No one spoke, though Sam’s betrayed expression, Whit’s obvious confusion, and Stef’s hostility said everything.
My voice was hoarse as I grabbed my coat. “We leave tomorrow.”
This time, I was the one to leave the cave.
I wandered through the twilight forest, sorrow curled up inside my chest. The sadness was lodged so firmly I could hardly breathe, hardly think. Only as light bled from the world did I realize I’d forgotten a flashlight and my SED, and the only ones who might come looking for me were shadows.
The moon hung somewhere above, but it was dark tonight. I could see the outlines of trees, thanks to starlight, but soon I was lost, shivering inside my coat, which suddenly seemed inadequate. Ice crunched under my boots and broke off against my sleeves as I brushed past.
In the dark, shivering and aching with misery, I swept snow off a boulder and slumped onto the stone. My butt froze instantly, but after everything, I was too tired to care. I was too tired to keep picking my way through the dark.
It was my nineteenth birthday.
A year ago today, I’d left Li at Purple Rose Cottage and set out to find my place in the world. Instead, I’d been chased by sylph—sylph that had evidently been trying to befriend me—and jumped into Rangedge Lake, where Sam rescued me. When I closed my eyes and sent my thoughts back in time, I could still feel the ache in my chest and the blackness swarming in my head as consciousness faded.
I could still feel Sam’s arms wrap around me, feel him blow air into me, feel the cold wind on my wet skin as I saw him above me, smiling.
He’d brought me back to life.
And now I would take him to his death.
I bent over my knees and sobbed myself raw, coming back to the present when the shivers got too much. I grew hyperaware of every sound in the woods: a breeze rattling branches and rustling pine needles, birds settling into nests, and a low and melancholy moan.
Sylph.
I licked moisture back into my cold-chapped lips and tried not to let my voice shake too hard. “Cris?” It could have been any of the other sylph, too, but I didn’t know their names, or if they even had names anymore.
Heat flowed around me, making my skin prickle. The sylph hummed quietly beside me. -This way.-
I couldn’t see where we were going. I followed the warmth, frustratingly slow because any time we turned or went around something, I had to test the air. But I was relieved to have been found, and by someone who could thaw me to the core.
Twigs cracked beneath my boots as I followed, and somewhere in the darkness, small animals scurried away. At last, I caught the faint light that looked as though it shone from around a corner. The cave. Usually at night, sylph lined up at the exit, absorbing the light so anyone—or any creatures—wandering past wouldn’t see it.
“Thank you for finding me,” I murmured to the sylph, then headed inside. When I squinted through the dim light, everyone appeared to be sleeping in their bags. No one stirred as I pulled off my snow-dusted coat and boots and shoved them in a corner, but when I searched for my sleeping bag and found it near Sam’s—though not as near as it had been earlier—I caught the whites of his eyes in lantern light when he blinked.
I paused, crouched by my sleeping bag. I’d been ready to slide it away from him so I wouldn’t forget when I first woke up in the morning.
But our eyes met, and for a moment I hoped he’d say something or open his sleeping bag in invitation. We’d had fights before, and reconciling kisses were always sweet. Instead, he gave a slight nod—acknowledgment of my return—and closed his eyes.
Heart still aching, I dragged my sleeping bag away from his, crawled inside, and stared into the darkness until morning.
When the sun rose, we left the cave and headed north.
To where dragons lived.
15 SOLITUDE
THERE WAS NO music for a long time. Not from Sam or the sylph, and not from the woods that shielded us from the bitter wind. The farther we traveled, the closer and taller the trees seemed, as if they held secrets between their branches and guarded them fiercely. With few small mammals in the underbrush and even fewer birds calling in the trees, the world began to look very lonely.
My boots crunched paths on the ice-crusted ground. The crackle was sharp and startling, but the others never glanced back.
Our progress was abysmal. After two and a half weeks, we were barely halfway to our destination, though we’d had to pause for a few days after eating something that shouldn’t have been eaten. Still, we should have been farther.
It was the most miserable time of my life, relieved only by evening SED calls with Sarit.
Outside the tent, I listened to Sarit tell me about the curfews and who’d been imprisoned for resisting Deborl or expressing concern about newsouls.
“It was Emil this time,” she said.
“The Soul Teller from Anid’s birth?”
“Yes.” She sighed, and it sounded like she was trying not to cry. “Everyone is so afraid here. With the earthquakes and storms, people are terrified.”
I knew. She said the same thing every day.
“Armande said to tell you hello, and that he hopes you’re eating enough. He keeps saying he should have gone with you to make sure you’re properly fed.”
“I wish you were both here.” Except I didn’t want them to be angry with me, too. I hadn’t told Sarit the secret I’d revealed, only that they knew something and it had changed everything. She did know where we were heading, though.
“How are things going with you?”
“Sam still mostly talks to Whit.”
“And Stef?”
“Still upset with me.” I closed my eyes as snow began to fall. “They aren’t mean to me. They don’t ignore me. But they’re all different toward me.”
“Are you being different toward them, now that they know?”
I shrugged, even though she couldn’t see it.
“I’ll take your silence as a yes.” Sarit sighed. “You can’t expect things not to change. Give them time to adjust.”
“You’re right.”
“Of course I am.”
“But Sam—”
“You know what you’re asking of him. It’s probably taking everything he’s got just to keep functioning. You remember how he was after the market attack last year. This is worse than that.” Her voice crackled as the SED signal grew weaker. “I know this must be hard, especially after the way Li treated you, but they don’t mean the silence the same way she did. Why don’t you try talking to them?”
“About what? The longer we go like this, the more awkward it gets.”
“Music? Food? How much you hate the cold? I don’t know, Ana. They’re just as miserable as you are. Don’t wait for them to be friendly with you first. But if you won’t take action, I can’t help you.” Something crashed in the background, and she swore. “Sorry, Ana. Armande needs me. Earthquake.” She clicked off before I could say good-bye.
I sat outside, watching snow gather on my mittens and SED.
Our goal wasn’t the dragons’ land, exactly. The library had information on dragons and their habitat, of course, so we knew roughly where they lived, but I didn’t need to go quite that far north.
In his previous lifetime, Sam had come across an immense white wall, like Heart’s city wall. There, dragons had discovered him and killed him.
That was my goal, because we knew dragons patrolled that area, and there was built-in shelter on one side. At first, I’d been afraid I would have to ask Sam to remember details about his trip north, or that I’d have to see if he’d recorded any details in a diary—and if that diary had been scanned into the library’s digital archives—but the sylph ended up saving me again.