Alara woke with a start, her hand reaching for the dagger tucked in her belt. It was more reassurance than protection—the blade remained dull over the last week as they trekked through the cloud forest. Still, she found herself checking her belt for it every few hours, even in the middle of the day, as they took turns sleeping.

It took a second to recognize what had awoken her. Runeo leaned over her, dark eyes shining in the twilight. Around them, the small clearing came to life in the growing shadows. Small purple flowers had opened up along the ground, giving off a faint glowing light. It would have been beautiful had Alara had the energy to appreciate them.

“We should head out soon.” Runeo’s voice was a whisper, but it was clear and commanding. He stepped away without waiting for an answer, shaking Quenti and Khuna, who curled together nearby.

Alara was too tired to do more than roll over. Runeo made his way around the clearing in complete silence. He was in his element out here, surrounded by the forest, but his shoulders remained slumped, yet somehow rigid.

It had been a few days since Alara had heard his voice crack with grief, and she wondered he locked behind the grim look of determination. She learned to not mention Micos’s name after the third day, when the word had sent Runeo into a spiral that ended with him not talking for two days.

Alara sat up, trying to shake the exhaustion and ache of hunger from her bones. It didn’t work. But at least her brain had stopped spinning. She couldn’t blame Runeo for how he felt. Her own gut clenched with grief every time she dwelled too long on the events that had brought them here.

“Alara.” Suri’s voice was close to her ear and Alara realized everyone else was up, eyes focused on her. “Are we clear?”

Alara gave a halfhearted smile and nodded, before closing her eyes. She reached toward her core, fumbling with the familiar threads, trying to grasp her magia with any semblance of control. A wave of cold nausea rolled through her, but she grabbed a strand of power and sent it out around her.

She searched the surrounding trees, but nothing beyond the cold absence of magia greeted her. Not even a magical beast was within a few miles of them. Over the past week of using her mind-stalking skills to scout out a path through the forest, Alara had noticed the magical cores of the animals that lived here—a few howlers and a fruit bear so far. The forest contained more magia than even the Council likely knew.

When she opened her eyes again, Lili was at her side, hands hooked under her elbow. She was leaning heavily on the tierren.

“I don’t sense anyone for at least a couple of miles.”

Alara tried to move her weight to her own legs, but instead she nearly collapsed, her knees shaking beneath her.

“We’ll head south then,” Runeo said.

“We should prioritize food. It’s been two days of nothing,” Lili noted, gesturing to Alara.

“If we cross the river, we may find more game.”

“Don’t you think the councilguards have planned for that?” Quenti said. “There’ll be just as many problems hunting on the south side of the river. And that’s assuming we can even get there. It’s been a week and all we’ve managed is to hike in circles.”

“Hardly in circles,” Lili said. “Besides, those ‘circles’ Alara led us in helped us avoid councilguard confrontation.”

The tierren’s comments didn’t seem to do much to quell Quenti’s anger. The bruya didn’t respond, but her eyes bore into the ground with a fierce intensity Alara knew too well. Perhaps it was the hunger or the exhaustion, but everyone had been on edge over the past couple of days.

It had been a week since they had escaped from Cielo, and they did so with only a meager amount of supplies. The morning after their escape, they woke up with plans to cross south over the river and head into the cloud forest toward Arbol. They hadn’t even broken out of the trees before they’d heard yelling and the pounding of feet.

Runeo and Khuna had climbed a nearby tree to scout out the commotion without being seen. When they dropped down from the treetops, eyes distant and panicked, Alara knew her mind-stalking abilities hadn’t lied to her. A platoon guards were marching down the road, spreading out along the river, preventing their most direct route home.

“We need to move,” Khuna had said. “Now!”

They had been running non-stop since, sleeping among the trees or in hidden clearings during the day and walking at night. But no matter how many directions they tried, they remained trapped by the councilguards staked out along the road and river. The borders of Sombria were officially closed, and they were stuck on the wrong side.

Runeo’s face reddened. “This wouldn’t have been a problem if we’d just kept moving that first day,” he said in a sharp whisper.

Lili placed a hand on his shoulder. “Anger will take more energy than we have.”

