We reach the shore an hour before dawn.

The water grows shallower, inch by inch, until our hull scrapes across the rocks. We sit for a moment, taken aback by this jolting end to our journey. There’s no grand procession onto shore, no welcoming party of friendly local villagers. After all this time, it feels anticlimactic.

‘You know,’ Teddy says after a while, ‘I’m all for drinking in the scenery, but I reckon we should get a move on.’

We clamber out of the boat, our limbs cramped and uncooperative. My boots splosh down into cold water and I ease a pack onto my aching shoulders. On the bright side, at least the sky doesn’t seem keen to burst into flames again.

Teddy gives our boat one final pat. ‘Farewell, noble rowboat.’ He shoves it back into deeper water with a grand gesture, as though releasing a captive bird into the wild. ‘Be free!’

Lukas laughs, sharing a brief grin with Teddy. Good. They’ve spent too long distrusting each other. I glance between them, a small smile on my lips.

It’s too dark for details, but the moonlight gives a vague hint of the shape of the landscape. It glints across the nearby foliage, a choke of shrubs and bracken. The mountains have descended into foothills now: broken humps to our left and right. And ahead … blackness.

I could use the star charm on my bracelet, of course, to illuminate our path. But if there’s danger nearby, I don’t think lighting an alchemical beacon – even a tiny one – would be the smartest way to extend our life expectancy.

Besides, my magical proclivity is Night, marked by a curling black tattoo at the top of my spine. My powers only developed recently, so I don’t have full control yet, but I’m beginning to sense the phases of Night as they crawl across my skin.

We must have moved beyond the Valley’s magnetic seams, because the magic is slowly ebbing back into my veins. I can feel the breath of encroaching dawn – even with my eyes closed, and no hint of light yet in the sky.

Teddy squints into the dark. ‘Anyone see what’s up ahead?’

The others shake their heads.

‘Any owls around?’ I say hopefully.

Lukas’s proclivity is Bird, and he sometimes borrows their eyes to survey the landscape. But he shakes his head, apologetic. ‘Might be some in the distance, but …’ He screws up his face in concentration. ‘No, too far away.’

We slosh up onto the shore. I hear a few muffled curses as someone trips, and I jab my shin on a thorny twist of foliage. At least the air smells fresh. After so long tucked onto the boat with four filthy crewmates, it’s a pleasant break for my nostrils.

After twenty minutes of stumbling, we reach the edge of solid footing. I’m the first to realise what’s happening; with a gust of wind, the night presses hard against my body and I throw out my arms to hold the others back. ‘Stop!’

They freeze.

My proclivity tingles, sensing an unbroken wall of Night. I let out a slow breath and drop to my knees. Cautiously, I crawl a few paces forward. My palms lift from stone to … nothing. Empty air. I draw my body back, careful to balance myself as I retreat into a crouch.

‘It’s a steep drop,’ I say. ‘A cliff, maybe.’

We all stare into the darkness. A little more moonlight is finally splintering through the clouds, but from this height it’s impossible to tell what landscape lies below, or even if we’ll be able to descend this cliff to reach it. All we can do is –

Teddy grabs my arm. ‘Look!’

I whip around to follow his gaze. He’s staring behind us, focused on a patch of distant mountain slope. The light is grey and feeble, but there’s just enough to suggest the shape of boulders, of rocky outcrops and –

And a man.

If he were standing still, he’d be impossible to see. But he darts across a patch of open slope, and the movement catches my eye. For a moment I think it must be a wild animal – a deer, perhaps – until I catch the tiny spark that moves with him.

An alchemy charm.

‘Who …?’ Clementine whispers.

This can’t be a coincidence. The man is sneaking around, hiding in shadows. And he’s chosen a charm, not a proper lantern, to light his way. Clearly, he doesn’t want to be seen. But if that’s true, the fact he’s risking any light at all means he must be looking for something.

Or someone.

‘Hunter,’ I say. ‘It must be a hunter.’

