Talin took a risk, warning you to escape while you could. You don’t know the depth to which Constantine can control her, but she clearly still has a mind of her own. It means there’s still time.
You can still find a way to get her out. You have to.
The rest of the day gradually passes. I shift locations hour by hour, careful to stay on the move. My body aches. Sunset slides into evening and then into dawn. When I fall into an unsettled half sleep, I imagine I’m a boy soldier again, curled next to other guards and shivering on my shift. I dream someone is shaking me awake, Danna shouting that I’m late for my rotation. His voice turns into the Chief Architect’s, telling me to get up, it’s time for the next phase of my Skyhunter transformation. I bolt awake again and again, trembling.
Then, as the first weak rays of morning sift through the forest’s canopy, I see a lone figure picking its way silently through the carpet of dotted light.
At first I think it’s a Karensan scout. My muscles tense as I prepare to kill the intruder before they can find me.
Only when the figure passes under an illuminated patch of forest floor and I catch the glint of red in his hair do I recognize Jeran.
I let out my breath in a rush. My eyes quickly scan the rest of the forest around us, checking if anyone is following him. But he’s alone. No one else had made it out with him.
I should be elated that Jeran escaped the trap set for us. But he looks like a shell of his former self. Bloodstains on his worn Striker coat have turned black. Judging from his walk, at least, he seems uninjured. All I can muster is a bone-weary relief.
I’m trying to figure out the best way to alert him to my presence without frightening him when his steps stiffen a dozen yards from me and he looks around. His stance shifts seamlessly into an attack position. He searches his surroundings before his eyes turn up toward the trees, locking on me.
In spite of everything, I can’t help smiling. His instincts have not abandoned him.
I twist around on the branch and step against the trunk, then slide to the forest floor with a soft hush, my wings softening my descent. Even this slight use of them for a glide makes me wince. I’d pushed them hard during my escape, so even Adena’s temporary fix can’t stop the fire of agony that shoots up and down my spine.
I crouch on the forest floor for a moment, catching my breath, before painstakingly folding my wings and approaching Jeran.
He looks exhausted, the early light casting long shadows across his face. The knot of his hair hangs messy and loose, damp strands clinging to his forehead. For a moment, neither of us says anything. Then we exchange a silent, grim nod in unison, as if we already know what the other wants to say.
“You didn’t head back to camp,” he whispers, when he finally finds his voice.
I shake my head.
He studies my expression and sees my guilt. It breaks something within him. Whatever restraint had held him together as he made his way here snaps, and his face crumples. He sinks to the forest floor on his knees. His sapphire coat pools around him in a circle.
“I couldn’t move,” he whispers, his voice breaking. “I saw his face and I couldn’t move.” His words halt, and I hear him take in a sharp breath wet with tears. “I couldn’t do it. And they took Adena and Aramin because of it. Because they protected me.”
I wait beside him as he cries, the sounds of his weeping quiet and muffled in the silent stillness of the forest. I think of the look of fear that came across his face at the sight of his father’s Ghost. I know, in that moment, he must have seen not a monster but the man who he feared, who Jeran had always protected himself from by simply bowing to his wishes.
There’s nothing you can say to comfort him. You know how it is. You saw the same with your own family.
Finally, when his sobs have calmed, I say to him in a low voice, “The first time I saw my father and sister as Ghosts, I froze too. It felt like someone had plunged a hand into my mind and seized it, letting it bleed. That’s what the Federation intends, you know. To recognize those you love within something you hate. They know it kills something deep inside you.” My voice softens. “There was no other way you could have reacted.”
He shakes his head, wiping his sleeve across his face. We sit in silence for a while, the only sound being the occasional trill of some faraway bird.
At last, Jeran reaches up to retie his hair. The neater knot seems to give him a sense of calm, and he looks at me with clearer eyes.
“They knew what we were planning because of Talin, didn’t they?” He nods in the direction of the camp. “That’s why you aren’t going back.”
I tear my eyes away from him to the thick of trees surrounding us. All I can do is nod once. The joy I’d felt connecting with Talin is nothing compared with the rage and grief that swallow me now, knowing that my joy is the reason for my sorrow.
Our link pits us against each other, and the closer we get, the more we may hurt each other.
“I can’t risk it,” I reply. “Talin could sense, somehow, our planning—she may even have seen a glimpse of us there. The closer I linger to the others, the more danger I put them in.”
At the look on my face, Jeran reaches out to touch my elbow. “Your bond with her still works,” he says. “That’s a good thing. And that’s something we can turn to our advantage.”
“How?” I pause, letting the wind through the trees haunt us. “Her link with me is a constant danger to us.”
“Aramin always told the Strikers that we can always be the hunter if we think like the hunter,” he says. “If Talin can see you, then maybe you can see her, too. Maybe she can give us a look inside the Federation, into the heart of what Constantine is planning day to day.” Jeran’s fingers tap restlessly against the hilt of his blades, and some emotion flickers across his face. I wonder if his heart is with Aramin and Adena. “Maybe we can find a way to strengthen it.”
“Our bond tightens when we are physically closer,” I say.
Jeran looks at me. “Then maybe that means we should head back into Cardinia.”
I’m quiet for a while. He’s right, of course. Let the rest of the camp here survive on their own, free of whatever dangers I might bring back to them. We’ll carry on to the Federation itself.
I nod at him. “It’s where they’re taking the others, anyway, on that train.”
Jeran’s lips tighten. “Yes,” he replies. “So we don’t have a choice.”
And now I hear the hint of resolve in his voice, some fire burning deep and angry in his chest. The Federation is reckless in who it hurts. Perhaps someday, in some way, that recklessness will be what brings it down—recklessness that breeds strong enemies against it.
The other voice in me seems to agree, lending its strength to me.
You are still here. And that means you have a chance.
Jeran is careful not to voice aloud what we both fear. I picture Aramin, then Adena, strapped down in glass chambers, turned into Skyhunters or worse. I see them joining Talin’s side, forced to strike down their own friends and companions.
“It will be easier, just the two of us traveling,” I tell Jeran.
He nods, and I’m grateful that he—one of the first Marans to help me—will be at my side. The realization of leaving Mara behind to fall burdens his eyes. If we leave now, it is our acknowledgment that there is little our small group can do to take this nation back. It is him turning away from his homeland, like so many others have before him. Let things go so that we can live to fight another day.