When I woke, it felt like I had swallowed a mouthful of sand after rubbing my face in it. Everything was gritty and dry and uncomfortable. But that didn’t stop me from noticing that I was lying in a tent, that Prevna was kneeling by my side.

A rush of relief swept through me as soon as I registered that she was safe and didn’t look hurt. Relief that was crushed a moment later when I saw that her eyes were wet and the conflicted storm of emotions flickering over her face.

She tried for a smile but it faded away before she could finish her sentence, “From one horror to another, I…” Prevna drew in a deep breath, looked up at the ceiling and then back down at me. “I…storms! You—” She cut herself off before continuing, “This is coming out all wrong. Just—I—give me some time.”

I tried to say something, anything, but my voice caught on the dryness in my throat and all I could do was cough as she hurried out of the tent. I groped for my waterskin hoping for some spare drop to let me shout after her but it was just as empty as I remembered. So I coughed and couldn’t do anything while I was left behind again.

Useless.

A disappointment once again for being myself. Ruining any relationships I managed to make. Prevna hadn’t done any of her normal touches she typically did without thinking out of familiarity and comfort. Her knees hadn’t touch my side, she didn’t absently brush her fingers over my arm that was right next to her, couldn’t keep looking at me. Couldn’t even smile.

And I knew why.

I had gone against her wishes, broken her trust, and put myself back into a position where, if I was anyone else, I should have been dead. A position she explicitly didn’t want me to be in.

Malady pushed her way into the tent and took Prevna’s spot though she didn’t fit as easily into the space. She thrust a waterskin into my hands and judged me while I drank.

“You know how to make a mess of things, don’t you?”

I glowered back at her but otherwise ignored the accusation. “What happened?”

“Jika finally crashed an hour ago after being unable to sleep after whatever you gave her. She was seeing things and begging us to help her sleep but the village’s healer said that in similar cases in the past they just had to wait it out—though he also couldn’t be sure what you had done.”

“I did what I had to. Our reinforcements never arrived and we needed to stay awake, so I made the resistance mixture as best I could without grounder grass.”

“That’s one of three ingredients.”

“The men use more.” I crossed my arms. “I did what I could. I assume we’re back at the village? How?”

“Jika carried you. She kept repeating that you told her to leave you but she couldn’t do that. Helena and I arrived back at the village only to learn that for some reason your group had returned piecemeal and you two were still missing. Her cats found you both not far from the village’s lake outpost but Jika was too exhausted to carry you further.”

Malady gave me a look that clearly said I should be grateful to Jika and not annoyed that if not for Nine Claw’s spectral cats my predictions would have come true. Nor did I really know how to accept the idea that someone other than Prevna would have gone to such lengths to save me. Jika and I had never been exactly been on friendly terms since we met since I kept her at a distance and she always acted like I was about to bite her.

So I pushed her actions to the back of my mind, coughed, and then asked my next question, “Do you know why no one came from the village to get us? Deamar was supposed come back with more floating boxes, or at least a bigger one.”

Malady gestured dismissively at the tent flap. “Go outside and you’ll see a path of scorched earth going past their camp. Apparently, some destructive monsters came closer to this place than they have in years and now we are being blamed for the occurrence.” She sniffed. “You’d think everything had been burned down with the way they are carrying on and yet none of their blasphemous wooden structures has so much as a scorch mark.”

She spared a moment to glower before focusing back on me. “Helena bid me to tend to you before I made the situation worse. Deamar has been throughly chastised for abandoning you and will be punished further for failing to notify the village’s leaders that you hadn’t returned with him until this morning.”

“And Prevna? The others?” I had to struggle not to whisper her name. As if saying it loudly would summon back that moment of her abandoning me all over again.

Still, I swore Malady smiled slightly when I mentioned Prevna’s name, which caused pride to flare in my chest on her behalf. Pride I had no right to feel.

“Ah, yes.” Malady said, “Prevna reported that Tike and her found Kuma bound up in a constrictor vine. She was unconscious from the pollen it puffs out but Tike knew how to protect against it and they were able to cut her free. By that time however the…fire dancers were between them and where you were hidden so they risked returning to the village in the dark.”

Malady caught my gaze with hers. “Which begs the question: what possessed you to stay behind when you had a path to safety, exacerbating a dangerous situation?” She frowned. “Or, perhaps, you weren’t thinking after refusing to sleep for days on end?”

I opened my mouth, closed it, before I muscled past the infuriating shame and embarrassment that wanted to steal my voice. “It made sense to stay. If Prevna and Tike had returned to Steamer’s Fall they wouldn’t have known to wait for reinforcements if someone wasn’t there to tell them. They might have thought we were forced to try for village because we couldn’t stay there.”

