Bastian leads us from the sky, gliding overhead to mark our path. From down here, his foxhawk seems no more than a pair of enormous wings, silhouetted by the afternoon light.

‘Are we sure about this?’ Clementine says quietly. The scratches on her face and hands are drying now, but the lines of dark crimson look stark upon her pallid skin.

‘We could make a run for it,’ Teddy says. ‘I mean, he’s basically riding an overgrown chicken-fox, right? I reckon we could –’

‘We can’t outrun it,’ Lukas says. ‘Trust me.’

‘Oh, aren’t you just an optimistic little ray of sunshine?’ Clementine says.

Lukas raises an eyebrow. ‘I’ve been inside its head, Clementine. I know how its muscles move, how its wings can beat.’

We squint back up at the sky again, and I know he’s right. Those massive wings would sweep around in an elegant loop, and there’d be claws and bullets at our backs before we knew what was coming.

‘His people might help us,’ I say. ‘And that hunter would have a hard job sneaking up on us now – the foxhawk’d see him coming miles off.’

‘But he gave us the option to leave,’ Clementine says. ‘To return to Taladia. If we asked him nicely, perhaps he’d give us another chance to –’

Maisy places a gentle hand on her arm. ‘Clem, we can’t go back. Not now.’

Clementine sucks down a harsh breath. Then she nods, a cold devastation behind her eyes. ‘I know. I know we can’t. It’s just …’

‘This isn’t what you were expecting?’ I say.

She nods again.

‘Join the club,’ Teddy says. ‘I figured we’d be living it up in fancy spa baths, watching alehouse dancers and sculling champagne out of honey-melons. Dunno about you lot, but I’m not seeing a lot of melons around here.’

‘Just leaves,’ Lukas says.

Teddy brightens. ‘Hey Danika, maybe you could whip up some of that leaf tea. Good way to fend off hunger.’

‘I thought you hated my tea,’ I say.

‘Yeah, exactly,’ he says. ‘Nausea’s great for keeping your appetite down.’

I toss a fistful of leaves at his face. Teddy swats them away with a grin. Then his expression grows serious, and he turns to Maisy. ‘Hey, have you ever heard of these firestone things?’

‘Yes, I think so. But …’

‘What?’

Maisy waves a dismissive hand. ‘My books said they’re just a superstition, like most of the rumours and legends from the Dark Ages.’

‘Well, Bastian doesn’t seem to reckon they’re a superstition,’ Teddy says. ‘I mean, if it’s his job to harvest ’em and all.’

‘What are they?’ I say.

Maisy hesitates. ‘They grow in the earth, like crystals. And even once they’re harvested, they must be stored in the dirt – buried again like seeds – to retain their power. They draw their magic from the earth itself.’

‘Magic?’

‘Well, they’re supposedly a sort of … conduit,’ Maisy says. ‘Like a radio frequency. A conduit for magic.’

I stare at her. A conduit for magic? I try to imagine a scattering of stones, with signals bouncing between them like radio waves. An alchemical blast, leaping from stone to stone, beaming its power into the dark.

‘Are you sure?’ I say.

‘No,’ Maisy says. ‘I’m just telling you what the stories say.’

Lukas frowns and glances skywards, ensuring that Bastian is out of earshot. ‘My father was obsessed with this land,’ he says. ‘Even mentioning it was enough to make his blood boil – he wouldn’t even tell me its name!’

‘That’s why Quirin wouldn’t let his smugglers cross the Valley, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘Because King Morrigan had such a strange fixation on this place, and Quirin didn’t want to get the king offside.’

Lukas nods. ‘I just wish I knew why.’ He gestures at the trees, visibly frustrated. ‘I mean, it doesn’t look special, does it? I don’t see what could cause such an obsession. Maybe the firestones are real.’

‘I reckon this Farran bloke’s got something to do with it,’ Teddy says. ‘Maybe King Morrigan’s got a grudge going on.’ He turns to Lukas. ‘Hey, do kings and lords ever get together for parties? Maybe this Farran bloke cheated at marbles, or spat in your dad’s soup or something.’

Lukas snorts. ‘Not when their nations are enemies, no.’

‘Damn,’ Teddy says.

Following Bastian’s lead, we emerge from the woodland into a field of massive boulders. They remind me a little of the Marbles back home – a landscape as lumpy as boiled potatoes. But here, flares of steam blast up in the distance and the rocks sting hotter than cooking pots.

A heavy smell hangs in the air, like rotten eggs, or restaurant bins in summer. Each whiff brings a wave of memories. Huddling in alleyways. The flies and the stench. The clattering of doors as kitchen hands dumped rotting lettuce and old chunks of meat …

Clementine pinches her nostrils shut. ‘What in the name of Taladia is that?’

Teddy takes a deep sniff. ‘Smells like home, I reckon.’

‘Maybe in the part of town where you grew up,’ Clementine says, ‘but I’ve never smelt anything so awful in all my life.’

