"I want someone to notice when she's falling apart and pretending to be just fine."
Ravel was quiet for a long moment. "I'll notice," he said finally.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. I would have done it regardless of whether you asked me to. I'll just feel a little less guilty about it now that you gave me your blessing."
The honesty of his words and in his tone told me everything I needed to know and everything I'd suspected for months. I should have been angry. I should have felt territorial, possessive, jealous. And I was all those things, but I was also grateful.
For me, the hardest part of leaving was knowing that Kailin suffered. My suffering didn't mean half as much to me as hers did.
The mountains began to change as we flew south. The jagged, impossible peaks of the central range gave way to lower, gentler formations, still formidable by any standard but lacking the lethal grandeur of the interior. Podana appeared ahead, the capital city of Elucia, built of stone and timber on the mountainside, its squat, simple buildings a far cry from the skyscrapers of Catonia's capital.
It was quaint compared to Vedona's sprawling architecture, but Podana's modesty was deceptive. This city had been rebuilt from nothing after the Sitorians ground the original civilization to dust, and its builders had prioritized function and resilience over aesthetics.
Ravel guided Onyx toward a field on the outskirts, a flat stretch of cleared ground that probably served as a landing pad for dragons and a staging area for military operations. As we descended, I spotted a group of soldiers in the dark green uniforms of the Elucian special forces standing beside two military hover-vehicles.
Onyx touched down with a precision that barely jostled me. The squadron settled around us in their protective formation, and the ground forces commander walked toward us. She was a compact woman with close-cropped gray hair and a face that looked like it had been carved from the same stone as the mountains.
"Commander Ravel," she said. "Cadet Tekum."
I was surprised no one was addressing me by my proper title. Perhaps that was what Saphir had meant by keeping my identity a secret while providing me with a princely escort.
I dismounted first, and Ravel followed.
"Lieutenant Mandina Solgev, Elucian Special Forces." She extended her hand to me with a grip that could crush walnuts. "I'm responsible for your security from here to the transfer point."
I shook her hand and tried not to wince. "Thank you for the escort, Lieutenant."
After giving me a quick once-over as if to determine what all the fuss was about, she turned to Ravel. "We've cleared the cable car schedule and reserved a whole car for Cadet Tekum's exclusive use. Estimated descent time, forty minutes. The Elurian unit is already in position at the lower terminal."
Ravel nodded. "Any irregularities?"
"None. It's been quiet."
Ravel unfastened my pack from Onyx's underbelly and handed it to me.
It seemed that I wasn't getting any princely treatment and would have to carry my rucksack myself. Surprising, but welcome. The longer I had before I had to slide back into a role I detested, the better. I shouldered it, the weight settling comfortably across my back.
"Thank you for the lift, Commander," I said.
"It was my honor." He extended his hand, and when I took it, his grip was firm and brief. "I'm confident we will be seeing each other again soon."
"I hope you're right."
"So do I." The corner of his mouth twitched. "Be well, and take care of yourself, Cadet Alar Tekum."
"Thank you. I'll do my best." I released his hand and stepped back.
There was more I wanted to say, things about Kailin and the prophecy and the future that none of us could see clearly, but the special forces unit was waiting, and the lieutenant looked impatient.
With one last look at Ravel, I climbed into the lead hover-vehicle and sat between two soldiers. The vehicle lifted smoothly off the ground, its magnetic drive humming as it glided toward the central hub in Podana.
I remembered well both the lower and upper terminals of Elucia's cable car system, the engineering marvel that served as the nation's lifeline to the outside world. When Codric and I had arrived at the lower terminal months ago, we'd gawked at the scale of it like the tourists we had been pretending to be. Eager to get to Skywatcher's Point, we hadn't spent much time in the upper terminal, leaving quickly to catch a ride to our final destination. Now that I was seeing it again, it seemed even more impressive than its lower counterpart.
The terminal had been carved directly into the mountainside, a vast complex of platforms, loading bays, and passenger areas connected by tunnels and walkways hewn from the rock. The main cables, thick as a man's thigh, emerged from enormous drum housings and stretched out over the void, disappearing into the cloud cover that perpetually clung to the lower slopes.
Separate cable lines handled cargo, the containers moving in a steady procession along their own track, hauling everything from weapons and ammunition to medical supplies and foodstuffs. This was how Elucia survived, how an entire nation perched on inaccessible mountains sustained itself, through this single engineered artery connecting it to the world below.
