“We’re too near Chernast,” Mal replied.

Harshaw adjusted his grip. “Does it matter? If we fly through the day, we’re going to be spotted.”

“We could go higher,” suggested Genya.

Nadia shook her head. “We can try, but the air’s thinner up there and we’ll use a lot of power on a vertical move.”

“Where are we headed, anyway?” asked Zoya.

Without thinking twice, I said, “To the copper mine at Murin. To the firebird.”

There was a brief silence. Then Harshaw said what I knew a lot of them had to be thinking. “We could run. Every time we face those monsters, more of us die. We could take this ship anywhere. Kerch. Novyi Zem.”

“Like hell,” muttered Mal.

“This is my home,” said Zoya. “I won’t be chased out of it.”

“What about Adrik?” Nadia asked, her voice hoarse.

“He lost a lot of blood,” said Tolya. “All I can do is keep his heart steady, try to give him time to recover.”

“He needs a real Healer.”

“If the Darkling finds us, a Healer won’t do him any good,” said Zoya.

I ran a hand over my eyes, trying to think. Adrik might be stable. Or he might slip more deeply into a coma and never come out of it. And if we set down somewhere and were spotted, we’d all be in for death or worse. The Darkling must know we wouldn’t land in Fjerda, deep in enemy territory. He might think we’d flee to West Ravka. He’d send scouts everywhere he could. Would he stop to grieve for his mother? Dashed on the rocks, would there be enough of her left to bury? I looked over my shoulder, sure that at any minute I’d see nichevo’ya swooping down on us. I couldn’t think about Nikolai. I wouldn’t.

“We go to Murin,” I said. “We’ll figure out the rest from there. I won’t force anyone to stay. Zoya, Nadia, can you get us there?” They’d been flagging before, but I needed to believe they had some reserve of strength to call on.

“I know I can,” Zoya replied.

Nadia’s earnest chin lifted. “Try to keep up.”

“We can still be seen,” I said. “We need a Tidemaker.”

David glanced up from bandaging the powder burns on his hand. “What if you tried bending the light?”

I frowned. “Bend it how?”

“The only reason anyone can see the ship is because light is bouncing off it. Just eliminate the reflection.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“You don’t say,” said Genya.

“Like a rock in a stream,” David explained. “Just bend the light so it never actually hits the ship. There’s nothing to see.”

“So we’d be invisible?” Genya asked.

“Theoretically.”

She yanked off her boot and plunked it down on the deck. “Try it.”

I eyed the boot skeptically. I wasn’t sure how to begin. This was a completely different way of using my power.

“Just … bend the light?”

“Well,” said David, “it might help to remember that you don’t have to concern yourself with the refractive index. You just need to redirect and synchronize both components of light simultaneously. I mean, you can’t just start with the magnetic, that would be ridic—”