He jerked away from her hand, but didn’t speak again.

***

The group moved silently under the darkened sky. Even Mitteo and Suri, both raised in the Haven for much of their lives, moved with relative grace across the soft ground. Alara kept a light touch on her magia, sending out threads ahead of them to scout out councilguards.

In a rare stroke of luck, most of the troops they had stumbled upon over the last week held at least one mage for Alara to sense.

Though this was a good thing for their group, the mind-stalker had noticed a strange pattern emerging. Every so often, she found herself… almost sensing the blameless guards. It was a skill that was proven unreliable in the days since, so she dared not speak of it to anyone. Not yet, at least. A part of her wondered if she was turning delusional with hunger. After all, there was no record of a mind-stalker being able to sense a non-magia core. At least, not that she’d heard of.

Regardless, it was something she knew to keep an eye on. If there was anything she’d learned over the past few months, it was to never brush off any aspect of her abilities, no matter how unreliable or inconvenient.

Emaru would be proud, she thought with a sharp pang of guilt at the memory of her guardian-turned-enemy.

Alara placed a hand on the dull-bladed dagger at her hip. She thought, not for the first time, of the core she had sensed when she’d first found it. During her watch as the other slept, she’d taken to wrapping her threads around the trinket. A few times, she thought she had felt something, a feeling not unlike what she’d felt with the blameless guards. But an instant later, the feeling was gone, the dagger just as useless as it had always been—save for those few times when its dulled edge mysteriously sharpened.

She was definitely going crazy with hunger. She needed—

“Fish!”

For a moment, Alara thought she may have spoken her own thoughts out loud, but the group had stopped and was looking at Quenti. The aguen was smiling and pointing to a small clearing up ahead. In the silence that followed her exclamation, Alara could make out the trickle of water that signified a stream.

A stream… a pond…

“Fish.” Khuna didn’t wait for the others, but sprung forward, her hands already outstretched. Quenti darted after her and the rest trudged ahead with all the energy potential food could muster.

Khuna and Quenti were already bent over the pond by the time Alara made it through to the clearing. The water was black and still in the night. Its surface reflected the light of the moon that filtered through the thick forest in a perfect mirror.

Alara knew something was wrong before she could quite pinpoint the root of her unease. Khuna’s hand held steady above the water, eyes shut. Quenti’s brows furrowed.

“I can’t sense any fish,” Khuna said, cracking her eyes open.

“That’s because there aren’t any left.” Quenti pointed to the edge of the pool. “At least none alive.” The moonlight was dull, and Alara used the flint she had tucked in her sleeve to light a small floating fire.

In the sudden luminous of the flames, the shore of the small pond was visible, along with the twenty fish that laid still and unmoving in the mud.

Looking back at the pond, Alara took in the unbroken surface of the water. Not a single bubble or ripple interrupted the mirrored reflection. The pond was empty of any life.

“What happened?” Lili’s small hand covered her mouth and nose as she looked down at the dead fish.

“Mages,” Suri said grimly.

“I know they’ve been scaring the game away, but how could they… why would they…?” Lili’s voice quivered. Alara wasn’t sure if it was from seeing life snuffed out so unceremoniously or from them losing their first meal in days.

“We were studying new ways of fighting bruyas.” Suri paused, looking apologetically at the bruyas around her. “The air and water mages were working together. They found a way to take the air out of water sources. Kill the lake, kill the fish, kill the people that rely on them for a source of food.”

“That’s disgusting.” Mitteo spoke for the first time that night. His voice was rough and deep. “Human are not the only ones who rely on water sources for food and survival. This could destroy an entire ecosystem.”

“As long as the bruyas are dead, what do they care?” Runeo said, his voice cold.

No one spoke, but they all seemed of the same mind as the continued moving, leaving behind the dead pond.

***

Thank Sol, indeed, Alara thought to herself as her stomach sent a sharp wave of nausea to protest its emptiness. She couldn’t believe it was only a week ago that she had been feeling hopeful. Yet here they were, trapped and on the verge of starvation. Had the others who had helped them escape Cielo made it out? Were they faring any better? If their group didn’t make it back to Arbol, would the bruyas ever know what had happened?

