Talin, I call again.

But she doesn’t answer. Of course not. There I go again, wanting the impossible. After a minute, her emotion fades away again, leaving me once more with nothing but the fragile thread of our bond.

Jeran glances back at me as we move quietly through the woods. “All good?” he signs to me.

How can it hurt more, after so many months, to feel a phantom sense of Talin and then have it taken away? How can it be worse than not hearing from her for so long?

I think about telling him this. But then the other voice in my mind turns on me, harsh and biting. It was just a trick of your mind, it says. Just the ache of Talin’s absence.

I nod and sign back, “All good.”

Jeran looks at me a beat longer, eyes searching mine, but then continues along our path.

Over the past few months, we have learned all the ways through this forest. With Adena, I practiced how to step softly enough not to disturb the leaves on the floor. From Jeran, I mastered gliding from tree to tree like—how do the Marans say it?—a breath of air. They still move more stealthily than I do, but one learns survival techniques quickly when trained by the Federation’s army.

By the time we reach a clearing overlooking the valley where Newage sits, the sunset has given way to twilight. Stars overhead are winking rapidly into existence. The train station’s construction site near Newage’s front gate is flooded with artificial light from their lamps, but otherwise, several bonfires burn across what was once the Outer City. From here, the three guard towers they’ve erected around Newage loom like pillars to the sky, casting long black lines of shadow in their wake.

A short distance away, Adena stirs in the shadows of an engine in the grass beside the tracks. She signs at Jeran and mercifully keeps her movements to what I’ve learned over the months, so I’m able to understand.

“Who’s watching the walls tonight?” she asks him.

Jeran’s gaze roams the area before he finds the uniforms he is looking for.

“Caitoman Tyrus and his patrols,” he responds to Adena in the darkness, using the new name sign we have developed to represent the Premier’s younger brother. Even though I can’t see Adena’s expression from here, I can tell from her silhouette that she winces.

My own memory of the General is of him smiling at me on the other side of the jail cell that I—a boy of fourteen—had been thrown into before I was sent to the National Laboratory and given to the Chief Architect. He’d listened to me as I begged him for the lives of my father and sister.

“And what would you be willing to do to save them?” he asked me.

“Anything, sir,” I replied in desperation.

At that, the General’s eyes widened, glinting with mischievous delight.

He ordered me taken out of my cell, then led to the prison’s courtyard, where he handed me the leash of a young goat they were about to send to the kitchens. He gave me a knife and told me what he wanted me to do to it.