Turns out walking isn’t really the ideal form of travel. For one, it’s slow. For another, it’s exhausting. Hardly a few hours in and every part of me aches. We’ve passed a few dirt roads where the path is clearer, but the prince told us to stay away. Not even half an hour after we left the flying machine, more jets rumbled overhead and we dove into an outcropping of trees for cover. The human army tracked where we landed, and they’re looking for us. Cars zoomed by, cutting down bumpy paths that were never made for them. As long as we stay out of sight, they shouldn’t be able to find us. My only solace is in being surrounded by the wilds. After my days in the human city, it’s restorative to breathe fresh air, to feel the Mother’s magic all around me.

The prince guides us forward using something called a compass. He says it leads him north, and if we keep marching in that direction, we should hit the train tracks eventually. He took a few other items from the plane before we left—human medicines, snacks, and various other essentials, as he called them. It’s amusing to me the things humans think they need to survive in this new world. They’ve forgotten all the gifts nature can provide—they’ve forgotten how to live in harmony with the earth, instead of at war with it.

That fact becomes more and more clear to me as we pass from lands that used to belong to my world into the lands of the prince’s world. A meadow filled with wildflowers is interrupted by a series of poles connected by thick black wires. I step off grass onto a cracked gray road with faded yellow stripes painted down the center. The wildness takes a different shape. Stone buildings are overrun with vines and they half crumble to the ground. Wood rot fills the air, along with a stench I can’t quite place, something acrid that burns my nose. Broken-down cars line the street. Beneath my feet, glass crunches from their shattered windows. But I notice something else when I look at the ground—a single yellow flower breaking through the destruction, its petals tilted toward the sun. The sight brings a slight smile to my lips, because no matter what, Mother will always survive.

“What happened here?” Ella murmurs.

“You’ve lived in London for too long,” Prince Frederick responds softly, kneeling to brush a bed of moss growing across a fractured sidewalk. “This is what a lot of the world looks like now, abandoned towns overrun by the passage of time. After the earthquake, our whole way of life changed. Roads were destroyed. With the electricity issues, no one wanted to fly. Long portions of train tracks disappeared, cutting the railways into disconnected sections. Trade was impossible, let alone getting basic necessities to the people. Any grocery shops that survived the earthquake eventually ran out of food. People swept through their supplies. And when those two sources ran out, they needed to abandon their towns to find other places to survive. People moved to cities that were less affected by the earthquake, to places where the infrastructure made life possible, or to farmlands where they could grow their own food. We’ve been rebuilding for the past ten years, but it’ll take a long time for the world to recover what was lost, if it ever does.”

While the prince talks, I keep walking, drawn by a dark spot that’s caught my eye. A sticky black sludge spills from the barrel of an overturned truck, puddling into a pool on the road and slinking between the cracks. It’s the source of that smell burning the back of my throat. The closer I step, the more my eyes begin to water. My chest stings as though poisoned by breathing it in. My soul wilts. Heart thudding, I bend down to press my fingers to the bit of exposed dirt.

I’ve seen this before.

In my dreams.

A brown-black substance staining the surface of the ocean. Fish floating belly-up, suffocated by the contaminated water. Birds drowning from covered wings made too heavy to fly. Plants browning. The air growing too polluted to breathe.

“Don’t touch that,” the prince says, bending down to grab my arm before my fingers sink into the poison.

I look up at him. “What is it?”

“Oil,” he says, unconcerned. “Probably a tanker that overturned during the earthquake.”

“Has this…” I trail off, shaking my head, disbelieving. I always thought my nightmares were just that—imaginary, pulled from my own fears, a twisted reality. The priestesses always said they were a gift, premonitions from the Mother. What if they were? What if they were visions of a world—just not my world? “Has this ever been put in the ocean? Spread across the sea?”

An expression of shame passes over the prince’s face. “Not on purpose, but there’ve been accidents…”

“Accidents?”

“Spills, leaks, that sort of thing.”

“What’s it used for?”

“A lot of things—powering cars, heating homes, for the fuel we used to fly that plane—” A rumble interrupts the prince and we both jerk our faces toward the sky. I’ve learned to recognize that sound. “We need to hide. Now!”

He grabs my hand, then Ella’s, and yanks us toward one of the vacant buildings. When he shoves his foot into a door, it breaks away from the stone and falls inward, collapsing in a pile of dust that we run through, coughing as we stumble inside. The roar grows so loud the ground around us starts to shake. Ella and I step farther into the shadows while the prince kneels by the entrance, staring up at the clouds. One plane flies overhead, then another, before the air turns quiet once more.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Prince Frederick mutters.

