If Ana and I made it, there was no other explanation. Why were we alive if she was dead?

I could not grasp it, could not accept it—wouldn’t.

“Isolde,” Adrian said gently.

“No—” My voice broke, and I dissolved into tears once more.

Adrian pulled me to him, and time passed in this turbulent manner—where I would cry and then sleep, overcome with exhaustion, and wake up once more in tears.

“How did you find us?” I asked.

He waited so long to speak, I didn’t think he would tell me, but then he started. “Sorin,” he said. “He found me in Cel Ceredi. He left you all in the grove, surrounded by villagers from Gal who thought they were doling out justice against witches.”

A wave of nausea soured the back of my throat.

This was Solaris’s fault.

“Why are you saying it like that?” I asked. “Why are you saying he left us?”

I felt defensive. I remembered hearing the low growls of aufhockers disturbing our casting, and the sounds of Sorin battling, but beyond that, I knew nothing because by then, we had been attacked. I wondered how the villagers had managed to slip past the monster or monsters attacking Sorin.

“Because that is what he did,” Adrian said.

“He could not help it,” I said. “There were…so many. It was almost as if they knew we were going to be there.”

Adrian was tense beneath me. I did not think he blamed Sorin for having to leave for help, so much as he blamed himself for not being there at all.

“How is Sorin?” I asked.

“Devastated,” Adrian replied, and I could tell he spoke with his jaw clenched. “He says he heard a growl and thought it was an aufhocker. Then he heard another and thought it might be a pack. When he shifted, he found he was surrounded by villagers, and by then, you had all been attacked. They were lying in wait.”

If that were true, how did they know? We had told no one save our small circle about our plans to cast a containment spell for the mist.

A spell that we had not even been able to complete.

All of that work and time, wasted.

“What happened to the villagers?”

“Those who did not die that night will die today,” he said.

I expected nothing less.

In the silence that followed, my eyes once again filled with tears. This time, I thought about how we had only been motivated to help our people, to protect them from Ravena’s magic. But none of it mattered; all of it went unacknowledged.

Perhaps I was foolish to keep fighting for others and should only fight for myself.

***

At some point, I woke up again, and Adrian was gone.

I shot up from bed but found him staring out the window. When he heard me, he turned and crossed the room to me.