

“I can’t help you, Cris.” My whisper came out rough, broken. “There’s no way I’ll be able to speak to the dragons. They won’t destroy the temple for us. They won’t use their weapon for us. They’ll probably eat us. Janan will ascend and Range will erupt. Sylph will be cursed forever.”

Only the crack of dragon wings answered.

“I wish you hadn’t put your trust in me. I wish you had sided with the others to talk me out of this plan. We should never have come here. I made a mistake.”

Cris hummed. -I believe in you.-

I sagged, too weary to hold myself up anymore. “I don’t.”

As I wiped tears off my cheeks, reflected sunlight caught my eye, drawing my attention north.

A white tower pierced the sky, brilliant and bright against the shadowed forest. Like the temple. And below it, a white stone wall ringed the tower, cutting through the forest like a knife.

It wasn’t perfectly white like Janan’s temple, though. Age and weather had dulled the shine of stone, and there were places the forest had toppled the wall, but this prison had certainly survived the millennia better than the one Cris had found in the jungle.

“We’re almost there.”

Cris nodded.

“It doesn’t matter.” I stood and brushed snow and slush off my clothes. There was no point to being here now. I’d seen the dragons. I’d seen the futility of my plan.

The sylph dried my clothes as I took one more look at the valley and the dragons moving farther away, still hunting in the forest. Their wings snapping the air grew distant.

I trudged back to where I’d left the water bottles, but there was only a shallow hole in the snow where they’d been. Someone had taken them.

“Did one of your friends go tattle on me?” I glared at Cris, who hummed with annoyance.

“It wasn’t the sylph.” Sam’s voice came from not far off, just a few trees away. He peeled himself out of the shadows and stalked toward us. “You were gone a long time. We came looking, and some of the sylph indicated you’d gone off with Cris.” He kept his voice low, even, but couldn’t hide the lurking power in there, or the disappointment. His gaze darted to Cris, and he tilted his head.

Without comment, every sylph left the area.

Sam turned on me. “I told you to come back if you saw anything.”

I prickled. “I didn’t see anything. I heard something and went to investigate. I had Cris with me. He wouldn’t let anything harm me.” That last bit was meant as a barb—Cris still cared about me—but if Sam noticed my intent, he didn’t react.

“What would Cris do if you got into trouble?” His dark eyes narrowed. “What if a dragon carried you off? Or you slipped and broke a bone? He can’t catch you. He’d have to go find help, and you’d have to wait.”

“It doesn’t matter!” Shouting felt good. I didn’t fight it. “Nothing happened. The point is, he was there. I didn’t go alone. You’re just angry I didn’t run back and tell you.”

“Is that what you think?” He advanced on me, expression hard and fists curled at his sides. “You think I only care about knowing where you are and what you’re doing?”

I backed away, wary of the set of his shoulders and that dark look in his eyes. He looked like a creature barely contained.

I hated the way my voice shook. “You don’t seem to care about much else lately.” Not that I could blame him. My heel hit a tree trunk, then my shoulders and my spine. I’d backed away all I could. “You barely talk to me. You let Cris go out and find me the night I got lost.”

“I asked him to find you.”

“It was still dark.” I tried to edge away, but Sam pressed his palms to the trunk on either side of me, caging me. I steeled my voice. “You don’t speak to me. You barely look at me.”

He was looking at me now. His face was so close we could kiss, and all his weight leaned toward me, making him seem bigger than he really was. “What do you want me to do?” he rasped. “Say it doesn’t matter that you hid something so important from me? Say Armande’s death isn’t ripping me apart? Say I don’t care that we’re traveling back to the place I died so you can make friends with the things that killed me?”

“I know—” The words came out wispy and weak. “I know this is the last thing you want to do.”

“But I’m here, Ana. For you. Because you said you believed this would work. But you can’t expect me to be cheerful about it.”

“I don’t.” I felt like I was hardening, like ice. Without the sylph nearby, cold nipped at my nose and cheeks. Even the heat of Sam’s glare did nothing to warm me. “But you don’t have to suffer alone.”

That was the thing, though. He wasn’t suffering alone. He had Stef and Whit, even if he was still upset with Stef for hiding the truth. She’d hidden it at my request. They both understood how awful this was for him in a way I would never be able to comprehend.

I wasn’t worried about him suffering alone. I was worried about my suffering. My loneliness.

Before he could see the shame in my eyes, I turned my head. My voice was pale and weak, almost snatched up by the wind cutting around trees. “I made a mistake. Lots of mistakes.” Avoiding him was one of them. Sarit had told me to take action, but I’d been too afraid. I’d kept my distance and made little effort to comfort him when he needed it, too.

He didn’t move. With my head turned aside, I could see only his forearm at my shoulder, and even with his coat on, I could see the strain and tremble where he held himself up.

“I shouldn’t have hidden the truth from you, but I hoped you wouldn’t have to know, because you shouldn’t have to feel guilty about something you did five thousand years ago when you were young and scared.”