Before I can ask why, Ella tugs on my hand. “Look, Nymia. It’s a bookshop!”

“A what?” I narrow my eyes, staring around the space, which is full of shelves—some standing, some fallen over. Beneath the layer of dust and dirt, I can tell it was once a vibrant space full of color and life.

“A bookshop!” Ella repeats, offering no clarification as she runs deeper into the building, then stops and pulls something from a shelf. “We had this one at the orphanage. It was my favorite.” I read the name across the front—Harry Potter. “It’s about an orphan who finds out he has magic and he gets admitted to this wizarding school. Oh, look at this. Fairies!”

Ella tosses the book at me. I catch it, for the sole purpose of not being hit in the gut, and curl my lip as I take in the image painted across the front. It’s a very small girl with a round face, large eyes, and glittery wings. “This is a pixie, not a faerie.”

“Here’s a children’s book full of magical creatures,” Ella continues, ignoring me as she flips through the pages, holding them up one by one so I can see. “A unicorn. A mermaid. A centaur. A phoenix. Ooh, a fire-breathing dragon.”

“Let me see that,” I mutter, grabbing the book from her hands. I scan page after page, furrowing my brow. Some of the images are pure fantasy, but some are frighteningly accurate—as though the artist saw these animals, as though they knew them. How is that possible? Our worlds were completely separate before the earthquake. Weren’t they?

Prince Frederick leans over my shoulder, his breath like a warm caress against my bared neck. The steady rhythm skips a beat when I turn the page to a creature we both recognize.

“That’s what I saw in the ocean that day,” he murmurs, reaching around me to press his fingers to the drawing, brushing the outer edge of my arm in the process. “A hippocampus.”

“A hippokampoi,” I correct absently, staring at his fingers as they trace the creature’s horselike head and webbed mane. When I turn to look up at him, his face is closer than I realized, hardly a hairsbreadth away. “You didn’t have these in your world before, right? How are they in this book?”

He flicks his gaze toward mine, meeting my eyes as his hand comes to a stop next to my thumb and grazes my skin. “They were a myth, a legend, stories to amuse children. We never thought they were real.”

“But they are,” I urge. “In my world, they were real. How is that possible?”

“I’m not sure.” He frowns. “Maybe our worlds are far more connected than any of us realized, or maybe—”

He stops cold as the sound of deep voices trickles through the open door.

We both freeze.

My heart thumps loudly, drowning out the eerie silence—the sort I know means humans are close by because the rest of the world is holding its breath. Prince Frederick puts his finger before his lips, signaling silence, and then tugs me down so we’re crouched behind one of the fallen shelves. Ella scurries over to huddle beside me as the prince leans around the corner, keeping his eye on the open door.

Outside, boots crunch on broken glass. The voices slowly grow louder, clear enough to understand. “Infrared picked up two heat signals. Keep an eye out for a possible third target.”

Beside me, the prince winces. “Bollocks.”

“What’s infrared?” I whisper.

He shakes his head, then presses his fingers to his temples and runs his palm over his face. Stress and concern wrinkle his features, but by the time he looks back up at us, gritty determination is the only thing lighting his pale blue eyes. “Ella, I need you to use your magic. Not so much you lose control, but enough that the power goes out and they can’t rely on their imaging systems. Then Nymia, you need to make us disappear like you did before. As soon as we see an opening, we’ll make a run for it, and we’ll figure the rest out later. One step at a time, yes?”

Ella nods.

I swallow and do the same.

“On my signal,” he murmurs as the voices outside continue to rise. A bright beam of light passes slowly over our heads, scanning the shadows of the bookshop. “Now!”

Ella releases a blast of power that sinks into the ground beneath our feet, making weeds grow in the cracks between the tiles, bright green against the dirt and dust. The light immediately blinks out. In the darkness, her features strain. Wrinkles knot her brow and her face scrunches as she tries to force the magic to bend to her will. It’s like a beast beneath her skin, fighting for control.

“Comms just went dark,” a voice calls.

“Radar too.”

“The truck isn’t working.”

There’s a beat of silence, followed by a spattering of soft clicks. The hairs on my arms rise as a tingle crawls slowly down my spine. I’m not sure if it’s my own experience or something from Omorose’s past creeping out of hiding, but I’ve come to recognize that sound.

Guns.

They know someone is using magic.

They’ll destroy us if they have the chance.

