The birds hop uselessly from my hand to a nearby branch. I curse. Of course magic won’t work this far from the Heliana. Or maybe they are too far from me that it doesn’t hold. I’ll have to just find them on my ow—

The first bird goes, and when the second follows, I nearly fall over in relief. Best of all, they fly in the same direction.

“Southeast,” I whisper. “Well, southeast for me, too, then.”

I alternate between jogging and walking as early morning becomes midmorning. My legs and hips ache at the repetitive motion. Sweat slides down my back and hairline. There’s less wind than up in the skies, and without the ever-present breeze, everything is unnaturally still. My lungs start to strain from the effort but I wait until I am starting to feel faint before I stop to rest again. Picking a choice tree, I climb up. Keeping an eye out for the finches, I pick a defensible position and catch my breath.

I’m swallowing a cool gulp of water when there is a chirp by my ear. One of the birds has come back. I thank it in my mind, mentally severing the thread that connects us. The bird did his best, but the forest below stays still, until—

“Rowan?”

I look down and find a familiar head of black-brown hair and dark eyes looking up at me. “Ox!”

A gentle smile betrays his disbelief. “Are you following me, Rowan An’Talla?”

“Not quite,” I fire back. “One second.”

I put the rest of my food back, painfully aware of the awkward silence. A wiser Leonodai might have planned out their lie, but well, I’m not that Leonodai. I don’t want Ox to be complicit in anything. What matters is the prince’s illness.

The fact that I’ve left without orders … that could wait.

Ox’s arms are around me the moment my feet hit the forest floor. He plants a kiss on the side of my head as he pulls me close. “What are you doing here?” he asks. “Did they send you, too?”

“Yes,” I say, remembering that someone once said the best lies are short—and so is our time. “Ox … Prince Tabrol is sick.”

Ox puts his hands on both of my shoulders, his jaw slack. “What?”

“It’s true,” I say. “And skies, it’s worse. The kids are dying faster than the sentinels thought. One boy died after five days. Ox, that cannot be Tabrol.”

“I know,” he replies.

“We have to find the cure right away,” I say, the thoughts I’d bottled up during my journey spilling out of me. “We only have five days, total, and that’s if the prince holds on that long.”

“Okay, okay,” he says. “I can’t get past the prince. I’m glad they sent more people, but why are you alone?”