Dark flames surrounding them, lungs choked with smoke, Cainan said, “Save her,” and then did that freakish thing where his mouth expanded overly large and he inhaled as though trying to draw in all the air in the world, except instead of air it was fire that came to him.

The flames roared into his maw, a dozen streams at once that coalesced into a single, powerful torrent that forced Ludo to shrink back to avoid being scorched, the heat unbearable, like living inside an oven.

But then Cainan clamped his lips shut and it was over, the flames extinguished save for a few here and there that lingered like small cookfires. The Fire Eater stumbled, looking like he’d walked a thousand miles.

And then he fell, body smoking.

“Can you carry him?” he asked the lion man—Dagr, he remembered—who simply nodded and scooped up Bryony’s father and slung him over his shoulders without so much as a wince or a grunt.

Tenderly, Ludo drew Bryony into his own arms, holding her in front of him. Though it made no sense, some instinct told him he needed to get her out of the forest, that it was Lostwood itself that was causing whatever malady assailed her. But even with that in mind, he couldn’t stop the words Cainan had spoken to him from spinning endlessly through his mind.

Your brother is alive. Gado is alive.

Thirty-Three

Edward

Drouin, Kinkalla

Crown Prince Edward Echevaria jolted upright, as though startled from a particularly jarring and violent nightmare. He stared at his surroundings for a long moment, trying to make sense of them. Had it all been a vivid dream? His entire life, he’d been hearing voices in his head, whispery words telling him things about himself, who he was, what he would one day need to do… But this had been different. This time, he had done those things. He’d eschewed his kingdom, his mother, leaving it all behind and tromping around in enemy territory seeking to grow his powers—I had powers!—in a way that felt, frustratingly, like a one-name-day-old child trying to take his first, wobbly steps. Still, all of it had been wondrous and scary and exhilarating and felt a void of a lot more like living than anything he’d done in his first twenty years of life.

The final battle had been exciting, if disappointing, his defeat a hard pill to swallow. But I still escaped, he thought defiantly, remembering how, even outnumbered and with a badly damaged wing he’d flown through the night, crashing several times but always getting back up and soldiering onwards, over forest and plain, river and hill, until he’d reached the majestic and familiar cliffs of Drouin.