“I am here, Lark. I will not leave you,” she whispered into my ear as she curled around me, sharing with me not only her warmth but her strength too.

My dreams were fitful and full of death, blood, violence and an urgency I couldn’t place. The world was safe. The demons defeated. Yet the sense of time slipping through my fingers remained.

The feeling that I was missing something integral, something I needed to understand, yet couldn’t see was overwhelming.

What could possibly be driving the emotions that fired my adrenaline and jerked me awake, sweating and panting for breath? The darkness disoriented me and for a terrifying soul-sucking moment, I was entombed, held by man-made material I couldn’t escape, once more in an oubliette.

I lurched forward, stumbling over Peta’s sleeping form. She let out a cry, but I barely acknowledged her, barely recalled she was with me, so turned around as I was in my mind. Believing I was once again confined, swallowed by a prison I couldn’t fight.

Scrambling on my hands and knees, I spilled out from under the deck and onto the hard-packed dirt. Fear nipped at me, and I drove my hands into the loose earth, letting the power slowly fill my soul, and drive the haunting ghosts back. No one could take me while I held the earth’s power.

Except Blackbird. A shudder rippled down my spine. Blackbird . . . Raven . . . one and the same. My younger brother had betrayed our family, destroying so much of the Rim, I wasn’t sure it would ever come back.

A soft wind blew through the trees, and the sharp tang of pitch and decaying earth filled my lungs. I drew it in and out, slow and even as I calmed my racing heart. This was the smell of home. The fresh scent coaxed the fear out of me piece by piece. The moon hung heavy over the treetops, its light reflecting off the tips, tinting them silver in the darkness. In the aftermath of the storm, the world was peaceful, clean, and safe once more.

Peta trotted to my side. “I hear Cactus snoring. We could leave him and be home in a matter of hours.”

I grinned at her, though my lips wobbled. “I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”

She snorted and I took a step away from the cabin. I paused and looked back, the wide black windows staring at me still. How he could sleep in there, I had no idea. I shuddered and hurried away.

The trees and darkness away from the cabin didn’t bother me, not a bit.

“Tell me again what you know of Ash’s disappearance.” I pushed a low-hanging branch out of my way.

“Nothing more than what we both know. He hasn’t been back for a year, despite Bella lifting the banishment—”

“That has only been a few weeks. Not long enough for him to hear about it,” I said.

“But Griffin couldn’t find him,” Peta said. “That is what Blossom said. They sent Griffin and he didn’t find a trace of Ash anywhere.”

I gripped the haft of my spear a little harder. I knew Peta didn’t actually know anything more than me. But I needed to ask the questions out loud because if they reverberated inside my head any louder, or longer, I would surely go mad with the sound of them.

With the battle over and the world safe, I had no distraction when it came to him. No reason to not think about him and where he was.

We approached the Rim from the eastern edge. I paused for a moment, running my hands over the trees. This was where my first challenge as an Ender had started. The eastern Rim carried a deadly lung burrower that spread through our Terraling family like a wildfire in the heat of summer. We’d lost at least half our family, and all the trained Enders. The only ones left had been Ash, Blossom, a few other trainees, and myself.

“The past, I see it in your face and feel it through our connection,” Peta said. “One day, you will have to let it go.”

She was right. I knew she was. Yet I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened to our world if I’d not been pushed to the limit of my abilities. I shook my head. None of that mattered now. Peta was right; it was time to put the past behind me for good.

I picked up my pace. First to the Rim to check in with Bella and make sure she was safe. She would have info on Ash’s last whereabouts, I was sure. Or maybe Griffin would have something, a lead for me to go on.

Then I would be off to find Ash, wherever he was. With my goals set firmly in my mind, I felt my heart settle into an easy rhythm. The Rim was quiet this deep in the night. Movement here and there alerted me to the Rim guards, but they saw me and let me pass without question, only tipping their heads and raising their weapons in a silent salute.

Peta was still in her housecat form and she leapt up to me without warning. I scrambled to catch her as she laughed. “We have to work on your reflexes.”

“I’m not a cat, Peta.”

“More’s the pity. Imagine the fun we could have.” She winked. I shook my head and walked straight across the main section of the Rim. Houses sat in a two-mile-long narrow oval with the Spiral at the center. The destroyed Enders Barracks—six months after the battle and it stood as it had then; burned out and desolate—sat to one side of the Spiral. The seat of power for Terralings, the Spiral had been my home for a short while as a child. Not that I cared about that anymore, but I needed a place to sleep. With the Enders Barracks burnt out, that left the Spiral or my old home at the far edge of the Rim. I paused, thinking.

A flutter of feathers and the thump of hooves hitting the ground spun me around. I knew only one creature who had a combination of hooves and wings.

The Pegasus stomped his foot, and snorted as he flung his head up and down, which sent his mane flipping about like a spray of water. “It’s about time you got here.”