CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Maren 
Sev in a garden, head buried in his hands—which are covered in blood.
I approach him cautiously. When he looks up, his face is ashen. “Maren. Is this another one of those…”
“Dragon dreams,” I finish.
He nods. “Then you have to know the Aurati gave a prophecy today, and the emperor interpreted it to claim credit for the attack on Lumina—he lied and said that the Aurati had turned against him.”
“What?” I understand the words he says, but not what they mean.
“He lied because he’s frightened of your power,” Sev says impatiently.
Not only that—Naava is long gone from Aurati power. So who was making the prophecies? “The prophecies aren’t real anymore,” I say. “Any prophecy that you hear from the Aurati is made up.”
He hears me, but does he understand? I look down and am mesmerized by the blood on his hands. “What happened to your hands?”
“I—” His voice cracks, and he begins to cry. The sight frightens me, not because of the tears alone but because of what they mean. Has he given up? In all the time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him weep.
I wrap my arms around him, and he curls into me, shaking. I hold him for a long time.
“I killed an innocent man today,” he whispers, so softly, I can barely hear him. “And now I can’t get the blood off my hands. I can’t take this place, Maren. I have to get out.”
“I’m coming, I promise.”
“When?”
“We’re on the highway to Irrad. Give me a week.”
“I don’t know if I’ll last that long.” He pulls back from me. “I have to get out of here. I’m in contact with the Dragons.”
“Will they come?”
He hesitates. “Neve is being held here in Irrad. The emperor doesn’t trust her anymore. If she’ll leave with me, the Dragons might take us both—and Piera.”
The dream slips, wobbles in and out of focus. “Who’s Piera?” I say.
“It doesn’t matter.” A shadow crosses his face. There is a streak of blood on his cheek that I want to wipe away. “Will you hold me?”
My heart wrenches. I don’t know what I can say that won’t cross a line, so instead I just gather him in my arms and rest my chin on the top of his head, waiting for morning to come.
Sometime in the night I stirred, and for a moment I thought Sev lay wrapped in my arms, his head nestled under my chin. Then I blinked and remembered it was Kaia’s body pressed against mine. An ache that was equal parts longing and shame bloomed in my chest. How could I have thought it was Sev beside me, even for an instant?
Kaia shifted, and I feigned sleep as she stretched and got up from the bed, then wrapped a blanket around herself and went to sit by the fire, staring into the flames. My thoughts were racing. Kaia had said to my face that I seemed like a completely different person—but how could that be when we knew each other’s bodies almost as well as we knew our own? When we had so much history and shared secrets between us?
I couldn’t bring myself to think further than that. So instead I counted my breaths until I fell asleep again, rousing only when Kaia slid back under the covers. I reached out without thought, catching her shoulder with one hand. She turned toward me, her breath warm on my cheek, and held on to me as though I were the only thing in this world keeping her anchored to the earth.
In the morning I woke before Kaia. A patch of early light fell across the bed, and I kissed her hair before easing myself free of her embrace. The fire had gone out, and I shivered as I pulled on a modicum of clothing. When I opened the door, the air was fresh and clean, and there were birds chirping, and everything seemed somehow new. I found a place to relieve myself and, afterward, stood there, taking it all in.
I put my hands in my pockets and felt something jab one of my fingers. Frowning, I pulled out—my silver hair clasp. In the tumult of the last few days I’d forgotten about it, yet somehow it had survived the journey out of the depths of Lumina and across the Zefedi sky. And before that, Kaia had kept it safe. Because I’d given it to her.
I sighed and pocketed the clasp once more. My relationship with Kaia was comfortable, its patterns marked and treaded—Kaia the leader, Maren the follower. But what if I was no longer content within those bounds? Things had changed—I had changed.
And then there was Sev.
I couldn’t help but remember how Sev had treated me, the way he had seen me exactly as I was—and how I aspired to be. And I couldn’t lie to myself about how my heart had broken when I’d seen his misery in the dragon dream, and how I would have given anything to ease that pain.
Heartmates.
I shook my head. Whatever feelings I had for Sev were only that—feelings. What mattered were the choices I made and the actions I took. I chose Kaia, the dauntless girl I had chased across an empire to save. But that didn’t change the fact that Sev’s life was more in danger every day that I wasted on the road. We needed to leave.
The dragon kit yawned and stretched as I opened the door to the house. I scratched her on the head and went to Kaia. “Good morning,” I whispered in her ear.
“How long have you been awake?” she said sleepily.
“Not long. But we have a lot of ground to cover today. Let’s go.”
Sleeping one night in this house seemed to have dissipated Kaia’s nerves, because she laughed when I presented her with another bowl of cold porridge topped with the last of our peaches and ate it without hesitation.
“Let’s not go,” Kaia said as I assessed our supplies and packed them away again.
She was joking, and the words brought an involuntary smile to my lips. “Do you know who you sound like?” I said.
She shook her head, her hair falling loose down her back.
“Me,” I said. “Before we left Ilvera.”
She frowned, just slightly.
“Don’t you remember?” I said quickly. “I wanted to stay so badly, and now you’re the one who doesn’t want to leave.”
