“I promise I’ll get you back to Andrew.” She leaned against the rail, overlooking a large valley illuminated with glittering silver light.

  Pain etched across Ashe’s dark eyes with each breath, but he squared his shoulders and stood beside Jàden as if he was fully armed. Sick or not, he wasn’t about to let anyone harm her.

  Kóra trees, each with trunks wider than a cottage, were connected by a labyrinth of hanging wooden bridges. In the middle of the web of walkways was the largest tree Jàden had ever seen. As wide and tall as any of the Sefir?n towers, its branches spread a canopy over the entire valley.

  But unease tugged at her gut. The walkways were eerily quiet when they should have been full of life.

  Ashe seemed to sense it too. He nudged her shoulder and pointed up. Giant nest huts hung in the high branches, built with mud and sticks that made their shadows eerily spider-like.

  “You should sleep.” Exhausted as she was, Jàden’s mind raced with thoughts of Jon as the last sun set, the lanterns in the village brighter than an hour ago. The lake below shimmered each light’s reflection, like a sea of stars below her feet that stretched the length of the valley.

  Ashe opened his mouth as if to fight her on it but doubled over and hacked again, a dryness to the wretched sound. The poison still had the last few tenuous claws in him.

  Jàden helped him into the small cottage inside the kóra trunk. “I mean it. Rest. We can’t do anything until Jon’s here.”

  Or éli found them.

  But she didn’t want to bring that stressor bearing down on Ashe’s shoulders. As he finally relinquished and crawled into bed, she closed his door and leaned her back against the solid wood.

  Braygen waited for her, dressed in fresh clothing with his beard neatly trimmed. “Coffee?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He pressed a cup into her hand, warmth seeping through to her palms.

  “Any news yet?” Her stomach knotted at the idea that éli could be lurking at the borders of Veradóra when Jon and the others arrived.

  Braygen shook his head, a shadow in his eyes. “No word yet.”

  She leaned against the rail, soft laughter echoing from high in the canopy. “How long have you been awake?”

  “Two hundred and thirty-seven years.”

  Her hands froze halfway to her mouth as she tried to sip her coffee. “Impossible.”

  “Hypersleep slows the aging process.” He leaned on the rail, watching her closely as if trying to work something out.

  Her cheeks warmed in embarrassment as she studied the dark liquid, wishing it could unlock all the truths she so desperately sought.

  “You asked me to take you back to the beginning. What did you mean by this?”

  “I don’t know anymore.” Jàden clenched her cup tighter. Kale’s words seemed like they were spoken a lifetime ago. The first time they met was on Hàlon, their first dance at one of her grandparents’ parties. And the first time they kissed was during a dust storm. “There’s someone I need to find, but every time I try, death follows.”

  She clenched the coffee cup, Evardo’s words still brewing turmoil in her thoughts. Kale was her pilot, the love of her heart. And she had to get away from Sandaris and the thing buried in the core.

  Yet all she could think of was Jon. His kiss no longer lingered on her lips in the cold rain, but the fire in her heart still burned for him.

  Except it shouldn’t.

  She hadn’t seen him for days and ached for his presence. But the one from before and the one you seek now wouldn’t leave her thoughts. Evardo’s words rang with a truth she didn’t want to believe.

  “I don’t know what you learned of me as a child, Braygen, but—”

  “It doesn’t matter what I knew. I learned the truth when I took the Tahiró ink.” He leaned his elbow against the rail as he faced her fully now. “I see the truth now with my own eyes, Jàden Ravenscraft.”

  The bloodflower seemed to get heavier the moment he spoke her true name. She’d wanted to thank him for what he’d done for Ashe and set him straight on the whole Guardian thing, but it didn’t seem to matter.

  She was Herana in his eyes, no matter which name he used.

  “You don’t know anything, Braygen. No one does.” Bitter frustration welled in her chest that she couldn’t tell him everything, not without putting him at risk too. He and Alida has shown her nothing but kindness, and the thought of hurting them tugged at her heart.

