Jàden rode close to Braygen. Exhaustion pulled at her eyelids, but she refused to sleep until Ashe was out of danger. She could do nothing but wait for him to wake up, and she needed answers. “How did you know my real name?”

  “I wondered when we’d get around to that.” Braygen chuckled. Guiding his horse around a fallen branch, he waited for her to catch up again and moved close enough that their knees nearly touched. “I was born on Hàlon, a few years before the war. Everyone knew your name.”

  “What war? What happened to Hàlon?” When he didn’t answer right away, she nudged Agnar ahead and cut him off, meeting his stormy gaze. That was when his words clicked. “You’re a sleeper.”

  “Like you.” His expression grew somber as the others forged ahead, leaving them alone on the empty road. “I was barely a toddler when the war started. My parents were botanists and trying to earn their Guild badges. They wanted to work on the moon’s surface and study all the new flora once terraforming took off.”

  Jàden’s stomach twisted into a knot. Her last day on the surface, when she’d tried to say goodbye to Sandaris, the Guild scientists were still scratching their heads because nothing would grow.

  His voice broke her reverie. “My father wanted to fight the Enforcers to free you of all charges that your connection to the Flame put everyone’s life in danger. Most of Hàlon called you the moon’s savior, but Enforcers arrested anyone with even a hint of your power. Protests turned to riots, and riots turned to death squads.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Even after her and Kale escaped the moon’s core all those years ago, they were still pursued. Barely able to get to the Sandaris surface, they were heading toward the Ironstar Gate when Frank caught up. She knew nothing about a war or any rioting, only that the Guild Council closely guarded the secret truth of Hàlon’s technology. The firemark bacterium hadn’t come from a rim world but directly from the alien starship buried in Sandaris’s core.

  The one that tethered her and the Flame’s power.

  She needed to escape Sandaris but couldn’t do so without a pilot. And the only one she trusted was Kale.

  Braygen grabbed her hand and gently squeezed as if trying to comfort her, despite his words. “Your connection to the Flame, once it came to light, started a war between the Guild Council and Hàlon’s citizens. They wielded Enforcers to suppress the knowledge that Jason Kale brought to light, but the Enforcers took it too far. Thousands of people got spaced out the docking bays, millions more locked in hypersleep.”

  “Locked in hypersleep,” she murmured. Forced like her. Millions. Jàden was going to be sick, recalling the high numbers on the hypersleep pods the day she’d awoken. As her heart filled with grief, she clutched Braygen’s hand.

  A hidden instinct pushed to the surface of her senses.

  A completeness, peace. As if she’d been searching for Braygen her whole life instead of Kale. His pale, freckled skin seemed to glow with some hidden fire deep beneath the surface.

  She yanked her hand back, some small part of her aching to grab his hand again as rain drizzled on her cold palm.

  He fiddled with his bow as the flicker dimmed.

  She must have been hallucinating from fatigue. Braygen traced his thumb across the polished wood where her zankata was etched. Carved below it was another creature, something she’d seen only once in her life.

  The terrifying monster with giant wings and a long tail from inside the moon.

  Jàden turned her horse away and nudged him after the others. She didn’t want to see that thing ever again and definitely not tied to her mark.

  But Braygen’s words took hold of her gut.

  If millions of people had been locked in hypersleep, did it mean they were still on Hàlon or scattered across Sandaris like her?

  Braygen stayed alongside her for the next few hours while she digested every piece of information from the war after Kale’s death to hypersleep. There were so many unknowns, and she couldn’t quite put the pieces together.

  “Why would Enforcers do such a terrible thing?” She’d met many of them over the years, and despite their duties to follow the chain of command, Jàden had found many of them to be kind, generous souls when they weren’t ordered to aim a weapon.

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  “That part is still unclear.” He patted his mare on the shoulder as she shied away from Agnar’s nipping. “All I’ve learned for certain is the Enforcers believed they were under attack and kidnapped all the gatekeepers. They opened the gates and forced a mass exodus to the surface by gunpoint to protect Hàlon. Then they sealed the gates and trapped everyone on the surface.”

  Her fingers itched toward the bloodflower pendant as tears slid down her cheeks. Never could she have imagined a war because of her and the power she wielded or the hypocrisy of the Guild Commanders.

  She couldn’t shake the memory of the emptiness she’d seen in the Enforcer control room. Guild citizens barely made up a tenth of the population, but they were the ship leaders, scientists, medics and military. All other citizens worked the pipeworks, sewage and water and other essential duties to keep the ship running smoothly.