“Of course I have to feel guilty.” His tone softened. “Because of my decision, a hundred newsouls have been—” His breath caught. “It could have been you. I died shortly after Ciana. You and I were born only weeks apart. Everything was so close, you might have been the soul exchanged for my rebirth. You could have been one of those souls in the temple, paying for my selfish decision. I think about that every day. I think about it every time I look at you. How can I not feel guilty? How can anyone live under the weight of so much guilt?”

From the corner of my eye, he looked pained and passionate, like it took everything in him to stay together.

“You’re trying to absolve me so I won’t think about what I’ve done. What we all did. You’re trying to keep your friends good and blameless so we can continue on as we’d been before, but that’s not going to work. Let us accept the blame for what we’ve done. Let us deal with that blame. It’s not pleasant for any of us, but you can’t—and shouldn’t—try to stop it just because it makes you uncomfortable.”

Without another word, he spun toward camp and vanished into the woods.

17

DEFIANCE

HE WAS RIGHT. I’d been making decisions based on what made me most comfortable.

Forcing them to come north with me. Not telling them the truth about reincarnation. Keeping my silence with the group. Avoiding Sam.

But now I knew what to do.

It was a terrible plan, but as I stood there with my spine against the tree, my breath misting on the frigid air where the heat of Sam’s body had already dissipated, I knew it was the right plan.

My eyes closed and my face lifted to the treetops and sky beyond, I whispered, “Please,” to nothing. To everything. To something greater than me. “Please let this be right.”

Only the wind answered, howling through the valley and around the trees. Ice clattered and hoarfrost trembled. No wonder the phoenixes had built a prison this far north: dragons, freezing weather, and utter solitude.

I shivered and pushed toward camp again.

Inside the tent, Stef glanced up from the tray of rabbit jerky as she dropped the finished strips into a bag, but she didn’t speak. The sylph assisting her hummed and twisted darkly, and Sam, with his knees pulled up to his chest, rested his forehead on his arms.

Unbidden, my mind conjured an image of the three of them in the temple’s skeleton chamber, offering their wrists to Janan’s Hallow. Silver chains clattered and gleamed. A million souls said yes to the exchange. A million souls traded countless lives for their own infinity.

My friends wore chains inside the temple.

I shook away the dark fancy as Whit met my eyes, offering a weak smile. “We need to get moving soon,” he said. “We’re already behind. Only four weeks until Soul Night.”

“We should turn around.” I startled at the sound of my voice, breathless and rough with chill. “We should return to Menehem’s lab for the poison.”

Sam looked up.

“Just . . . go back.” While they stared at me, openmouthed, I retreated to my sleeping bag and pulled out my notebook, but Stef didn’t give me a chance to get lost in my work.

She slammed her tray on the ground. “Now you realize what a stupid plan this was? Now, after we’ve come all this way?”

I spoke to my notebook, monotone. “I’ve put you in enough danger. And like Whit said, we have only four weeks before Soul Night. We don’t have time to linger up here. We’ll be more useful in Range.”

“I can’t believe this.” Stef surged to her feet. “What about this weapon you were so convinced we needed?”

The dragons’ weapon? I had no idea what it was. Or how I’d request an object I couldn’t even describe. The temple books were next to useless on the subject, too.

“How long have you been thinking we should go back?” Stef went on. “One week? Two? You’re right: we could do more in Range. We could have been doing more in Range. But you said you had a plan. Then you dragged us up here. And now you say it’s time to turn around, having accomplished nothing but wasted time.”

There was no way to respond to that, so I just frowned at my notebook and bit the insides of my cheeks. Still, my eyes prickled with tears and I had to turn my head away from everyone.

“Are you satisfied?” Stef’s voice broke. “Are you happy that you’ve steered us so far off course?”

“Stop.” Whit heaved a sigh and gathered an armful of lanterns and battery chargers. “Just stop. Yelling won’t help.” He took everything outside to let it charge in the sunlight.

Stef marched after him, and a moment later their voices came, arguing about the best way back to Range.

From behind the shield of my notebook, I caught Sam watching me from the corner of his eye. But I didn’t acknowledge him, just lowered my eyes and began writing.

Sam had always believed in me. When I’d thought I was a nosoul, he’d insisted otherwise. He’d encouraged me until I believed, too. And when I’d thought there was no way I could help rewrite “Ana Incarnate” after Li had burned it in a fire, Sam had told me I could do anything. His belief had made me believe.

When he said he’d go anywhere with me, I’d suggested the moon and the bottom of the ocean. He’d liked that I thought big.

Now he was here with me. In the north. With dragons.

And my plan was too big, too wild. It was crazier than going to the moon.

I didn’t blame him for not believing in me anymore. It hurt, but the truth was that he’d put up with a lot more than anyone would have expected. But his anger earlier and his silence now spun a thread of defiance in me.