When he was eighteen, Beldon had fled the family and been held hostage in a castle for three months – though he himself said it was less an imprisonment and more that he'd forced his captor to allow him to stay. Even Luka said he wasn't very good at playing prisoner.

When Beldon had first gone to war, he'd been away for about eighteen months. It had felt like an impossibly long time to not hear from him for the family, she couldn't imagine how long it had felt for him.

Marie-Fey had asked him after he finally returned from his first tour what it had been like. She hadn't wanted to drag up painful memories and raw fears, but she couldn't understand how he could survive living in constant fear on both occasions.

What had stuck with her back then, what stayed with her, was when he'd considered the question for a moment, then shrugged and explained that, after a time, he stopped being scared.

Not that he didn't feel fear ever again.

Every time he went into battle, the fear came back like a devil that had lost his scent for a time, but came roaring back once it found the trail, never truly shaken off.

But one couldn't survive in a constant state of terror. The mind tricked itself into steadying out. Into thinking. Into assessing rather than obsessing.

He was always scared at some level, somewhere in his core, but wasn't frightened in the moment.

The only time before that day in the desert that Marie-Fey could liken to the fear Beldon might have felt was the day she had been attacked back in that rotten excuse for a village and struck a man's eye from his face. It wasn't a day she cared to think about in any detail, not the moments before her hand had closed on the whip, but she did remember how the fear had changed.

She had felt a fear so deep; it had felt like it was all that sat in the core of her. But she also remembered how her mind had raced to save herself. Though she didn't care to, she remembered every detail.

She remembered the dirt of the road, right by her left temple had been four rocks, two the size of her thumbnail, one slightly smaller and the fourth about half the size of her fist with a jagged white streak.

She remembered the seventeen twigs that littered the ground around her. Twelve had various knots on them. Seven had smaller branches.

She remembered the whip handle had been three and a half inches out of the reach of her middle finger, the fourth loop of the fabric on the handle fraying, eight strands stuck up at awkward angles.

Her mind had taken that in in the second she'd taken to try and see where the whip lay. She'd then managed to drive her foot up and make contact with something that hurt her assailant and she'd broken the cage that held her down.

The fear hadn't had time to come to the fore until two days later when she'd finally got away from her sisters when they'd gone out for a walk with their father and her brothers had all gone into the village.

Only then had she been able to sit on the thin, hard bed she shared with her sisters, fists dug into her skirts and stare at the floor. The trembling had almost shaking her apart, but she hadn't been able to do anything more. She couldn't let her family know anything was wrong. It wasn't the time. There was too much already going on. Tears were too much a tell-tale.

Even when they asked what was wrong, she didn't let them know. She hid it with arrogance and anger, though it was too much. She knew Constantine had been trying to figure out the problem, and had been doing so ever since. She knew her sisters and Valentine were worried about her mood change but were too wary of setting her off into another rage. She knew her father was trying to understand what was wrong, through the fog of his depression, he was trying. She knew Beldon had observed her shift in mood and would start to question it more and more. Considering how much time he spent with the villagers, he may have even started joining the dots. But then he'd run to the castle to save their father and sisters and everyone's attention turned to him and his sudden, violent absence in their lives.

The fear eventually faded, taking a corner seat in the ballroom, always there but generally not noticed.

That day in the desert was the same.

Marie-Fey sat in the wagon, surrounded by the boxes, listening to the storm, and ignored the fear.

The only time it jolted into the middle of the dance was when the wind knocked her wagon over, tipped it onto its front where the driver would sit. But it didn't move any further and fear slipped back into its corner and Marie-Fey felt drained and tired. She could sleep, even in the storm.

When her eyes opened again, silence reigned, and she was no longer so tired.

She was still for a while, just listening, watching, studying the shade of darkness before her. Darker than before.

She was either buried or it was dark out.

Eventually she forced herself to move.

She shoved crates aside, standing on the fabric of the end wall, and started to undo the laces of her gown. Once it was off, she began to haul the boxes around until they formed something akin to a step ladder. Tying the skirts of her undergarments into a knot at her thigh, she started to climb. Prodding the fabric of the wall that now made up the ceiling, she didn't feel any pressure. Hoping she was correct in her assessment, she undid the ties and let out a breath.

No sand came pouring down on her and she was looking up at the bright, starlit sky.

Peering over the lip of the wagon, she saw the sand sat about halfway up the wagon, covering the front set of wheels. Heaving herself up, she dragged some of the lighter crates up with her and knocked them to the ground below then followed, stacking them in case she needed a ladder back up again.

The sand hadn't yet cooled from the day and the moon was low enough in the sky that she knew she still had an hour or so of warmth before the true chill of the desert set in.

First things first however, she made her way back along the caravan, ignoring that she walked over the graves of buried bodies and half-drowned wagons until she reached the carriage she'd left Maanah in.

"Maanah!" she shouted, banging on the half-concealed door. "Maanah, are you conscious?"

Considering the lack of answer, Marie-Fey took that to mean she wasn't. Looking back the way she'd come, she returned to the sixth wagon that had been blown on its side and pulled a stray arrow from its wheel.

Driving that through the fabric, she craved out several holes, then dug her fingers into one of the openings and pulled, the fabric tearing away under the weakened surface.