“Which is ultimately what happened.”

“I didn’t know Deamar would fail at the simple task of telling his fathers to come get us at that point.”

“You could have gone with to make sure the message got across.”

“I tried to make Jika go but she refused.”

“Lucky you she did.”

“I wouldn’t have died.”

There was a long, long pause before Malady sighed and said, “I see.”

I highly doubted she understood anything and I didn’t want her to understand if she did, so I snapped, “What?”

Malady ignored my question so she could press me with her own. “Prevna said that at the start of your search you entered a cave and that’s when your sleep issues started. She described having a…bad dream, but she said we would need to talk to you to learn more. That it was your story to tell. After which she insisted we let you sleep for awhile before giving you the resistance drink.”

Every word felt like a piece of Fellen’s hair cord fluttering to the ground while I cut it to ribbons. Only this time I was the one being cut down by Prevna’s consideration and a flicker of hope that everything wasn’t completely ruined after all. Of course, Fellen had still enlisted Prevna’s help after I shattered her trust, so perhaps Prevna’s actions were just another reflection of that last act.

I swallowed down the fear that was urging me to go running out of the tent, find her, promise her that I hadn’t meant to break her trust, tell that I couldn’t bear the thought of being safe while she was still in danger.

Prevna had asked for time.

I had to give her that since I hadn’t given her anything else.

So I swallowed the fear and let it burn into indignation. “Why should I tell you?”

“Because a word from Helena to Mishtaw about this fiasco will no doubt cause your mentor to think twice about giving you any missions again. Mostly like stop your role in this one right in its tracks.”

My teeth clenched against revealing the secret but I had to acknowledge getting taken off Mishtaw’s mission would make me fail my other one as well. “The Lady of Calm Waters called in a favor.”

No theatrics, no surprise. Malady just nodded and pressed, “And?”

After another long moment of reluctance I told her about looking for my patron’s “friend” and that was the reason for why we had gone to the cave before I showed her the stone. Malady examined it closely before handing it back but my distraction didn’t work for long.

“That doesn’t explain why you refused to sleep after the cave,” she pointed out.

I didn’t want to tell her—or anyone—about the dreams. Those were…too telling, too vulnerable. But Prevna had already mentioned having a bad dream. Perhaps I could do the same and just neglect to mention the fingers pinning me in place, the question on the wall, the words rasping next to my ear.

I cleared my throat and told her what I could, “One moment we were awake and the next I couldn’t find Prevna anywhere no matter how I looked. And I looked everywhere! It was horrible. A nightmare. Afterwards…I didn’t want to sleep in case I got caught in it. I couldn’t make myself close my eyes for very long.”

She clearly didn’t believe me, “You couldn’t sleep for days because of a nightmare?”

The rest of her question, unsaid but still heard, hung in the air between us: like a child still in swaddling clothes?

Part of me wanted to yell at her. To get rid of the discomfort through more familiar anger because, in a way, that really was truth even if the nightmare had been terrible in a way losing track of a friend didn’t add up to.

The rest of me wanted to make her afraid too. “Imagine knowing you’re asleep but no matter what you do you can’t wake up. You’re trapped in the nightmare and every bit of panic feels just as real as it would if you’re awake but in the nightmare the worst thing always happens and you have no way to stop it. You just have to experience it. Over and over and over again. You’re trapped. No control. No way to stop reacting even though you know what you’re feeling, experiencing isn’t real. Your body and emotions aren’t yours to control anymore. Would you want to fall asleep and risk that again?”

Malady relented, “No.”

“No,” I agreed.

Malady drew herself back up, about to ask another question when the tent flap opened again. Kuma crouched outside it, holding it open with one hand so she could look at us.

“The men are calling on their Master for judgment about our presence causing harm in the valley. Morn has apparently given into them and Logar can’t stop a revolt on his own. Nine Claws told me to tell you that we will meet their Master and ‘not bash their heads in’ unless she tells us otherwise.”

“They dare—” I didn’t hear the rest of Malady’s rant as she shoved past Kuma out of the tent and strode away.

Kuma gave me a sad smile. “Glad to see you’re alright.” She glanced behind her, not quite in the direction Malady stormed off in, before looking back at me. “Don’t look so gutted. Things might be a little hectic, but you didn’t call those fire dancers down on us same as I didn’t plant the vine that caught me. Some time to think and everything should be back to normal.”

I gave her a half hearted glare. “I’m fine.”

She nodded. “’Course you are. I’ll get you when we’re moving.”

Then she let the tent flap fall closed and I was left alone with my regrets.