Stix went still as this realization sieved through her. The flame hawk was not a prisoner. It could leave at any time—and clearly did. Which meant the creature was exactly as Kahina had described, exactly as Lovats had too: a pet.

At that moment, as the shards of an image fitted together to form a whole, the water below gave a hiss of interruption. Intruder, it seemed to say. Unwelcome. Then came heat. Then came a crackling that built toward a roar.

The flame hawk was returning, and if it was home, then what if its master had returned too?

A scream ripped out behind Stix, distant but unmistakable. Ryber.

Something had changed between Vivia and the Empress. Vivia couldn’t say what precisely, except that it was more than a wall falling, more than her mask—their masks—finally crumbling away. It was something warm, and she let it come. Welcomed it, even, for it soothed away the cannon fire still echoing behind. It kept her feet moving southward even as her heart beckoned north.

Eventually, the forest vanished. Desert and death reclaimed the soil and shore—though not before Vivia caught them a fish in the shallow waves. She even coaxed a tiny fire to light, but she was so worried about undercooking the mullet, she burned it to a foul crisp. One more reason among the thousands that she wished Stix were there: Stix was an even worse cook than Vivia, and it always made her laugh when Vivia messed up.

Not that the Empress complained about the fish. She had not complained at all since fleeing the Well, and the one time Vivia asked if her feet hurt, she replied, “I’ve experienced worse.”

It was well past midnight when they finally found a better mode of travel: a dinghy wrecked upon the shore. Vaness spotted it; Vivia confirmed it through her spyglass.

“Can you sail it?”

“Hye,” Vivia replied, and she grinned. Her first grin in over a day. One that built up from her belly and spread across her lips. “Though we’re both going to get wet.”

Vaness smiled back, a sight Vivia wasn’t sure she’d ever seen before. So rich, so real, with her forehead smoothed and the barest glimpse of teeth.

Vivia clacked shut her spyglass. Then cleared her throat, and without waiting to see if Vaness followed, she hurried down a runoff groove in the cliff. Scree loosed beneath her feet; she almost fell twice in her haste; but soon, she was on the rocky shore and peering down at the dinghy. The heat that had built within her moments before was now replaced by the heat of exertion.