Guilt gnawed at her chest as she eyed her companions. She was the reason they were here. The reason the network of rebels outed itself within the city of mages. If she hadn’t been caught by councilguards trying to get back to the Haven… If Khuna and—Alara’s mind stuttered over the images of Zinita and Micos… One dead and one lost. So much death and grief and no time to process.

She didn’t even allow her thoughts to skim over Adelmo’s face. She had spent the first three days on the run crying into her arms, trying to drift off to sleep rather than feel that pain. It felt like she was drowning in it, the weight of it pulling her down and trying to suffocate her.

But she’d locked away that piece of her in a small wooden box at the corner of her mind. There would come a day when she would have the time and energy to examine it. But not now. Now she needed to focus on moving forward, one step at a time.

“We can’t keep walking forever.” Alara startled herself with her words.

To her surprise, Runeo nodded. “She’s right. We’re going to starve before we make it across the river. And none of us is in any shape to face a councilguard and fight, which is what this may come down to.”

“What are you thinking? We march into the next town and ask nicely for some roasted cuy?” Suri asked.

“El’dyo, that doesn’t sound half bad,” Mitteo said.

“I was thinking more sneaking and thieving,” Runeo said, ignoring Mitteo’s comment.

Alara rubbed a hand along the twisted skin of her scar, staring into the trees, thinking. They had been heading west over the last few days, along the river and toward the sea. That meant that they were approaching the city that hugged the coast of Sombria.

“Quenti,” Alara said, “Hurazon isn’t far from here.”

The girl flinched at the name of her home time, eyes finding Alara’s in the darkness. “No.”

“Your dad—”

“Is just as likely to give us supplies as he is to throw us at the councilguards himself.”

Runeo watched the exchange, but seemed to ignore any subtext he might have heard there. “It’s settled. We’re going to Hurazon to resupply.”

Quenti opened her mouth to respond, but it was Alara that spoke first. “It’s hardly settled. Give us a moment, will you?”

Runeo looked just a taken aback as Quenti did as Alara pulled the girl away from the others.

“I know it’s not ideal, but Runeo has a point,” Alara said.

Quenti was leaning against a tree. Her eyes were just black spots in the darkness, but they bored into Alara, nonetheless.

“It’s a stupid plan. He was practically dancing as he packed my bags when you—when Emaru caught me.”

Alara flinched at Quenti’s correction. It wasn’t a correction; it was a lie to make Alara feel less guilty for being the reason Quenti was ever dragged into any of this.

“His daughter had magia. He was thrilled, like most parents are.”

Quenti’s look was deadpan. “Even if I believed that, it makes it even less likely he’ll be excited to see me begging at his door as a fugitive.”

“Maybe we don’t knock,” Alara said slowly, her mind wheeling.

“Okay…” Quenti narrowed her eyes.

“We need supplies and Hurazon is by far the closest city at this point. It’s also one you happen to be very familiar with. Suri was right. We can’t just march into town and buy supplies, but we can steal them.”

Quenti was grinning now. “I wouldn’t mind stealing from under my father’s nose—the drunkard wouldn’t even notice.”

Alara gave a small sigh of empathy and Quenti blushed slightly. Alara recognized the shame there and grasped the other girl’s arm warmly. She didn’t quite make eye contact with Alara, but she gave a small smile.

“Cheers to shitty parents,” Quenti said.

“Cheers.”

Alara and Quenti returned to the clearing to see their five companions huddle and deep in conversation.

“Let’s do it. Let’s go to Hurazon,” Quenti said. Khuna moved forward and wrapped her hand around the other girl’s own.

Runeo smirked. “Right answer. And I think we have a plan.”

Alara sent a small spark of fire snapping in front of Runeo’s face. The bruya flinched back instinctually before blowing it out with the wave of his hand.

“Don’t look so smug,” Alara said.

“So west bound it is to steal us some supplies,” Lili said, almost cheerfully.

“And I know what we can steal to get us outta here.” Quenti’s eyes were suddenly bright.

“A magical bridge to get us over the river?” Suri asked.

“Better. A sailboat.”