“Where are they?” I whisper in frustration, running my hand through my hair. Thorne keeps his cool, thinking through what we might have missed. Something prickles my awareness, like the feeling I get when someone needs to enter or exit Thayaria. But it’s muted, and I can’t quite pinpoint what I’m feeling. I close my eyes and extend my awareness to the mist, but nothing’s out of the ordinary. I shake it away, focusing my attention instead on the mission at hand, though a feeling of dread continues to fill my stomach. “Let’s look again, and this time keep our eyes open for a hidden door or anything we missed,” I offer.

Thorne takes my hand and leads the way out of the room. I lock it behind us again, then we slowly make our way back down the first level hallway. It’s too crowded now, the house filling with more and more rebels. We can’t navigate this, and I’m about to aerstep us out of the house to regroup when I hear a human woman say, “I’ll take this food down to the prisoners.” My eyes dart toward the voice and I see a large guard grunt and pass a tray of water and bread to a human woman with blue eyes and mousy brown hair. She’s curvy, like me.

“I know her,” Thorne whispers quietly in my ear. “She was at the Oakton manor and escorted us to Krantz.”

We follow her closely, surprised when she heads outside. She walks to the back of the manor, to a set of external cellar doors she opens with a grunt before carefully making her way down the steps and into the dark space of the cellar. I can’t believe we didn’t think to check the back of the house. We follow her down the stairs into the cellar, and as soon as we’re fully in shadow Thorne’s magic disappears, though it’s dark enough that I only see a faint outline of him. We’re making hand gestures, trying to align on a plan in silence, when the woman speaks to someone, and we freeze.

“I’m getting you out of here.”

“And why would you do that, you traitorous piece of shit?” Fionn hisses back, and relief washes through me that we found them and that he’s alive.

“Because I stopped believing in the rebel cause after the attack on Arberly,” the woman whispers quietly. “That wasn’t political protest, that was violence against the innocents, motivated only by a desire for power.” I glance at Thorne, who gives me a shrug. We silently decide to stay where we are to see how this situation plays out.