“Sometimes,” he says, looking straight at me, “I have no idea why I trust you.”

He’s gone, disappeared back into Eden before the hurt of his words can even register.

“Nice going, Gods Touched,” Harlie says from below me. She’s sitting on a sloped bit of rock, in a scrap of shade. She must have needed fresh air, come out here at some point when I was listening to Amory spill the wastes’ secrets. “You scared off the only person in the wastes who not only tolerates you, but loves you.”

“He doesn’t love me.”

“Girl, you wouldn’t know love if it rode up in a rickshaw and slapped you across the cheek.”

“Oh, and you would?” I snap. “You turned your back on family so you could dedicate your life to a wind wagon that didn’t sail!”

“Because I was trying to find green. So that I could save them all someday. That is the very definition of love.”

“And what do you think I’ve been doing?” I yell at her. “Why do you think I’m here?”

“I don’t know. Why are you here, Delta of Dead River? Is it to save the people you love or is it because you were trying to prove something?”

“Both.”

She scoffs. “Be angry and move past it then. Stop acting like you’re the only one twenty clicks from camp without a waterskin. Get over yourself, or you will lose everything you have left to live for.”

I open my mouth, close it.

I don’t know why I’m here anymore. I thought it was to save my family, and in many ways, that is still true, but the emptiness I feel at knowing the brand on my back is useless is harrowing. I feel hollowed out. Betrayed. The map has been a curse my whole life, a thing I’ve had to hide, a reason to remain small and invisible, and now the pain of carrying it hasn’t even paid off.

I have nothing.

I am nothing.

I can’t free my family, and even if I could, there is no Verdant to take them to. Just a bunker and no green. Shelter, but no water source.

Nothing viable.

Nothing but a place that’s already been deserted.

I can see how the myths started now, why we all believed that the first person to find the Verdant would also have the power to control its borders. Eden has impressive defenses, doors that can lock out the world.

There are fragments of the truth in the stories we’ve shared. But our faith in the people who abandoned us—these gods who disappeared—kept us from seeing the biggest truth: that this is it—these wastes, this dust. This is all we have.