Cal doesn’t stand up with the rest of us, and instead leans back on his hands. I suspect he knows my knees are still shaking, and that I’ll drop back down soon enough. He has a way of knowing things like that, and it makes me so very angry.

“Yes, Maven slipped into Harbor Bay,” he answers, all business. “He didn’t make a fuss, so we wouldn’t know, and he went for the first newblood he could find.”

I hiss at the memory. Wolliver was only eighteen, guilty of nothing but being born different. Guilty of being like me.

What could he have been? I wonder, mourning for the soldier we have lost. What ability did he wield?

“All Maven had to do was wait,” Cal continues, and a muscle in his cheek clenches. “They would’ve captured us all if not for Shade. He got us out, even with a concussion. It took a few jumps and too many close calls, but he came through.”

I exhale slowly, relieved. “Is Farley all right? Shade?” I ask. Cal dips his head, nodding. “And I’m alive.”

Kilorn’s grip tightens. “How, I don’t know.”

I raise a hand to my collarbone and the skin beneath my shirt twinges with pain. While the rest of my nightmare, the other horrors inflicted on my body, are gone, Maven’s brand is very real.

“It was painful, what it did to you?” Cal asks, causing Kilorn to sneer.

“Her first words in four days were ‘kill me,’ in case you’ve forgotten,” he snaps, though Cal doesn’t flinch. “Of course whatever that machine did was painful.”

The clicking sound. “A machine?” I blanch, looking between the two young men. “Wait, four days? I’ve been out for that long?”

Four days asleep. Four days of nothing. Panic chases away all my lingering thoughts of pain, shooting through my veins like icy water. How many died while I was trapped in my own head? How many hang from trees and statues now? “Please tell me you haven’t been babysitting me all this time. Please tell me you’ve been doing something.”

Kilorn laughs. “I would consider keeping you alive a very big something.”

“I mean—”

“I know what you mean,” he retorts, finally putting a little distance between us.

With what little dignity I have left, I sit back down on the sleeper and fight the urge to grumble.

“No, Mare, we haven’t just been sitting around.” Kilorn turns to the wall, leaning against the packed earth so he can see out the window. “We’re doing quite a bit.”

“They kept hunting.” It isn’t a question, but Kilorn nods anyways. “Even Nix?”

“The little bull comes in handy,” Cal says, touching the shadow of a bruise on his jaw. He knows Nix’s strength firsthand. “And he’s quite good at the convincing part. Ada too.”

“Ada?” I say, surprised at the mention of what should be another newblood corpse. “Ada Wallace?”

Cal nods. “After Crance slipped the Seaskulls, he got her out of Harbor Bay. Lifted her right from the governor’s mansion before Maven’s men stormed the place. They were waiting at the jet when we got there.”

As happy as I am to hear of her survival, I can’t help but feel a sting of anger. “So you threw her right back to the wolves. Her and Nix both.” My fist clenches around the fuzzy warmth of my sleeper, trying to find some comfort. “Nix is a fisherman; Ada’s a housemaid. How could you put them in such terrible danger?”

Cal lowers his eyes, shamed by my scolding. But Kilorn chuckles at the window, turning his face into the waning light of sunset. It bathes him in deep red, as if he’s been coated in blood. It’s just my wounded eye playing tricks, but still the sight gives me chills. His laughter, his usual dismissal of my fears, frighten me most of all.

Even now, the fish boy takes nothing seriously. He’ll laugh his way into his grave.

“Something funny to you?”

“You remember that duckling Gisa brought home?” he replies, catching us all off guard. “She was nine maybe, and took it from its mother. Tried to feed it soup—” He cuts himself off, trying to smother another chuckle. “You remember, don’t you, Mare?” Despite his smile, his eyes are hard and pressing, trying to make me understand.

“Kilorn,” I sigh. “We don’t have time for this.”

But he continues on undaunted, pacing. “It wasn’t long until the mother came. A few hours maybe, until she was circling around the bottom of the house, her other ducklings in tow. Made a real racket, all the quacking and squawking. Bree and Tramy tried to run it off, didn’t they?” I remember just as well as Kilorn does. Watching from the porch while my brothers threw rocks at the mother bird. She stood firm, calling to her lost child. And the duckling replied, squirming in Gisa’s arms. “Finally, you made Gisa give the little thing back. ‘You are not a duck, Gisa,’ you said. ‘You two don’t belong together.’ And then you gave the duckling back to its mother, and watched them all scramble away. Ducks in a row, back to the river.”

“I’m waiting to hear a point in all this.”

“There is one,” Cal murmurs, his voice reverberating deep in his chest. He sounds almost surprised.

Kilorn’s eyes flicker to the prince, giving him the slightest nod of thanks. “Nix and Ada are not ducklings, and you are certainly not their mother. They can handle themselves.” Then he grins crookedly, falling back to his old jokes. “You, on the other hand, look a bit worse for the wear.”