Ivory Hall is bustling with apprentices again. Round one of the bone games is over and all the groups are back in the capital.

And no one had a challenge as brutal as ours.

Chatter about the games floats through the corridors between training sessions and across the dining hall at mealtime—stories of one group tackling an obstacle course, another working as a team to cross a chasm, yet another who had to find their way through a giant maze made of bone. As far as I can tell, none of the other teams faced something with lasting consequences. Most of the apprentices seem to be in good spirits, as if the challenges have given them more confidence in their abilities. But a thick fog of foreboding hangs over me that I can’t quite shake. The Grand Council sentenced Jensen to fifteen years on Fang Island. He will miss Boe’s entire childhood. It makes me feel ill every time I think about it.

And I know my future isn’t any brighter. I feel like I’m in a bone reading, looking down two equally dismal paths—either my life ends at Latham’s hand, as it has so many times in my nightmares, or it ends as a prisoner on Fang Island once my secrets are exposed.

I long for the comfort of my mother’s good advice or Gran’s warm hands around mine or my father’s gift for telling me just the right story that puts everything into perspective.

But I can’t have any of that.

I’m homesick, but it wouldn’t matter if I were in Midwood. After Gramps died, I visited the Forest of the Dead often, finding comfort at the base of our family tree. But now, with my mother’s and Gran’s bones still missing, it would only be a painful reminder that I have no way to connect with them. Except …

I do have one of Gran’s bones—the healed one that I’ve been avoiding since I got here. Looking down my other path won’t allow me to visit memories of my father or Gran—they were both already gone before the bone broke. But I could see my mother again. I could finally look for clues about Latham. And now that I’m better about feeling my way forward and backward through time, maybe I can avoid seeing too much of Bram. The extra practice navigating through the reading might be good for me. It could help me in later visions to know if I’m seeing the past, present, or future.

My loneliness gives me the courage that my fear never could. I sit on my bed and fold my legs in front of me.