Aurora tried to keep her voice calm, not to let any eagerness show. “I could contact them. I know of a secret go-between they have in the camps.”

He folded his arms over his chest, and though his eyes did not leave her face, his head tilted slightly to the side, and she wondered if another spirit was whispering to him, if they could all see straight through her.

“No,” he declared after some time. “I do not think I will be letting you go quite so easily. Not until I am certain I can trust you. If the rebellion is of use, I will decide that myself.”

Then he turned and walked out of the woods, leaving her alone again. But alive, at least.

Days. That was how long Kiran had wasted. He could not think of all the things that could have happened to Aurora in that time. He thought at first that maybe she had not taken enough powder, that somehow, the fog had gotten to her. Because when he had come to, fog Stormheart clutched in his fist, Aurora had been nowhere in the clearing.

The dense clouds had still surrounded him, even though the magic that had controlled them was long gone. He thought she might have wandered off, her mind altered by the fog storm’s magic; so he had searched for her, calling her name loud enough that his voice went hoarse. He searched through the night and into the next morning. When he still could find no trace of her, he went back to their camp, thinking maybe she had wandered off, but had come to her senses, and when she went back to the clearing, he was not there. It was reasonable to assume the next place she would go would be their camp. But she was not there either. As far as he could tell, it had not been touched.

He wandered the wilds for another day, fearful every moment that he might stumble upon her body. There were so many ways to die in the wilds. He knew them all, had seen so many of them up close and personal. He used to pride himself on the fact that none of it scared him; he was ready to meet death however it came.

But the thought of finding Aurora in any of those ways? It was worse than death, worse than any torture he could devise. When he had walked for nearly two days without sleep or any sign of her location, he gave in to the foreboding twist that was knotting up his stomach, and turned back for Pavan. Kiran needed help. He needed Duke and Ransom and Bait and Sly, and gods damn it, he needed Jinx. She would know what to do. With her earth magic, she always had some way of learning things that the others could not. She would listen to the trees or touch the soil, and somehow know things.