  “The Enforcers control Hàlon now?” Even as the question floated off her tongue, it didn’t make sense.

  Braygen shrugged. “No one knows anymore. But they have the keys, and we can’t get back.”

  Millions of Enforcers plus nearly four thousand years of time would have swelled their numbers to fill the ship with life again. There was a piece of the story missing, but she didn’t want to hear any more. Not until she could process what Braygen had already told her.

  “So how are you awake?” she asked. Maybe his story would be brighter than the horrors of what happened during hypersleep.

  “I was five years old when the Enforcers found us. My mother tried to protect us while my father shouted opposition. The last thing I heard him say was ‘Free the Flame wielders’ before his head exploded.”

  “Shit,” Jàden breathed, trying to settle Agnar so he’d stop being such a nuisance to the mare.

  “I was shoved into hypersleep alongside dozens of other children. When my pod failed, I woke up to my parents’ bones scattered across the substation floor.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, the bloodflower key heavy against her chest. If it was held captive on Hàlon, how had it come to be part of Jon’s legacy?

  Another piece of the story she couldn’t yet grasp.

  She lifted her gaze toward the storm, the ship far beyond the clouds now and still running on full power.

  “Kale and I tried to leave so no one’s life would be at risk because of me.” The clusterfuck of energy under her skin made her sick. éli’s Flame suffocated everything, rotten oil she couldn’t rip out of her veins no matter how much she hated it. “But it didn’t matter, I guess.”

  “You asked how I knew your name.” Braygen touched a stray hair, caressing it back from her head. “I’ve known your face since before I could walk, the woman who healed Sandaris. Your image was in every hall, every library and on every screen.”

  “And now I’m a Guardian statue in practically every city,” she muttered and pulled away.

  The fire of Jon’s kiss whispered across her mouth. She needed Kale in the cockpit, Jon by her side—and yet Braygen was another link to the life she’d once cherished.

  What a fucking mess.

  The horses trotted through deep puddles, mud splashing up their legs and onto her boots. She needed time to heal from the lonely ache in her heart, not feel the fire of intimacy from every man who touched her like it was her last breath.

  She nudged Agnar faster to get away from Braygen and breathe the fresh jungle air. Like with Jon, Braygen’s touch elicited a gentle heat that was hard to ignore, and she didn’t need to complicate her life any further.

  As they broke through the tree line, a triangulation sensor stood in their path, gleaming silver in the storm.

  A blue light flashed on top.

  “Shit.” She ducked her head. This was why Frank’s ships kept flying back and forth. His men were setting up sensors to locate her. “Frank has no idea where I am.”

  Braygen dropped from his horse and flipped open a panel on the sensor pole. He pulled out a wire, shoving it into a datapad he slid from his tunic.

  “You have a datapad?” The sight of it straightened all the hairs on her neck.

  These people saved Ashe’s life, but was it all a ruse to get her closer to Frank? Using the zankata to lure her in was definitely a dirty enough trick for Frank to orchestrate.

  After several minutes, Braygen closed the panel and returned to her side. “Someone’s sectioned off parts of the coast. Whoever’s in the sky, they’re looking for something.”

  He handed her the datapad. The screen showed a half-formed map of the jungle with a honeycomb of triangulated sections. She could almost see their route from Naréa’s ship to Felaren, but the map was far from complete. And if she was reading it right, beyond the tower was out of range, until Frank’s men planted more sensors.

  “We have to get beyond that line of bushes.” She handed the datapad back to Braygen, thankful she had gloves on so the system didn’t try to read her biometrics.

  They rode past the sensor tower and into a muddy field. Jon and the others were still back there, somewhere on Frank’s map.

  She glanced at the trail behind her. Come on, Jon. Where are you?

  Eventually Frank would map all of the Dark Isle. But that could take him years, and he certainly didn’t have such patience. She imagined him yelling at his pilots and threatening their families if they didn’t find her soon.

  She searched the sky for starship light, but only low storm clouds greeted her. “Braygen, how did you even find me? It can’t be a coincidence.”

  “A rumor from the north. A Tahiró sent a message claiming the Guardian Herana lit up the harbor and killed a silver sky beast. Our brothers and sisters fled to the coast to find you. One spotted you on a barge two days before I found you near sahirana territory.”

  “The silver sky beast was a scout craft, and the asshole flying it is the one who started this whole mess we’re in.”

  They rode in silence until the others were in sight.

  Braygen’s features softened. “We are like the wind now. You will not be seen unless you wish him to find you.”

  If only she could believe that.