We both know the situation is beyond dire, even for us. We're hours from home, getting perilously close to Lucindris—the sprawling and sparkling city that sits at the edge of the Kingdom of Mouren. And the closer we get to that capital city, the less likely rescue becomes. No one from the Burn is going to risk navigating the increasingly numerous, armed outposts between here and Lucindris, nor riding beneathMouren's skies, which are allegedly so thick with dragons and smoke that it frequently blots out the sun.
Luckily, Briar and I are used to it being just the two of us trying to figure out a solution.
I spend the next hour or two trying to do just that, observing everything I can in hopes of coming up with a plan. I note the guard movements. I study what I can see of the camp's layout, the routes that might lead to darker parts of the woods around us—to paths we could disappear on. I learn names and faces. I discern ranks, paying attention to who seems to hold the most power, the most authority, the most dangerous weapons.
The officer who arrested us—Commander Gareth, I hear him called—keeps coming and going in and out of the garish, large tent nearby. Messages are being sent and received by him at a furious pace, carried by the small, dragon-like creatures known asswifts, which are said to fly nearly ten times as fast as a horse can gallop.
I watch as one of those swifts drops a folded letter into Gareth’s hand, squawking relentlessly at the commander until he rewards it with some sort of treat from his pocket.
Not for the first time, I find my gaze getting caught on this man, following his every move and expression until the rest of the camp blurs around him.
Briar clears her throat. “What do we make of this Commander Gareth?”
“I'm not sure.”
“Every time I look at you, you're looking at him. You've got him entirely sized up and catalogued, I assume?”
“…It's not just that,” I admit.
I feel her curious gaze shift to me.
I exhale the tense breath I'm holding, and I finally gatherthe courage to voice what I've been thinking since the moment I first saw this man: “He looks like Mal, doesn't he? Something about the way he holds himself. The shape of his jaw. The unusual color of his eyes.”
Briar doesn't answer right away. When she finally does, her tone is softer, gentler than normal. “You see his face everywhere, Owyn. Especially when we're in the thick of disaster like this.”
“I don’t.”
“Youdo.”
“No, I just…” I inhale and exhale several times. “You know what? Never mind.”
“It's a comfort to think of him in moments like this. I get it.”
I angle my face away so she doesn't see my building frustration.
My gaze fixes on a nearby campfire. But staring into its flames only makes my exasperation grow, unfortunately.
Briar is wrong; I don't actuallywantmemories of Malachi.
Because no matter how beautiful most of them are, no matter what comfort they might bring, they all ultimately lead me back to a pain I would give anything to erase, even if it meant forgetting him entirely.
Maybe it's selfish. Cowardly. But I'd let my last pieces of him go if it meant never again thinking about how I'd lost him. How I’d woken up on our last night together to find him missing from our bed. Looking back, it seems strange that this was the first thing I noticed—that I was aware of his absence before I was aware of the flames.
Of course, it didn't take long for the hellish glow of the burning city to catch my attention.
The memories swirl and shift into a more solid scene as I watch the campfire dance. I see the lower level of Malachi’s house, flooded with smoke so thick I can't speak, can't breathe. I feel the sharp burn in my throat as I inhale too much, too quickly, when I try to shout for him.
I'm coughing and sputtering, ready to collapse, when suddenly he reaches through the grey, catching me by the wrist and pulling me through a broken window.
Outside is worse.
So many dark beasts in the skies above, each silhouette another promise of death.
Everything—everything—seems to be on fire.
I race toward my parents' house, reaching it just in time to see a dragon landing on the roof, the entire structure collapsing beneath its weight. The dragon thrashes violently among the wreckage, reducing my family’s home to piles of splinters and glass and broken belongings. One of those piles catches fire, whether from the beast’s magic or a stray ember from the houses already blazing around it.
My heart pounds in the present as fiercely as it did back then. I try to close my eyes against the memories, but they keep coming, chasing me back into the past, and now I am running, screaming my parents' names over and over andover?—
