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Another phoenix screamed from above. Rubbing my streaming, dust-stung eyes, I turned my blurry vision to the sky as two birds circled the rocks. The white one was diving low, then sweeping back up, and a blue Air Phoenix feinted left, then banked right, not attacking the Riders’ fire-red birds but scattering them.

Why? They were rogues, so perhaps the Yule madness had fully claimed them, and there was no real purpose to their actions. But it didn’t look that way. It seemed as if their movements were coordinated and intentional.

The Rider on the footpath lifted a hand, gathering fire on his fingertips and forming a large fireball. There was a short, sharp cry as the bright blue rogue phoenix saw it and banked high and vanished into the clouds. I wasn’t sure how much a Skyworld fireball would hurt a phoenix, but it was clearly a deterrent. And I sent a silent prayer that those Barren Riders and their birds would never catch the rogues. They were the rebels of the sky, and I allowed a smile to lift my lips.

“Go!” the Barren prince called to the others as his red phoenix dived out of the sky and he held up a hand. The bird swooped low, and just as I had seen Kit do, he gripped the bar with his magic and then tucked his legs into the leather pouch. He sped upward, chasing the rogues.

I stayed where I was until the last echo of wingbeats had dissolved into the air.

Then I pushed myself up, rubbing the dust streaking my palms down my trousers.

The rogues had scattered the Riders. Maybe by chance. Maybe because the Wilds guarded its own. I didn’t know what was better.

By afternoon, the rocky landscape had changed again. The boulders thinned, then opened into a stretch of broken stone terraces and low walls half-swallowed by ivy. Ruins. Annatalian, by the shape of the arches and the faded blue tiles still clinging stubbornly to the cracked masonry. My eyes stung. This was home, even though it wasn’t.

With careful steps, I moved further through the ruins, climbing over fallen columns and through courtyards filled with sand and rubble. Once, this place must have been beautiful. My fingertips traced an elegant carving of clouds and then some stars, all of which had survived across shattered columns. They belonged to a people who lived before Annatalia fell. It was a time no one remembered.

The sight of the ruin built a lump in my throat, and I hugged my arms around myself to contain the longing that threatened to consume me. After all the years in captivity, the sight hit me harder than I wanted to admit. I was so distracted by the carving that I almost missed the smell of smoke. Not Skyworld fire that kept the sconces alight. This was a cookfire, and probably just as dangerous.

I flung myself toward the nearest broken wall. There, a thread of grey lifting from between two collapsed terraces, almost hidden from sight. The Barren Riders would soon head to the Phoenix Tower closest to the border as night was setting in.

Creeping heel to toe, heel to toe, and keeping low, I tried to get a better look at who was desecrating an Annatalian temple. I had never met a Wilder before and only knew that they lived underground, but then, what we’d been told about the Ruckus was untrue, so it could be the same here.

The entrance was almost invisible: a crack between two fallen slabs, draped with canvas that matched the stone and tumbleweed, so carefully arranged it appeared natural. I might have passed it twice over if not for the smoke.

I eased closer and pulled out the dagger that rested against my hip. As soon as it was in my palm, I relaxed a little. Voices drifted out with the smoke. They were talking in the southern dialect of Annatalia. As royals, we had learned the three dialects, but I hadn’t heard this one for a very long time. The soft, familiar vowels pulled me closer. The flattened, harsh speech of the common tongue was all I had spoken for so long.

I stepped into the open before I could talk myself out of it. The reaction to my approach was immediate. A woman whipped around from just inside the opening with a kitchen knife in one hand and a length of iron in the other. Behind her, an older man straightened from where he had been crouched over a low brazier. His face was lined and wary, but his eyes—gods, his eyes were Annatalian blue.

Everyone froze—waiting for the other to make the first move. We stared at one another. Then the woman’s gaze moved to my hair, my eyes, the shape of my face, the cuff on my ear, and her mouth popped open in a wide O.

“Who are you?” she asked.

The accent nearly undid me, and I swallowed hard before I could answer. “A friend,” I whispered, unsure of my words. “I’m… I’m only looking for my… a friend.” I placed my blade in my belt. Away, but still within easy access. “She was taken into the Wilds.”

When I asked the FootPaths to take me to the Annatalians, this wasn’t exactly what I had meant.

The man moved first, coming forward just enough to block the woman with his body if needed.

“Lots fled into the Wilds over ten years ago. Recently, some escaping the Barren carried on to the Ruckus, but still ended up here,” he said.

“She was brought here recently. By the Wilds Prince Rider, I think,” I replied. “I know she’s here somewhere.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed, and then she spat on the fire. “The Wilds have flocks… some say the largest one, but they are useless men that most want rid of. They all go north over Yule for some sort of hunt. Do you know that if you are found with magic, then they’ll take you to their nunneries? If you’re found…” Her finger circled my face. “Looking like that.”

I shook my head. “I’ve been… hiding.”

“Sure you have.” Her look told me that they had been doing the same. “They trap women like you so they can have them when they want. They are brothels with a different name, and do you know who they like the most? The blue-eyed born, because their eyes are the colour of the Sky.”

“But that’s…”

She spat at the fire again. “So, what colour eyes does your friend have? Violet, like yours? Royal, like yours?”

I didn’t answer. The FootPaths, or perhaps the little book, had done me no favours, dropping me here.

“Whoever she is, you should pray she’s no’ magic.”

Fuck. If any of us did have magic, it was Ember, with her ‘always knowings.’ A shudder swept over me. What had Kit said about Zephyr taking Ember’s anklet off? If he had, then any magic the anklet had been suppressing would come flooding back.