Just in case? “Is this a bomb?” Ayla squeaked, afraid to move even an inch. Beside her, Crier made an alarmed noise. “Should I really be holding it?”

“Don’t worry,” said Dinara, sounding more amused than Ayla thought necessary. “It won’t explode unless you throw it.”

“What if I drop it?”

“That’s probably fine.”

“Probably?”

“Definitely. Definitely fine.” Dinara’s attention was already back on the boy with the hammer. “Ah, I should take care of this,” she said with one last smile, and headed over to crouch beside him, examining the cracked Tourmaline.

Ayla stared down at the bomb in her cupped hands. “Probably,” she said again.

“I’ll carry it,” Crier offered.

Ayla shook her head. “If anyone’s gonna end up needing a bomb, it’ll be little old human me,” she said, brushing her thumb over the soft leather of the pouch. Was it a chunk of Tourmaline inside? It had to be. “No, I’ll carry it.”

“Be careful,” said Crier.

“Aren’t I always?” said Ayla, and Crier’s resulting glare was the strike of flint and fire steel: first heat, then sparks, then Ayla, the tinder, was aflame.

They left the heartstone keep and started the slow, treacherous journey up into the Aderos Mountains at dawn. Dinara, compass in hand, took the lead. Fen and a few other rebels followed close behind her, then Ayla and Crier, then more rebels—the oldest ones—were bringing up the tail end.

Ayla wished Rowan were here.

Or Benjy. Or Storme. She felt so exposed, picking her way through the rocks, sun beating down from above. But she was glad to have Crier here with her, as time seemed to pull shut like a drawstring around them.

The sun hit its zenith, and their procession reached a narrow pass between two jagged peaks. A footpath barely wide enough for a horse zigzagging down the near-vertical mountainside. Dinara and the others didn’t hesitate, sliding down a short shelf of rock onto the path one by one, a rain of pebbles marking each slide, but Ayla paused. There was nothing special about this pass—it was naked gray rock, dusty path, and the valley below. Dark green firs and stubborn moss clung to the rocks, the only color between stone and sky. At the other end of the valley, a thick fog was rolling in. Like white sea-foam. Nothing was obviously out of place. There were no columns of smoke; nothing to suggest they were not alone here. But something felt wrong.

If there was anything Ayla knew to be true, it was this: she trusted her instincts above all else. Her mind was conditioned to overthink, to doubt—I’m being paranoid, I’m seeing things, I’m making it up—but her body was the body of her ancestors, everyone who had lived and died before her, and their instincts were recorded in her blood, her bones, her heart. Their instincts hadn’t let her down yet.

“Crier,” she said, sensing Crier come up behind her. “Wait.”

Crier stopped. Shoulder to shoulder, the two of them looked over the fog-obscured valley. Almost directly below them, Dinara and the others were winding along the footpath.