She had been lacing up her boots. Now she paused and let her hair fall over her face, masking her expression. “I remember. What’s your point, Maren?” There was an edge to her voice.
“I was just making an observation.”
“Well, you’re right. You’ve changed. I’ve changed,” she said curtly.
I fiddled with the strap of my pack. “I feel like you’re angry with me,” I said. “Why?”
“I’m not—” She shook her head, brushing me off. “It’s fine. Let’s go.”
She picked up her pack and left the house without another word. I followed her out, ready to insist that she tell me what was wrong. We were going to talk about this tension, or whatever it was between us, because it had been building for days now. But instead of having to run after her, I was surprised to find her standing stock-still right outside the door.
“Kaia, what…” I trailed off as soon as I saw the figures emerging from the trees.
There were ten of them forming a semicircle around us. At first glance I thought we had been ambushed by the emperor’s men—but then I looked closer. These people, a mix of Lirusan and Celet, weren’t dressed like soldiers or mercenaries. And they were of a variety of ages as well, and genders. A few of them held knives or swords, but the rest hadn’t drawn their weapons. I eyed them warily, my own hand poised above my knife.
“Who are you?” Kaia asked in Zefedi. “What do you want?”
“Which one of you is the dragon mistress?” a young woman out front said. Her hood was down, revealing dark hair cropped close to her head.
Kaia and I exchanged a long glance. I didn’t want to answer that, not before we knew who they were.
“We asked first,” I said.
The woman narrowed her eyes at me and opened her mouth to reply. But the dragon kit chose that moment to appear from behind me, and more than one person in attendance let out a shriek of fear. The kit recoiled, then tried to hide behind my legs again, with very little success. She poked her head out, sniffing curiously.
The woman, who appeared to be the leader, stepped back, her sword raised. “So it’s you, then. You’re coming with us.”
I drew my knife. Ten was more than I wanted to fight, but I was confident that the dragon kit could help hold them off—and all we needed to do was get through them and to Clem—wait, where was the horse?
An arrow buried itself in the earth in front of me, and I jumped back. I looked up and caught the glint of something moving in the trees. So there were archers above us.
“This doesn’t have to be difficult. But we only need you,” the woman said, pointing at me.
Her tone was threat enough. I sheathed my knife and found Kaia’s hand, squeezing hard. We were quickly divested of our packs and weapons. When the dragon kit lashed out, one man approached her with an open vial of lavender oil. Where had they even gotten that?
I thrust her behind me, blocking his way. “I swear I will kill you if you come near her with that.”
“Then control her,” the man said. “We have a long way to go.”
I reassured the dragon kit as best I could, telling her multiple times that all would be well. Not that I knew anything of the sort.
They separated us so that Kaia walked several steps in front of me. I kept my eyes on her as we proceeded through the forest. These people were clearly familiar with it, as they walked on paths I could scarcely make out. Before long I heard the sounds of a village up ahead and was surprised when we entered a clearing to find nothing there.
One of the people let out a whistle, and suddenly camouflaged branches were lowered and shifted to reveal an entire network of shelters and walkways roped between the trees. It was both ingenious and foolhardy, it seemed to me.
“What will you do if the emperor sends a Talon to burn the forest to the ground?”
I shouldn’t have said it, but the question was out.
The silence that followed was aggrieved. For a whole minute no one answered me. Then the leader said, “The Talons are occupied in other places. They don’t come into the Forest of the Doran.”
Convenient for them. “What’s the Doran?” I asked.
This question went entirely unanswered. Braided rope ladders dropped from above, and we were instructed to climb into the trees. I whistled to the dragon kit and placed her into my pack for the climb. Once we’d managed our way up onto one of the platforms, our hands were bound. They put us in an empty tree shelter, tying us both to one of the posts supporting the wall. The dragon kit hissed as they reached for her.
“You’d better not,” I warned. “She may spark, and you wouldn’t want this whole place to go up in flames.”
They had a brief whispered argument, and I was relieved that they left the dragon kit in the shelter, though they did loop a loose leash around her neck and tied it to one of the support poles.
“I knew we shouldn’t have stayed at that house,” Kaia whispered furiously in Verran.
“That’s very helpful of you,” I said. “But things could be worse.”
“Captured and tied up isn’t your worst-case scenario?” Kaia said drily.
“Compared to being burned alive by dragons or captured by Talons and sent to the emperor?” Even the thought of it made me shudder. “Sev and I were once trapped in a cave with malevolent ghosts after he was wounded by a Talon. That was worse than this.”
“Fair,” Kaia said begrudgingly. She leaned over, trying to look out the open door. “What do you think they want with us?”
“Well, something to do with the dragons, I assume. But I have no idea who they are. Do you?” I asked, realizing that she might have learned something in her time as an Aurat that would be useful.
“Separatists of some kind is my guess. There’s been a movement over the last year or so, while the emperor has been ramping up his war with the Seda Serat. But there aren’t many of them. It’s a difficult life, not pledging loyalty to any kingdom. And the emperor is… vindictive.”
There was a wooden creak, and I looked up to see the same young woman who had captured us enter the shelter. She crouched in front of us, putting herself at our eye level. “We need your help. She crouched in front of us, putting herself at our eye level.“We need your help.”