She didn’t like the way Norren’s eyes sparkled when he said with. She narrowed hers. “I need to speak to my mother.”

“Of course. But I thought you…” He shook his head. “Well, I didn’t know what to think, truth be told. First those Talons dragged you off, then Deena told us all it was fine, they’d come to crown you a princess.” He guffawed again, louder. “Can you imagine that? A princess, our Zofi.” Norren mimicked an elaborate curtsy, and Zofi elbowed his side, hard.

“Don’t you dare start.”

But Norren maintained a steady stream of my ladys and assorted affected titles all the way through the marshlands. Unlike the oasis towns, which by necessity had to huddle together around their lone source of water, villages out here in the Western Reach tended to sprawl. This one consisted of at least a hundred houses on stilts, dotted throughout a swamp that stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. Here and there, portions had been walled off to grow rice and grains, but most of it, as far as Zofi could tell, remained wild.

They walked several feet above the marshes on a wooden path that varied from ten feet at its widest down to narrow foot-wide bridges Zofi had to tiptoe over. At the first of these, she and Vidal were forced to tie their horses to a hitching post, the animals unable to cross.

“I can stay and watch them,” Vidal offered.

“No need,” Norren said. “Enough people have seen you by now. Even if this area was known for thieves, which it isn’t, nobody is daft enough to steal a Talon’s ride.”

Finally, far ahead, she spied a structure that reminded her of a tree house without the tree. A massive four-level series of wooden platforms, it stood open to the elements, save for the tents pitched around the edges. And clustered around those tents, she saw them.

Bette and her kids. Her partner Rez. Mia. Lek. Ora. Dozens of familiar faces, one after the other. More materialized as she drew closer, and shouts started up along the platform.

Finally, emerging from one of the tents on the first level, his hair cropped shorter than the last time she’d seen him, his cheeks thin from weeks on the run…

Elex.

She walked as if in a trance. It felt like drifting backward through time to an earlier version of herself, a less complicated one. To the Zofi who only knew half of her life, half of her story.

She was still aware of Norren on her right, shouting greetings. Vidal on her left, close enough that their fingers brushed with each step. She glanced over, found him staring at Elex, too. Of course. They’d met the night she sprang Elex from the dungeons. The night Vidal turned traitor to help Elex escape.

They nodded to each other, expressions solemn.