  “I see loneliness.” His voice softened. “The deep ache that comes from too many years of loneliness. Of a burden so heavy it threatens to crush your soul.”

  “You’re wrong,” she whispered, the tremor in her voice betraying the lie. Every word hit like a hammer as she shoved the coffee aside and turned away. She couldn’t let him see her tears. Or the weight of the inner gate, Bradshaw’s lab full of innocent, tortured lives or that all she ever wanted was a quiet, monotonous life without the Flame ripping through her senses.

  “Then offer me one night,” Braygen said. “Prove me wrong or let me help drive away the emptiness for a time.”

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  Jàden’s heart skipped as she faced him again. She ached for touch, for the warmth of intimacy so she could pretend the pain in her heart didn’t exist. A chance to escape the lonely grief—something she desperately ached for with Jon.

  Braygen stepped closer and touched her cheek, thumbing away a stray tear. “You wear no bonding cloth. I have no wife. Let me dry your tears for a night and put your heart at ease.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat, his fingers warming her cheek.

  There was gentleness in his gaze. A promise that he could make her forget all her troubles until the cold and bitter Sandarin world ceased to exist.

  But she loved Jon. She loved Kale.

  She was a walking disaster of emotions that none of them deserved.

  “I can’t.”

  “This pain will not go away. It will only fester.” He caressed a lock of hair away from her neck. “What can I do?”

  Despite the things he’d told her, she knew almost nothing about him, and yet the warmth of his fingers against her skin seemed to dig deep into her soul, tugging at something dark and angry far beneath the years of pain and loneliness. Almost as if they had a connection from another life.

  “No.” Jàden stepped back, pushing his arm away.

  Bitterness welled in her as she thought of Frank. Of two years stripped of her dignity and senses to become this creature who needed to be touched, desperate for intimacy and a hero to save her.

  “Guardian.” A strong, feminine voice sliced through her thoughts. Alida’s wife—Sumaha—stood behind Braygen. “We must speak.”

  A chill crept up Jàden’s spine. She met Braygen’s gaze, the storms back in his eyes, but she could not see past his shields. “Will you keep an eye on Ashe?”

  His expression softened as he tugged aside his collar to show his tattoo. “By this ink, my life is yours. The offer stands for whenever you need it most.”

  “Thank you.” She pushed past him but didn’t look back.

  Braygen had no idea how tempting his offer was. Kale would never have to know, or Jon, about how much she burned with the idea of intimate heat against her skin.

  But the bloodflower hung around her neck like lead, and Jon’s words whispered through her thoughts. I know you’re in love with another man, but you ain’t gonna get rid of me that easy.

  If he only knew the truth.

  She was in love with him too.

  The wind blew a chill across her cheek, as she followed Sumaha onto a well-packed path that rose along the cliff. Birds called from high in the canopy, verdant leaves dark against the evening sky and ominous thunderheads. Jàden pushed aside stray branches, fingers scraping over sharp thorns, velvety flower petals and prickly leaves.

  Energy pulsed into her fingertips. Jàden sensed the mark of the Flame as she pulled back, inspecting her hand. “What is this place?”

  “Where no man can tread.” Sumaha’s curt response sent another chill through Jàden. “You do not protect this world, Herana. We do. You protect the northman, whose existence stains this world.”

  Jàden’s hands clenched as they stepped into a clearing. Water rushed over a large boulder into a pool of crystalline purity. Shelora’s moon was already above the horizon, its full phase casting a bright glow upon the land.

  “He’s a good man,” Jàden said. “Only the poison seems to have erased his sense of humor.”

  Sumaha rounded on her. “He is a northman. And you are protecting him. They steal and rape and burn anyone in their path.”

  So this was why Suhama wished to speak with her.

  Jàden clenched her jaw, fighting back a scathing remark. This woman judged her, the light of doom flickering across her eyes.

  Sumaha had no right to be angry at her.

  “Ashe and his brothers saved my life, and I will be forever grateful. These men are not villains. They protect me, and I’m trying my hardest to protect your world,” Jàden said. Ashe was alive, but all the anxiety of his brush with death, coupled with Evardo’s dooming dream, boiled to the surface. “So don’t any of you dare tell me I’m a destroyer or that the outlawed Rakir I call brothers are. You know nothing, Sumaha.”