I grab Prince Frederick's and Ella’s hands, wrapping the cloaking spell around our bodies as the prince leads us forward, toward a small table against the wall. He crawls under first, then scoots to the side, making room for the two of us. It’s a tight squeeze, but we drape our arms across each other and become as small as possible.

The soldiers step inside.

They hardly look human, draped in shades of green with helmets on their heads and goggles over their eyes, arms outstretched with guns half the size of their bodies, in thick black vests that bulk their chests. Ella buries her head against my side. Prince Frederick squeezes my hand. The air simmers with the burn of magic, but they don’t seem to sense it as they creep across the space, crushing books beneath their boots. They keep a formation, circling each other, one man always with a set of eyes in each direction, as though they’re a single person with multiple heads. They don’t need to speak and they don’t need their inventions.

I hold my breath as they come close.

One man leans down, glancing at the space beneath the table. His eyes pass over us and he stands, moving on to the next shadowed nook.

Prince Frederick releases a soft breath.

The minutes stretch on, warping in the silence until I feel I’ve lived an entire life cramped in the dark. The soldiers are slow, inspecting every inch, but eventually, they leave.

We wait until the sound of voices disappears before speaking.

“What now?” I whisper.

“Will your spell hold up in the sunlight?”

“Only if we’re perfectly still.”

“Okay. I can work with that. We need to get some distance between us and them before we make our next move. If I squeeze your hands twice, like this”—he tightens his fingers in two quick pulses, giving a demonstration—“that means stop. No talking in case they’re close enough to hear. Now, let’s go. There’s got to be a back door somewhere.”

Prince Frederick pulls us from our hiding spot and shuffles us toward the back of the building. We walk in a chain, with him at the front and Ella behind, the two of them connected through me. Ella’s fingers tremble, shaking my arm, but she doesn’t complain. I’m not sure if it’s the pain of her curse or the strain of controlling her magic, but she’s tougher than she looks. And so is the prince. For all his bravado and smiles, he’s sticking to his word. He’s keeping us safe. I never thought I’d live to see the day when a human, a faerie, and a human with stolen magic were gripping each other as though their lives depended on it, trusting each other, helping each other, yet here I stand, using my magic to shield us all.

The prince pops his head through a door, peering out, before tugging us through. We take a few steps before we hear voices, and he squeezes—one, two. All three of us stop. A troop of humans walks through the break in the buildings, but their eyes pass over us, and they march on. We do too, turning around bends and down streets, moving as far away as quickly as we can. We only need to stop two more times, and then we’re out of the town and into the more wooded area beyond. Houses pepper the abandoned streets, and the prince pulls us around the side of one before finally speaking.

“I don’t think they saw anything, for now.”

“How did they find us?” I ask, dropping their hands. The cloaking spell falls away. “What’s infrared?”

“It’s like the magic radar I showed you, only it tracks heat signals. Every living animal has one, humans included, though faeries might be different. If we can get to a more populated area, they won’t be able to use it. But out here, we’re sitting ducks. Ella—”

He breaks off sharply when he turns to look at her, prompting my gaze to shift. A fine sheen of sweat glistens on her skin, which has turned a little green. She wobbles on unsteady feet.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“My curse.” She forces the words out, voice strained.

“Curse?” He flicks his gaze toward me.

I pointedly keep my focus on her. “How much longer can you hold on to your magic?”

“It wants to be used,” she mutters. I can sense the power leaking into the ground beneath her feet as she speaks. The grass grows taller in a halo around us. Wildflowers start to bloom. “I’m trying to slow it down so I don’t burn out like last time, but it hurts. I never knew it hurt my mum so much.”

I wonder if the effect is strengthened because of her age, or because she’s not used to it, or if maybe on some level Aerewyn’s power senses my presence and knows the chance for freedom is near. But I’m not sure. And there’s nothing I can do.

“She won’t last long.” I look to the prince, watching the questions swirl silently in his eyes. “How can we hide from this infrared when their inventions start working again?”

He blinks, and I can almost see his mind force itself to still, to focus on the task at hand instead of the new information he’s trying to parse through. “Short of finding a more populated city, where our heat signals will blend with the crowd, there’s not much we can do.”

“What about animals? You said all animals have them?”

“Yes, but we’d have to find, I don’t know, a pack of wolves to blend in. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t fancy turning into dinner.”

I close my eyes and reach out with my magic, letting the Mother fill me as my senses sink into the earth and spread, searching for the heft of bodies on grass or the bite of teeth on leaves. I feel the soft brush of antenna and the scurry of little paws on branches. Then a little farther away, I find what I’m looking for—the heavy weight of hooves.

I turn to the prince. “What about a herd of deer?”