A horn blast shook Gibnor, waking me up out of a dead sleep. The hair on the back of my neck rose as I leapt up, knife in hand, and ran onto the ledge. Sarah was soon behind me with dark eyes and her own weapon dangling at her hip.

We looked at each other as another blast sounded, and she placed a hand on my shoulder. “It is not a battle call,” she reassured me. “Two trumpets—they require aid. Let us see what has happened.” We descended to Gibnor’s main ledge two stairs at a time. Below us, the canyon was still obscured by the cold shadow of dawn. A convoy had just passed under Bellgate’s arch and was heading for Gibnor. It was escorted by scouts, weather-beaten and limping. As the two blasts sounded again, people flooded from all corners of Gibnor to peer over the edge.

I laid on my stomach, trying to make sense of the sight. Behind the scouts, discernable by their all-beige clothing, were a dozen people. Some rode on rams, while others stumbled across the sand like zombies. Even from high up, I could tell something was wrong—their clothing was nothing more than rags, and many were missing limbs.

My stomach turned. The prisoners, I realized.

Soldiers and civilians rushed from the rocks to support the prisoners who did not have a ram to ride. In a moment, at least half had been loaded onto a UTV and bundled in fresh clothing. As I leaned farther forward, frustrated by the height, Sarah pushed a spyglass into my hand. When I raised it to my eye, the group grew into sharper focus. A sour taste rose to my mouth. Up close, the dire state of the prisoners was far more obvious, with each one the amalgamation of blood-soaked bandages and crudely cut stumps.

The air disappeared from my lungs. At the end of the convoy, a man refused support from a soldier and twisted around as if expecting an ambush. His looks were striking compared to Bellgate’s locals: like me, he had the light skin and hair of a Northeasterner. He walked with a strange, half-jumping gait, and my eyes traced his left leg to see that it ended in a stump below the knee.

Even as my body grew hot with hatred for the king, I still could not take my eyes away from the blonde man. Something about the structure of his face and the way he moved was eerily familiar. I handed Sarah the spyglass, rushing through an explanation, and took off down the stairwell. I crossed three stairs at a time, breaking all etiquette by squeezing past the people who were ascending. Shouts of warning followed me, but I couldn’t stop.

I jumped the last few stairs, still barefoot, and sunk my feet into the burning sand. I ran after the group with my eyes trained on the blonde, my heart thudding in my chest. For a moment, I was lost in the crowd of people supporting the convoy, but then I found myself again using Gibnor as a reference point. I whipped my head around, trying to find the man again. Then, suddenly, we were face-to-face.

Time grinded to a halt. The man stared at me with one familiar, clear-blue eye, the other scratched out in an ugly scar. My face grew wet with tears. “Owen…” I whispered.

We stared at each other, the years we had spent apart stretching between us. There was nothing to say—no way to forget his betrayal, Peter’s death, or my escape. Now, he stood before me, having experienced unspeakable torture. But as he looked at me, I remembered my childhood back in Historical Amberasta: the days spent on a sunny river bank, plotting together; dancing at the byre; sharing an apple stolen from the market.

I threw my arms around him and began to sob in earnest. “So you survived, too,” he said, speaking in low tones. His voice was scratchy, as if he was unaccustomed to using it. The sound seemed to pull at the very foundation of my heart. “Glace, what is this place?” he whispered, “Are you captive here?”

I shook my head against him. “Shhh, I am called Anabelle now. This is Bellgate, a city-state free from Keon. It’s safe here.”

I pulled back, and his face was a hard mask of skepticism. “Impossible.”

“No, it-” I looked around, realizing the convoy had moved forward, and we were beginning to draw attention. I gripped Owen’s arm. “Listen, we cannot talk here. Go with them, they’ll treat your wounds. I’ll come find you.”

He nodded, but I thought I sensed an undercurrent of unease. “Okay. Until then.”

Standing in the sand, I watched him rejoin the group with his strange gait. He had changed—but then again, so had I. But while I had lived in Karakul, he had suffered two years of torture in one of Keon’s maximum security prisons. I shook my head. What matters is that he is alive. It is more than I have ever dared to hope for.

***

Nico drew back the curtain to my room. “I have to see him,” I said without preamble.

“He’s under surveillance with no visitation.”

“He just escaped prison, and now he’s surrounded by strangers. There’s no way I’m leaving him alone.”

He sighed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“How is he? Is there any news?”