‘I think it’s sulphur,’ Maisy says. ‘My books said it smelled like rotting eggs. And those must be geysers.’ She points towards the blasts of steam. ‘We’d better stay away from them. If a blast comes up under out feet, then …’

She trails off, looking nervous.

‘Good idea,’ Teddy says. ‘I mean, I know I look dashing in red, but I don’t fancy life as a pot-boiled lobster.’

The stench thickens as we trek deeper into the boulder field. But with time my nostrils adjust, and even Clementine stops pinching her nose.

‘Ah,’ Teddy says, with a deep sniff. ‘Home sweet home. Told you you’d recognise it.’

Clementine scowls. ‘I need my hands to balance, Nort.’

‘Sure you do. And you need your nose to savour this subtle bouquet of –’

‘Nostril abuse?’

‘I was gonna say “good old-fashioned Rourton charm” – but hey, whatever floats your boat.’

The nearest geyser rumbles. It’s a deep sound, a guttural roar that rises through the stones and gurgles up through the soles of my feet. It almost tickles: not just a sound, but a physical spasm.

High above, Bastian lets out a cry. ‘Run!’

We don’t stop to ask questions. I’ve heard that tone in people’s voices before, and it’s never ended well. We run.

‘What’s happening?’ Clementine gasps.

No one answers. None of us has any idea, beyond the fact that the ground is shaking. Spurts of hot fluid rise and burst like fountains in a richie’s garden. Bastian’s foxhawk wheels overhead, searching out the safest path for us to follow. ‘This way!’

I stumble blindly forwards as the air fills with steam. I narrow my eyes to a sliver and barrel onwards. My heart pounds. I stumble through piles of slippery pebbles. The earth groans.

We duck behind a stack of teetering boulders. A moment later it collapses in a chaotic clatter of smashes and cracks. A jet of steam erupts from the debris and I yank Maisy away from the blistering air. ‘We’ve got to get out of here!’

‘Oh, really?’ Clementine snaps. ‘I’d never have guessed.’

There’s a shriek overhead – the cry of the foxhawk – and I wrench my gaze up with a start. Bastian soars southwards and his beast lets out another screech, as though to summon us. We take off at a shambling run, just as the earth where we were standing begins to crack.

I grab Clementine and wrench her aside as a blast of steam erupts beside her. She screams, overbalancing, but steadies herself against my grip.

‘Come on!’ I choke.

My breath comes in sharp gasps, but my legs are oddly steady. I don’t know if it’s just the animal instinct to survive, but my earlier stumbling and fumbling is over. My body knows what to do. It’s almost like riding a foxary – sitting back in a numb sort of terror as my limbs take over. My legs leap between rocks; my arms fling outward to balance myself; my head ducks aside to avoid a blast of wind and ash.

And oh, the ash. It tumbles around me like snow. A snow of grey, as pale as the sky, but with the brushing irritation of hot flakes of pepper. It spews up from the nearby geysers, until its heat and dust and coarseness sting my thorn-scratched skin. Every breath is hot and ragged in my throat.

We can’t see Bastian any more. I have no idea which way to turn, which way to run.

‘Look out!’

The stones beneath my boots begin to crack. I stumble, my balance shattered as the rocks slip and slide. Lukas snatches me with such a jerk that a surge of pain stabs my left shoulder. The shoulder’s been dislocated several times, and the sudden lurch threatens to pop it from its socket once more. But my shoulder stays in place, and I keep my feet.

Behind me, the earth collapses into a startling dark hole. Long and thin, deep and dark – like a knife-wound in the flesh of the earth. I stagger away from it, Lukas’s hand tight on my sleeve, before the steam blasts up with the screech of a kettle.

I stumble forwards, away from the noise, and clap my hands across my ears. The others are doing the same: clenching their ears and eyes, like children trying to escape a dream. But this is no dream. If we don’t get a grip on ourselves, we’ll die.

Focus, Danika.

Bastian is still invisible. It’s almost like running through the centre of an alchemy bomb. I’m as blind and helpless as the night of my first ever bombing, when I was a child wrapped in my mother’s arms. But instead of magic, we face ash and stone and boiling water.

‘All right!’ I say. ‘Follow me.’

I don’t know where I’m leading them. I have no better idea of our surroundings than anyone else, and I’m hardly qualified to take charge in a situation like this.

Lukas joins me at the front of the group, and we charge towards a sparser patch of rocks. The air thickens, as hot and stuffy as a quilt in midsummer. But the boulders look smaller up ahead, and if that means less risk of collapsing rock formations, I’ll take it.

Teddy cries out and jumps sideways, just as the earth beside him crumbles into darkness. I yank him back from the brink, and we stumble together onto a wider stretch of rock.

The world gives one final rumble. The geysers flare and fizzle, then settle back down into silence. A gush of wind, a clearing of steam. The stillness coats my limbs like fabric, heavy and hot in the aftermath of the earthquake.

‘Is it over?’ I manage, coughing. ‘Is it –?’

And the stones beneath me fall.