The others nodded in agreement.

“Fine,” Edwyn relented. “We’ll help evacuate, but none of you are to go off on your own. It’s important we stick together.”

They rowed back to their ship and sailed for the Isle of Trowe. Unlike Munsey, Trowe overlooked a steep cliff, and their uphill climb to the town was exhausting. By the time they arrived, the weeping tide was already lapping at the rocks below, but few in Trowe had noticed it from so high up.

“Knock on everyone’s doors,” Edwyn instructed. “Warn them that Lochmordra is coming.”

“Got it!” the apprentices said in unison, and they split into three groups—Shazi with Cecily, Barclay with Viola and Tadg, and Edwyn with Yasha. Barclay and his friends raced to the cottages along the cliffside, banging on their brightly painted doors and hollering, “You need to leave! Lochmordra is coming!”

At Barclay’s first door, a young man answered, looking ashen. “He’s here? In Trowe?”

Barclay nodded. “The weeping tide has already surrounded the island.”

The man fled back into the house to pack his belongings, and Barclay felt a flutter of pride. He might’ve been afraid, but he was helping people. And that was what mattered.

But the older woman at the second house wasn’t as happy to evacuate. She scowled down at them. “I’ve lived in this house for thirty years. If it’s going down, then so am I.”

“It’s not a ship,” Tadg growled at her.

But she wouldn’t change her mind, even after Tadg threatened to shove her in a barrel and let her roll down the hill to the beach. And so, frustrated, they moved on to the next house, where a woman needed help carrying her elderly father from his bedroom.

As they worked, a clock ticked in Barclay’s mind, trying to keep track of how much time had passed since they first heard the roar. Had it been twenty minutes? Thirty?

While he helped hoist the woman’s father into a cot, the daylight above them began to fade. Not from clouds in the sky—but a cloudlike mist around them. It swathed Trowe in fog so thick that droplets of water dribbled down Barclay’s cheeks.

“What’s going on?” he asked Viola, who was merely a silhouette beside him. His teeth chattered from the cold. “Is this— Is Lochmordra—?”

“This is Orla,” Tadg told them. “I bet she and the other Guardians have arrived.”

“Do you think they can stop Lochmordra?” Viola asked.

“The Guardians on the other Isles couldn’t before,” Tadg said. “But Orla had never made it in time, and those islands hadn’t had the Horn of Dawn and the Fang of Dusk. If anyone can kill Lochmordra, they can.”