Roar turned away. He picked up his jacket, banked the fire, and began to walk.

As they hurried to put the Snake behind them, clouds moved in, casting a mottled darkness over the woods. Aria’s right knee throbbed—she must have sprained it on the fall from the balcony—but they had to keep going. Sable would be after them. They needed to get away from Rim and find safety. It was all she let herself think about. All she could manage.

They traveled along the crest, stopping in the afternoon in a dense pocket of pines. The Snake curved along the valley below, the water rippling like scales. In the distance she saw a wall of rising black smoke. Another stretch of land decimated by a storm. The Aether was growing more powerful. No one could be in any doubt.

Roar dropped his satchel and sat. He hadn’t spoken once yet today. Not a word.

“I’m going to look around,” she said. “I won’t go far.” She left to scout their position. They were protected on one side by a shale slope. On the other by an impassable cliff. If anyone came after them, they’d have fair warning.

When she came back, she found Roar hunched over his knees with his head in his hands. Tears streamed down his cheeks and rolled off his chin, but he wasn’t moving. Aria had never seen anyone cry that way. So still. Like he didn’t even realize he was doing it.

“I’m right here, Roar,” she said, sitting by him. “I’m here.”

He shut his eyes. He didn’t respond.

Seeing him that way made her hurt. It made her want to scream until her throat was raw, but she couldn’t force him to talk. When he was ready, she’d be there.

Aria found a spare shirt in her satchel and tore it into strips. She wrapped her knee and put her things away, then had nothing else to do except watch Roar’s heart bleed out before her eyes.

An image sprang to her mind, of Liv smiling sleepily and asking, Are you the bird, or is my brother?

Aria clamped her hand over her mouth and scrambled away. She darted past shrubs and trees, needing distance because she couldn’t cry silently and she wouldn’t make it worse for Roar.

Liv should’ve been married tomorrow, or she should have run away with Roar. She should have seen Perry as a Blood Lord, and she should’ve been Aria’s friend. So much had vanished in a second.

Aria remembered being in the dining room with Sable. She’d had a knife in her hand, and a clear shot at his neck. She hated herself for not having done it. She should have killed him then.

Eyes swollen, her head pounding, she limped back to Roar. He was asleep, his head resting on his satchel.