There was a long moment of silence, and when Sly’s expression gave nothing away, Kiran shifted his gaze back to Aurora. Her eyebrows were furrowed, her cheeks hollowed, and her lips pursed as moisture gathered in her eyes. “It’s my fault,” she whispered. “I took her in there. And now they have her.”

“Have her?” Ransom growled.

Kiran cut him off. “Who has her?”

“Locke soldiers. When the twister hit, we were in the dome, and part of the roof collapsed. Sly and I ended up on one side, and Jinx on the other with my friend Nova. We would have found a way through, but soldiers came on their side, and … and … we had to leave before it was too late.”

“Speaking of too late,” Sly said, “is there a way out of this place that isn’t going to be guarded by a legion of soldiers? Otherwise, we might all be captured.”

Kiran kept staring at Aurora, feeling like he was being pulled in two different directions. He was furious and horrified at the capture of his friend, at the fact that she had been in needless danger at all, but he knew, knew with every bit of certainty there was in the universe, that he would always want Aurora to save herself if she could. But that did not stop the shredding feeling inside him, like he was being pulled not so cleanly in two.

Feelings would have to wait. For Sly was right; they could do little for Jinx now. They needed to get to safety, regroup, and plan. He had a grappling hook and a rope; they just needed to find an isolated spot and hope they could get all of them over the wall without being seen.

In the end, they used his hook and one of the steel-arrowed anchors they used sometimes to keep their footing during high winds when hunting. He threw the hook over the wall, pulling until he had solid leverage, and then he shot the arrow into the uppermost section of stone. It only sunk into the rock a bit past the arrow’s head, but that would have to be enough. Together, the two ropes allowed them to move quickly, and it helped him and Ransom carry the added weight of their extra passenger. They were lucky that the sky was still shrouded by smoke from the firestorm; it made the city dark and hazy, and they were over the wall after a tense period without drawing any unwanted attention. But the danger was not over once they had made it onto the city streets.