“Do you even have to ask?” I whispered.
A thumb slid over swollen lips. “I need to hear you say it.”
“You can trust me, Wickett Veyne.”
Stone groaned behind us. The barrier was pulled away piece by piece.
Light flooded in, blinding after the pale blue of the luminescent stone but also air, fresh, glorious air.
A massive form blocked most of it. Not Riot. Not Lucy.
Silas, standing with the sun at his back, eyes like daggers meant specifically for Wickett’s throat.
“Easy,” I said, moving toward him. “I’m fine. We’re fine.”
The griffin made a sound that suggested he absolutely disagreed with my assessment offine, but he stepped aside to let me through, snapping his beak at Wickett as I passed, through the freshly dug tunnel and out into the open air with everyone else.
I scanned the group immediately. Pip was still tucked in Calder’s pocket, her terror-filled face peeking out.
I caught Calder’s eyes.Okay?he asked without words.
I nodded, mirroring the gloom I felt in the room. The Oracle stood beside Riot, both looking somber in ways that made my stomach drop.
“Where’s Lucy?”
Pip flew toward me, her eyes heavy with sorrow. “After the crash, we heard her scream. As our Lucy, not dragon Lucy.”
Riot tossed the boulder he’d been moving. “She’s gone. No trail. No scent to follow. Her pack, her weapons—nothing. It’s like she just... vanished.”
My legs weakened.
Gone.
She’d just become my friend, really, truly my friend, in the span of a few desperate days.
Gone.
I thought about the way she’d looked at me when she said, “I’d like to try.With you.” Like friendship was something precious and fragile she was offering despite believing she didn’t know how.
And I’d said yes. I’d said we were surviving this.
Except now she was missing, and we had no idea if she was alive, hurt, taken, or something worse I couldn’t let myself think about.
The relief of being reunited shattered like glass.
Chapter 42
Syneca
When the flame on a candle bends toward you, the dead are leaning in to listen. When it bends away, they’ve heard enough, and you should probably stop talking.
Corvus, Silas, and Riot took to the sky in turns, their shapes dark against the fading light. Searching. Hunting for any sign of Lucy in a landscape that swallowed people whole.
The rest of us were supposed to take turns sleeping. None of us did.
I sat at the cave entrance, staring out at the Erelith burning perpetually on the horizon like the creator had drawn a line and said:this far, no farther.
It should have been awe-inspiring. But there was nothing between here and there except an expanse of flat land, cliffs and then ocean. The Sable Deep, waving in the distance.
