Some of the children ran after them, wailing and weeping, falling quickly behind, and losing them completely when the wagon turned around the first bend. But Cruze stayed behind, surveying their surroundings. They were near a river; the soldiers had done them that courtesy at least. But there was little in the way of shelter or protection. The leaves and vines were so thick on the trees overhead that they blocked out most of the sky, making it difficult to determine where the sun hung overhead, or if it did at all. They had to be far, far away from the city. Not even the great looming castle that sat atop the gloomy ocean-battered cliffs could be seen from wherever the soldiers had left them.

He set about exploring, mostly so none of the others would see the way his eyes turned red, and his lip shook with every breath in and out.

“This is better,” Cruze told himself. He would make a better life for himself. He could. He might have lost his mother and his father and what little home he had. But he had his wits, his strength, and he had the goddess. His father, before he had stopped visiting, had always told Cruze he was goddess-blessed.

And the goddess would protect him now. He believed it.

He had to.

Because as he climbed up a tree in order to kick down a few coconuts for the group to share, he realized it was not the canopy that blocked out the sun overhead. It was a storm. Dark clouds unfurled like the wings of some beast of the night, and he heard it roar on the wind. Cruze did not know how, but when he looked on that tempest something in it seemed to look back at him. Icy awareness trailed up his spine and then he heard a voice—not in his mind, nor in his heart, but everywhere in him and nowhere all at once.

“Destroy,” it whispered. “Death. Decay.” Again and again, the words took up residence inside him. “Destroy. Death. Decay. This is the will of the goddess.”

“Did you say something?” a voice called out below, jerking his attention away from the clouds.

The girl hovered below him, her arms full of the coconuts he had already freed, clearly waiting for more.

“What?” he asked.

“Did you say something about the goddess?”

Cruze’s mouth went dry, and he refused to raise his eyes again to the storm overhead. Instead, he slid carelessly down the tree, earning what would prove to be several monstrous bruises later, no doubt.

When his feet met solid earth, he looked at the girl and said, “There’s a storm coming. We need to find shelter, or we die.”