“Because they’re commanded by the general, Martyn, and Martyn is far wiser than any Horde I’ve ever heard of. He knows that you and I have no chance of recovering Johnis, and having realized this, we’ve fled to Middle Forest.”

“But I would never leave my son!”

“Obviously. Risking your neck for the Catalina cacti is what started this whole thing in the first place.”

“And I think you would do the same, if I’m reading your eyes correctly.”

Silvie looked at Johnis’s mother and knew there was no hiding what both understood. “You’re right. I love your son. So we have a problem.” She looked back at the city. “We have to leave for the forest, but we can’t leave without Johnis.”

“And we don’t have any more water,” Rosa pointed out.

“Correct.”

They rested on their elbows, staring in hopelessness.

“How old are you?” Rosa asked.

“Sixteen. Nearly seventeen.”

“Then you’re older than him.”

“Not much.”

“It’s young to be married,” Rosa said. “I know it’s common, but still . . . very young.”

“Do you really believe that, or are you more interested in keeping him?” Silvie asked. She felt free, after two days together in the cell, to say anything to Rosa.

“I suppose it’s to keep him,” Rosa said, sighing. “You’d be a very lucky girl, you know. He’s stubborn, but he’s a purebred.”

“Then you know about the prophecy?”

Rosa blinked. “What prophecy?”

“ ‘A chosen child marked by Elyon will prove his worth and destroy the Dark One,’ the secret prophecy goes. Thomas and Rachelle claim it was kept secret to protect whoever that Chosen One was. You know the mark on his neck?”

“Yes.” Rosa’s eyes were wide.

“The Roush, Michal, told us that Johnis is the Chosen One.”

“You’ve . . . you’re saying you’ve seen a Roush?”

Silvie remembered their vow to keep all they’d learned and seen in complete confidence. This was a dangerous track she was on, though seeing as how they’d lost the books and Johnis might be dead, the vow they’d made to the Roush seemed distant and irrelevant.

“Metaphorically speaking, in a dream. Thomas was given the prophecy in a dream. Do you doubt that your son is chosen?”

“No. But it’s the first time I’ve heard anyone else say it.”

“You knew? How?”

“I had a dream too. A Roush told me the prophecy, and I knew that Johnis bore the mark. So Thomas and Rachelle both know!”

Silvie felt her last lingering doubts disappear. Johnis was the Chosen One.

A flock of birds circled in from the west. Black vultures, Silvie thought. But then she saw that she was wrong. They were Shataiki.