The hunters are an elite force of killers hired by King Morrigan to track fugitives across Taladia. In the past, hunters have shot at us, bombed us and chased us on foxaries. It was hunters who tried to drown us in a churning river. It was a hunter who sent Radnor over a waterfall.

‘Gee,’ Teddy whispers. ‘Guess the king really wants us, huh? Didn’t think he’d chase us all the way through the Valley.’ He forces a grin. ‘I reckon I’d be flattered, if I wasn’t so busy cacking myself.’

‘How many?’ Clementine says.

‘Just one, as far as I can see.’ Teddy pauses. ‘Mind you, could be a whole damn platoon behind those rocks.’

He doesn’t need to mention that one hunter will be enough. Even alone, this man could be deadly. He’ll lurk behind us, following our tracks through the wilderness. He’ll slink in silence, biding his time. Sooner or later, we’ll let our guard down. And then, with either pistol or proclivity, he’ll blast us to shreds.

The others turn to me. I know what they’re thinking. I’m the only one with a useful proclivity here. I could dissolve into Night, float forward and scope out our position.

But my power’s still raw, and I barely have a grip on it yet. If I can’t keep control, there’s a real risk I might lose myself. I could dissolve forever into darkness, and float away into the night.

I’ve come close to such a death, and the memory sends a chill through my veins. That unbearable lightness: its peace, its lure. The summoning of shadow, the fading of my sense of self. Just another tendril of the dark.

‘You up to this, Danika?’ Lukas says.

There’s a quiet strain of worry in his voice, and I know he doesn’t want me to risk my proclivity. But he doesn’t try to stop me, either. He knows it’s my choice to make.

I force a smile. ‘Hey, I did it down in the catacombs, didn’t I?’

‘Yeah,’ Teddy says, ‘but that was a real emergency. We were gonna drown anyway, if you couldn’t do it. But now …’ He shakes his head. ‘I reckon we should wait. He’s still a fair way behind us, right? If we head over this cliff as soon as it’s light enough, I bet we can give him the slip.’

I wait for Clementine to argue. Surely she’d rather I take the risk than let Maisy stride into danger? Not so long ago, she’d have put her foot down and argued I should be kicked off the crew if I didn’t take this risk. Yet here she is, nodding in favour of the safer option. Of keeping my soul intact, and my limbs solid.

I swallow back a sting of emotion. I’ve spent so many years alone: an orphan on the streets of Rourton, no friends and no family. The idea that anyone might care for me – even Clementine Pembroke, of all people – seems as foreign as a boat with wings.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘We’ll have to –’

Lukas lets out a cry. I spin to look at him, my throat frozen tight. What has he seen? Another hunter? A soldier?

His eyes are blank, rolling back to show the whites. He collapses to his knees and stares at an empty patch of stone, his entire body shaking.

I bend beside him, my stomach as cold and solid as a magnet, and clap a hand across his mouth to silence him. ‘Lukas!’ I whisper. I yank his chin up and stare into his eyes, trying to snap him out of it.

Lukas just rolls aside again and throws his palms open in front of him. He stares into them with a dizzy gaze, quivering as though a bullet has smashed through his belly.

‘What …?’ My eyes travel from his face to his palms and back. Then I realise what’s happening. Bird. Lukas must have sensed a bird nearby. He’s locked into its mind, using his palms as a mirror to reflect what the creature is seeing. But I’ve never seen such a violent reaction. Lukas always blanks out when he borrows a bird’s eyes, but he doesn’t normally shake, or moan, or –

‘Teddy!’ Clementine hisses.

I look up at the others. With a cold shock, I realise that Teddy has collapsed to his knees. He trembles, his eyes blank and glassy, focused upon a smooth patch of dirt. But Teddy’s proclivity is Beast, not Bird, and his power is limited to mammals.

What could possibly …?

Lukas lets out a sharp cry: the shriek of a hawk on the hunt. There’s a long moment of silence. Then he gives a strange little gasp and collapses sideways, like a newspaper flopping in the breeze.

