Now Kiran paced back and forth, every muscle in his body pulled taut like a bow. The arrow, he felt, might be lodged in his lungs, for no matter how much air he gulped down, it seemed to leak out faster than it should.

She couldn’t be inside. She just couldn’t be.

They’d not traveled safely across the wildlands only to have her die in a Stormling city just like his sister. His skin began to crawl, the way it sometimes did in cities, as if the memories were about to burst through his pores so he could ignore them no longer.

Out of nowhere, a downpour of rain began a few streets over, quickly expanding to reach over the inn. He turned his head up to the sky, and welcomed the wash of cold over his face and down into his clothes. He never felt clean in cities. It was good that hunting kept him in the wilds the majority of the time because he was already restless, and they had barely arrived.

He watched the flames atop rooftops sizzle and steam under the fall of rain, waiting for the inn’s fire to subside completely. Pushing his soaked hair off his forehead, he resumed his pacing. He was not sure how many times he marched back and forth in front of that inn, refusing to think about what he might find inside, before Ransom called out, “Kiran!” His friend gestured down the road where two silhouettes were beginning to take shape through the torrent of rain.

The taller of the two had a hood pulled low to cover her face, her form little more than a moving shape in the distance, but he would know Roar anywhere. He had memorized everything about her—the too-graceful glide of her walk, the way she hunched her shoulders to make herself seem shorter when she wanted to go unnoticed, and how it was utterly impossible for him to ever not notice her.

She was moving gingerly, as if in pain, and before he knew it, he was sprinting toward her. She was dripping wet, but somehow a streak of soot still marred her pale cheek. When he was almost upon them, she turned and shared a long, unreadable look with Jinx.

What were the two of them doing that took them away from the inn?

He cast the thought away. None of that mattered, not when he’d been so afraid that she was … He shook his head, refusing to dwell another moment on the possibility.

Kiran slowed as he neared, covering the last of the distance in a few long strides. Then he caught her face in his hands and kissed her.