Aria couldn’t respond. Later, when she could think clearly again, she would recall Molly’s every word. She’d consider the way Reef watched her with his arms crossed, like this was her problem to fix. Now she moved further inside, her heart stuck in her throat.

Most of the people she saw were still as death. Others shook with fever, their complexions sallow, almost green. She didn’t know which was worse.

She searched the faces around for her friends—Caleb and Rune and—

“Aria . . . over here.”

She followed the voice. A pang of guilt hit her when she spotted Soren; he hadn’t come to mind. Aria stepped past the quaking bundles, kneeling at his side.

Soren had always been so burly, but now the thickness in his shoulders and neck had deflated. Even wrapped in a blanket she could tell. She could see it in his hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, which were heavy, half-lidded, but focused on her.

“Nice of you to come by,” he said, clearly more lucid than the others. “I’m a little envious you got private accommodations. Pays to know the right people, I guess.”

Aria didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t absorb this level of suffering. Her throat was choked with it. Tight with the need to help. To change this somehow.

Soren blinked tiredly. “I can see why you love the outside,” he added. “It’s mega champ out here.”

2. Peregrine

2

PEREGRINE

You think it’s Roar and Twig?” Gren asked, pulling his horse alongside Perry’s.

Perry inhaled, searching for traces of the riders who’d been spotted earlier. He smelled nothing but smoke.

Ten minutes ago he’d left the cave, eager for fresh air. For light and the feeling of openness and movement. What he’d gotten was a thick gray haze from the morning’s fires blanketing everything, and the stinging sensation of the Aether like soft pinpricks over his skin.

“I’d be surprised if it was someone else,” he replied. “Hardly anyone besides me and Roar knows this trail exists.”

He had hunted these woods with Roar since they were kids. They had killed their first buck together not far from here. Perry knew every bend on this path, which cut through land that had once been his father’s, then his brother’s, and then—half a year ago when he’d become Blood Lord—his.

It had changed, though. In the past months, Aether storms had started fires that sheared through the hills, leaving wide, charred stretches. The temperature was too cold for late spring, and the smells of the wood were different too. The scents of life—earth, grass, and game—seemed buried beneath the acrid stench of smoke.