Aidan tossed and turned as he dreamt troubled dreams. He saw his father gushing downriver, drowning in rapids; he saw another river and his sister, Kyra, flailing as she tumbled down over waterfalls; he saw the entire Pandesian army invading Escalon, setting it aflame; and he saw an army of dragons swooping low, breathing fire over Escalon and burning it to a crisp. The flames of the dragons met the flames of the Pandesians, and soon Escalon was nothing but one giant conflagration. Aidan saw himself caught in the middle of it, shrieking, burned alive.

Aidan woke with a start, gasping, breathing hard, wanting to cry out; yet some part of him stopped himself, warning him to stay silent. He felt himself moving, bumping, and felt hard wood behind his head. He twisted, supremely uncomfortable, and tried to figure out where he was.

Disoriented, Aidan looked about, felt a clump of hay in his hand, and noticed hay in his mouth. He spit it out and as he heard the clatter of horses and felt another bump, it all came rushing back to him: the wagon.

Aidan remembered he had been crammed back here, hiding beneath the straw, riding south for what felt like days—though he knew it could not have been that long. He felt the hunger gnawing in his stomach, felt the cold in his bones, and realized he had fallen asleep somewhere along the way. The dreams had seemed so real it took him a moment to collect himself, and as he began to sit up, he checked himself, realizing not to sit too high so as to remain undetected. The last thing he’d want would be to lose his only ride out here, far from home, in the midst of the Wood of Thorns. There remained a long way to go, he knew, until he reached his father and his men—wherever they were.

Aidan pondered the dreams, trying to shake them off but unable to. His heart pounded as he considered it all. Was his father in danger? Was Kyra? Was Pandesia attacking? Were the dragons coming to kill them all? He felt more of an urgency to reach his father than ever.

Aidan leaned back and looked up at the sky, relieved to see it was still night, giving him more cover from being detected. The sky jostled by as they rode, the millions of stars far away, and he wondered about them, as he often did. Aidan had studied astronomy—along with philosophy, history, reading and writing—as had his siblings, all of them so fortunate, he knew, to have been given a rare education typically reserved for the royal family. He was lucky the weak king’s historian had fled Andros to stay with his father in Volis.