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He didn't move.

Alex cupped his hands around his mouth. "Food."

Ashter appeared from behind a fern almost immediately.

I looked at Alex.

He looked delighted. "He understands me."

"He understands food."

"Still counts."

Ashter trotted over, bumping Alex's hip on the way past before coming to stand beside me. Smoke had started curling more heavily around his back legs in the cooling air, faint red light showing through the cracks across his chest.

I rested my hand between his ears and looked back through Gledhi.

The bioluminescence was starting to wake up now. Blue light traced the bark of several trees farther off, while small violet flowers beneath a root slowly opened toward the darkening canopy. In another hour the deeper parts of the forest would glow, and the paths I'd walked so many times at night would look the way I remembered them.

This was normally when I stayed.

I'd spent years waiting for this part of the forest, sneaking out after dark because night was the only time I could take for myself without anyone noticing it was missing. Every visit ended with me checking how long I had before I needed to climb back through a bedroom window and pretend I'd never left.

Today I'd come in the daylight because I wanted to.

Then Alex showed up, and I'd nearly sent him away because for a few bad minutes I'd assumed his presence meant the freedom I'd been given was another lie. Instead, I'd spent hours walking through Gledhi with him.

Nothing important had happened.

He hadn't trained me, assessed me, or tried to learn anything useful about my ability. He'd thrown sticks for Ashter, asked enough ridiculous questions to make me consider pushing him into the stream, and somehow turned biomancy into something I could laugh about.

Now he was telling me Halver would be cooking soon like returning to the house for dinner was simply the obvious next part of the day.

I looked toward the path back.

For the first time, going back didn't feel the same as being returned.

"Come on," Alex said, already starting toward the trail. "If Halver makes that root thing Nykos likes, I'm blaming you for making us late."

"I don't even know what root thing you're talking about."

"You will. It's terrible."

"You just said Halver was a great cook."

"He is. Nykos has terrible taste."

I followed him with Ashter moving beside me, the first blue lights of Gledhi beginning to glow behind us.

I still missed the forest at night.

But for once, leaving it wasn't the part I resented.

Chapter Five: Tell Me When I'm Wrong

Corian

I reached Training Hall Four twenty minutes before six and found Jade already there.