Nico shook his head. “All of the refugees are in bad shape. His leg is infected, and it will be a long road, but the medics said the prognosis is good.”

I stopped my pacing to light a lantern. It was dark, past midnight, and Sarah was out. “I can’t believe he’s alive,” I said softly. “I’m not the only one who survived that night.”

Nico’s eyes grew darker. “Anabelle, you need a cover story. About how you and Owen met.”

“Why? It won’t be long before my story is exposed to all of Amberasta, and the king already knows that Owen was inside the Fortress on the night of the theft.”

“This isn’t about the king.” Nico shook his head. “If the elders knew that Owen was involved, they’d want his testimony in the pamphlet. They’d insist. For God’s sake, look at him—it’s obvious he was tortured. Think about it. His life is proof of our claims. He was taken by the men in grey and ended up in one of Keon’s prisons. That means they were Amberastan all along, not Solokian.”

I swallowed. “Shit, you’re right…but that decision needs to be Owen’s.”

“Say he’s your cousin or brother. You look alike, after all.” I nodded. It was a good story, and not far from the truth. Back at the capital, Owen and I had been as close as family. That’s why seeing him injured was so painful. I wondered if death would have been preferable, and questioned for the first time if I had done Owen a disservice not by leaving, but by failing to use one of my bullets to kill him as he stood captive in the arms of the men in grey.

Nico looked at me closely, his brows drawn together. “Are you okay?” I shook my head, but said nothing. “I know what you’re thinking, but you bear no blame for what happened to Owen. The fault lies with himself and with Keon’s regime.” I opened my mouth to argue, offended that Nico had blamed Owen. He raised a hand. “Hear me out. He chose to enter the Fortress without training, and he paid dearly. He knew the risks. But of course, Keon bears the most responsibility for creating the situation.”

He has a point. After all, I’ve been angry at Owen for years for diving through those gates.

Nico placed a hand on my shoulder. “Just know that if you had attempted to intervene, you would have met the same fate, or worse.”

***

“You have an hour,” Nico told me. His voice was firm and professional, markedly different from when we were alone together.

“Thank you,” I replied, giving him a quick glance. He opened the door for me, and I stepped inside of Owen’s chambers in the infirmary. As I passed, Nico brushed my hand gently, as if passing along his strength.

Owen was propped against the headrest, staring at the rock wall. “Hello,” I called, hoping my nervousness didn’t show.

His good eye looked me up and down. “You came.”

“Of course. How are you faring?”

“Better than I was. They operated on my leg.”

I sat down on the edge of his bed. I could see his stump in my peripheral vision, freshly stitched and bandaged. I was at a loss for words, so I only nodded. “I can still feel it, sometimes,” he continued, “like my body still thinks it’s there.” His voice was unsettlingly calm, and I found myself wanting to retreat to somewhere far away.

I touched his arm. “Listen, they’ll take care of you. I know it sounds impossible, but they’re making a difference. I’m talking about real resistance: nine-thousand people free of Keon.”

Owen shook his head. “That’s what we thought, too. But we were fools. We didn’t stand a chance, and they don’t either.”

My words stuck in my throat. I had planned not to discuss what had happened in Historical Amberasta, but he was right about Peter, Daichi, and the others. Robbing the Fortress and escaping alive was a pipe dream. “We were all desperate,” I said quietly. “Here, we have time.”

“Time to do what?”

I shook my head. “Owen, Bellgate’s scouts risked their lives to bring us here. We both survived, so maybe even Katrina-”

Owen’s eye clouded over, and I knew instantly that I’d misspoken. “Katrina,” he said flatly, “is dead.” His hands were shaking. How would he have learned that in captivity?

“Are you sure? They might have lied. Maybe she-”

“Stop! They showed me her body. She’s dead.”

A tear rolled down my cheek. “Owen, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He stared at the infirmary wall, looking at something I couldn’t see. His blue eye was like cracked glass. “Glace, Keon took everything from me: my body, my father, my friends, my girlfriend, my home, my sanity. So no matter where I go, I will never be free of him.”

Suddenly, I understood. There was nothing I could say—the Owen I had known was lost long ago, the night he had been taken by the men in grey. I searched his face, then hugged him tightly. My shoulder grew wet as he cried—slowly at first, and then with all the force of a storm.

My grip tightened, and anger blossomed anew in my chest, so powerful it hurt. “We will get our revenge, I promise.”