I cup my hands gently beneath Lukas’s head, trying to support him. I’m vaguely aware of the twins gasping and fussing over Teddy. Lukas’s skin is warm and clammy, and his dark curls ruffle between my fingers. He releases a few ragged breaths. Then he finds the strength to push himself up onto his elbows, and finally into a sitting position. His eyes are overly bright in the darkness, but I let my hands slip away as he regains control over his body.

‘Are you all right?’ I fight to hide the anxiety in my voice. ‘What happened?’

Lukas takes another breath, then shakes his head. When he speaks, his voice is as coarse as dry sand. ‘Hawk. Somewhere out there, in the dark.’

He tilts his head towards the abyss before us, and the shadowed landscape beyond.

I glance across at Teddy. He’s still on his knees, his face strained. ‘I felt it too,’ he says. ‘A tightness in your chest, yeah? Like you can’t breathe, and there’s something dodgy curling up into your brain?’

Lukas wets his lips. ‘It wasn’t … it wasn’t a natural hawk. There was something strange about it, something wrong with the connection …’

Teddy nods. ‘I reckon the magical breeding does something weird to ’em. Messes with the magic in their bones. First time you hook up to a new alchemical species, it takes a while to adjust. Same thing happened the first time I met a foxary.’

I stare between them, bewildered. Foxaries are beasts of burden in Taladia: enormous foxes, ridden like horses. They’re alchemically twisted creatures, capable of surviving on tree-bark if need be, and tough enough to trek for days through the roughest wilderness. Teddy can link into their magic because his proclivity is Beast.

But Lukas’s proclivity isn’t Beast. It’s Bird.

‘I was looking down into the darkness,’ Lukas says, his voice still dry. ‘High up in the clouds, with shadow all around me. I couldn’t see much – not up there, in the night. But I could feel my wings, as huge as branches, and I could feel …’ He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I just imagined it. But I thought I could feel a weight on my back, and something on my face. And a kind of metallic cage, digging into my tongue …’

‘Like a bridle?’

‘Yeah, I think so. And a rider.’

I hesitate, stunned. Back home, the royal alchemists have been trying to create hawkaries: enormous birds of prey, reshaped and restructured by alchemical serums. So far, their experiments have failed because alchemical creatures store magic in their bones. The bones of birds are too hollow and brittle to sustain much magic, and alchemy isn’t advanced enough to keep such heavy creatures airborne. At least, not in Taladia.

I turn to Teddy. ‘You felt it too?’

‘Yeah, I reckon so. Felt like when I first connected with a foxary – and the shape of its body felt the same, too. But I could see down into the sky, and there was wind, and feathers, and …’ Teddy trails off. ‘I’ve gone all dizzy, though. Feels like someone’s jumped into my skull and taken my brain for a waltz.’

‘But that doesn’t make sense!’ Clementine says, frustrated. ‘You have different proclivities – Bird and Beast. You can’t both connect with the same creature.’

Teddy throws up his hands. ‘Hey, I’m not arguing. Just telling you what I felt.’

‘Unless …’ says Maisy.

We all turn to look at her.

‘What?’ I say.

Maisy bites her lip. ‘Well, if the bones of birds are too hollow to sustain alchemy, perhaps the people here had a different idea for a winged creature.’

‘Some kind of hybrid, you reckon?’ Teddy says. ‘Part hawk, part foxary?’

Maisy nods. ‘It’s difficult to create a new alchemical species – it takes decades of experimentation. It would be much easier to take a creature that’s already been tainted with magic, I imagine, and twist it a little.’

I think of the foxaries, with their claws, their teeth, their vicious eyes. I think of the metal blades on their bridles, used to keep the beasts under control. A scrabble of claws. A flash of feathers. Death from the sky.

‘But if you’re right,’ I say, then hesitate. ‘I mean, if the people here have managed to breed winged foxaries … they’d need alchemy way more advanced than anything in Taladia, wouldn’t they?’

‘Yes,’ Maisy says quietly. ‘They would.’

And as one, we turn to face the dark.