Inside was the equipment used to build their campsite from the night before... the night just before...

She blinked and dismissed the distraction, lying on her stomach and reaching down until she caught one of the shovels.

She then returned to the carriage and began to dig. Mound by mound, the sand fell away until it was low enough and wide enough that she could yank the door open and not have more sand just tumble into the gap.

Sliding inside, she met the black, silent eyes of Aya, watching her in her cage, waiting and unruffled.

Marie-Fey looked at her for a moment, then unlocked the cage and opened the door wide.

"There's a good chance I still won't make it. You might as well fly home, or elsewhere in any case," she said before crouching down and looking at Maanah.

The floor was black under her, blood too dark to see in the night but she could smell it. But her face lay in moonlight that glinted through the window; her sun-kissed skin looked too pale. Marie-Fey looked at her lips, the shade unnatural, then blinked and turned her attention.

Reaching for her wrist, she felt for a pulse.

But there wasn't one.

She dropped the cool hand and looked away, taking another breath.

"Pulse, too weak to hear," she muttered, eyes gliding over the interior of the carriage and settling on Maanah's travel purse.

Tipping the content on the velvet seat, she found the little mirror Gharam had given Maanah for her last birthday.

It had been a drama because Gharam hadn't been able to decide on a style, and since none of them could simply go to the market and browse, Marie-Fey had put an end to the fussing by snapping at her to sketch out what she wanted the mirror to look like then sent out an order to have the item specially designed.

It was a pretty little thing with imagery of the mountains on the golden back. Apparently Maanah had been born in a town that bordered a snow-capped mountain range.

Lying down beside Maanah, Marie-Fey angled the mirror so she could still see the surface, then held it just above Maanah's nose and mouth and waited.

A softest veil of white frosted over the surface then faded away. It came again seconds later and Marie-Fey sat up, setting the mirror aside.

Condensation from breath.

Maanah was alive, but she was almost as good as dead.

She would have to fashion some sort of rug if she intended to drag Maanah with her out of this hellscape.

But moving a body was no simple matter even under ideal circumstances.

If she took Maanah with her, the chances were they were both going to die – Maanah from her injuries, Marie-Fey from exertion, among other things.

She took a seat on the bench and looked at Aya, who remained in her cage, watching.

"Of all the easy deaths to choose from, I end up with the slow, awkward decline," she said absently.

Aya tilted her head at her and Marie-Fey released a breath and climbed back out of the carriage. She returned to the equipment wagon and unearthed the small medical bag that contained the bare minimum to get a party through a short trip across the desert that would have them regularly moving through towns.

From Uday's wagon at the front, she found a small bottle of alcohol and that as the best she could do with her limited knowledge and limited supplies. She dressed the wound as much as she could, then stepped outside again and looked at the sky.

The question was, in a way, a simple one, and yet there was no simplicity to it at all.

Her maid was alive.

But she was of no use.

Did Marie-Fey leave her behind the die of infection and dehydration, or even kill her outright, and take her chances alone in the desert?

Or did she drag that body with her, upping both their chances of death by nearly one hundred percent in hopes of that minuscule percentage getting them out alive?

"Loyalty is an ugly thing," she muttered, leaning back against the wagon and dropping her gaze to the ground.

Something glinted in the sand, drawing her gaze.

She looked at it for a moment, then her brow creased.

She wasn't seeing what she thought she was seeing... was she...?

Pushing away from the carriage, she walked to the glitter and stared at it.

It was the necklace Zaydan had given her.

Which was impossible because that necklace was in its box, in her carriage, in the chest under her seat cushion where she had put it the day they'd left.

It could not be here.

She knelt down and picked it up.

It could not be here, acting as a paperweight to the card The Black Rabbit had given her after his fortune-teller had predicted... this... this moment.

Nothing to do with Maanah.

Her secret was still to be discovered.

She still had a future to be told beyond this moment.

Perhaps Marie-Fey didn't but Maanah did.

She picked up the card and looked to the sky, in the direction they'd come.

The constellation on the card didn't hover over the palace, and it obviously didn't sit above her home country.

But it did sit above the city they had left the morning before. If she followed that constellation, if she found her way back to the city, it would eventually lead her home.

She looked at the card again.

"What was it she said?" she muttered, turning the card over and over through her fingers. "What was Gharam's fortune?"

A shrill cry made her look up to see Aya circling above, her voice echoing through the night.

"Watch for Aya and be ready to send help," Marie-Fey breathed, pushing back to her feet, watching Aya fly around and around before diving to settled on the roof of the carriage, her cry haunting in the silence.

But no, it wasn't quite silent.

There was the night breeze.

The creaking of the shifting dunes.

And the thud of something approaching, steady and unhurried.

Something that would not be made to do anything it did not wish to do.

Marie-Fey turned, eyes fixing on one of the dunes as a figure appeared, illuminated by moon and stars.

And she started laughing, sinking to the ground and laughing, her voice joining the chorus of the night.

"But I suppose, loyalty has its moments," she said, pressing her hand to her face as Barnaby plodded his measured, haughty way back to her, still dragging the man she had shot through the leg along behind him, the camel he'd run away with following along behind.