She wanted to turn back—how could she possibly want to go back? But she did. Perry was the rugged cliffs and the crashing surf. He was the Tide compound and the hunting trails and everything else she’d left behind.

Talon shifted in Twig’s arms. Sleepily, he raised his head and moved from Twig’s arms to Roar’s. Aria looked from one to the other and back.

They had to be enough. Maybe someday she’d feel like they were.

Voices carried from the cockpit. The pilots and engineers, assessing the terrain. For an hour—and then two—all she heard was the careful trading of coordinates. The running of tests that evaluated freshwater sources, elevations, and soil quality. The cataloging of every feature from the air as carefully as a spider creeping over its web, with technology so sensitive, so advanced, that it seemed like magic. Once, this kind of magic had built worlds for her in the Realms. Now it was discovering a new world, taking its temperature. Mapping the best place to establish a settlement.

What they were really looking for, she knew—everyone knew—was people. Such a discovery would bring a host of issues to consider. Would they be welcome? Would they be enslaved? Turned away? No one knew.

Until Sable emerged from the cockpit. “It’s ours. It’s uninhabited,” he said, sounding a little breathless.

“Good fortune at last,” Hyde said softly. He stood behind her, tall enough to see over her head to the window. All of the Six were there, crowded around her. They had been since they’d crossed the barrier.

She didn’t know what to make of that. She didn’t know whether it was supposed to mean something, all of them standing around her like a wall.

“About time,” Hayden said. “I’ve got no fight left.”

Twig let out his breath. Reef met Aria’s eyes, and she wondered if he’d been hoping, irrationally, for the same thing as her. That the instrumentation would find one human. A young man of almost twenty, with green eyes and blond hair and a crooked smile that he used infrequently, but to powerful effect. A young man with the purest heart imaginable. Who believed in honor and who never, not for a moment, placed himself over others. But of course such a person hadn’t been found. Magic wasn’t real.

Marron stepped between Hyde and Twig, joining them. “I wouldn’t call it good fortune. Millions of people lived here once. Now there isn’t a soul left. That seems far from good fortune. And we might have benefited from some compassion and some help. We are so few.”