  “I still do not trust them.”

  Jàden clenched her fist to hold back her irritation as Sumaha regarded her with a stony gaze.

  “Come.” Sumaha trudged deeper into the field.

  Soon they were surrounded by tall grasses forming a barrier around a large willow. Sumaha pressed aside the curtain of leaves, gnarled branches twisting away from the trunk in a dozen directions.

  The air cooled beneath the willow’s shadows. Trying not to shiver, Jàden stepped through the far branches, hanging in a curtain of leaves.

  Low ultraviolet light blazed across a second clearing, this one larger than the first. Rows of corn and tomato, leek and gourd, filled every inch of the wide-open space. Tall willows and almond trees arched high overhead, the canopy of branches like a dome keeping the light inside.

  Jàden walked along a row of tomatoes, touching the soft fruit with her fingertips. Peppers grew on the other side, green and purple, red and yellow, balls and long, curled arcs. She breathed in the heavy aroma, a blend of flavor and a symphony of color. She ached to pull off a smaller tomato and pop it in her mouth, but she refrained under Sumaha’s hawkish gaze.

  “I do not believe you are the Guardian,” Sumaha said abruptly.

  Light pulsed along the ground, catching Jàden’s eye and disappearing into the dirt. Ignoring Sumaha’s comment, she crouched over a plastic tube and traced her fingers on the arced section looping above the ground. The light flashed again, power surging in waves from one end to the other.

  This was Hàlon technology.

  She followed the line of plants. Several more tubes arced above the ground, no more than a zip of light from one patch of muddy soil to the next. They pulsed in the same direction. As Jàden passed rows of pumpkin and patches of herbs, the light converged into a pattern. Rock rose ahead, a sharp plymouth covered in lichen and soaring into the high canopy.

  It’s a starship.

  Except this one didn’t have her zankata painted on the side but the orb and trailing legs like her dagger hilt. Jàden tugged her shirt over the knife sheaths as if they somehow cursed her.

  The top of the tail fin was nearly invisible, black shield plating and sharp edges burrowing down into the rock. She followed the line of the craft, guessing it to be a small cruiser with the nose buried far beneath the high meadow.

  Unease tugged at her gut. A war, the gates shut down. Hàlon.

  “What’s inside that ship?” Jàden asked.

  Sumaha waited for her by a large sheet of glass standing upright in the dirt. Rocks and flowers lined the base, bright yellow blossoms unfolding between the tight spaces. “You will show me what’s inside. Put your hand here.”

  Biting down on her lower lip, Jàden stepped to the shield glass and held her hand up. A pang of guilt thrummed through her chest. She so desperately wanted to see Kale again, but she definitely did not want to call Frank to her location.

  She let her arm fall to her side. “No.”

  “Open the ship, Guardian.” Sumaha nocked an arrow onto her bowstring and aimed at Jàden. “You are a Guardian. You must know how to open it. I do not want that shadow”—she gestured to the orb symbol—“over Veradóran lands.”

  “You’ll die if I touch that screen.” Jàden glared at her, almost daring Sumaha to try and shoot her. “I won’t—”

  “Sumaha!” Alida’s loud shriek reverberated across the garden as a dagger slashed through Sumaha’s arrow. “How dare you threaten Herana.”

  Jàden eased back, happy to let Sumaha take the brunt of Alida’s fury.

  “She is not to be trusted.” Sumaha had a fire all her own as the two went head to head. “A woman who rides with northmen and brings their hunters to our land. Why do you believe in this legend?”

  Their argument escalated, and both fell into the soft rhythm of a language Braygen had spoken earlier in their travels.

  Jàden eased back until they no longer noticed her. But she couldn’t keep her eyes off the ship and the strange painted marking. Someday, she’d need to understand where it came from, but today it only seemed to present danger.

  And the last thing she needed in her life.

  It was time to find Kale. Find the beginning and put an end to her journey.