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“Here’s another one.” A man called out from behind me, and the floor shuddered, and someone grunted. But I knew that voice—Eddie, a guard, who was one of ours. Why was he there?

“Feather…”

I spun around and focused on the shape… Aster.

Fuck.

“Az?” I called. He was clutching his shoulder, and blood covered his stomach and face, sticking strands of hair over his eye.

“Sto…” Aster groaned and clutched his side.

“Gods, what are you…?” I tried to drop to the floor to get to him. My hands shook as I reached out for him. But Torran’s smoke was still around my wrists, and they threw me back against the wall before I could even take a step. How did Aster end up here? In the grip Let. Me— of a guard who was one of our own, looking as if he’d lost a fight when it would take ten men to take him down?

Torran shoved me towards Kit. “Stay.”

Which was a stupid thing to order, as I’d never done anything he had told me up to this point, so it must have been rhetorical.

“You three can meet us there,” he said to the Barren Riders who were walking through the main door.

“What? You can’t…” the blond Rider barked.

“If you want to get into my lands so badly under the pretense of interrogating these prisoners, then you can face the rogues in the sky.” With that, he reached down and lifted Aster until he was over his shoulder as if Aster were a bag of feathers and not a six-foot-three muscular warrior.

Aster groaned in pain—he seemed barely conscious—but Torran paid him no heed.

In all the activity, Eddie had slipped away. But the three Barren Riders, two of whom had captured me in the Wilds, stood staring at us far too close for my liking.

And that’s when Kit moved, grabbing my wrist, which now had a strange smoke bracelet around it, and hurried me down the spiral staircase into darkness. I tried to move faster to get to Aster, but the shackles were digging into old wounds, slowing me down.

“Let. Me—” I tried to pull away from Kit’s hardened grip to catch up with Aster. To check he was still breathing.

He pulled me close and whispered, “You don’t say a word in front of those Riders.” I turned my gaze over his shoulder and to the three men at the threshold of the stairs, still watching us with knowing eyes. “We’re the enemy, but they’re the devil. They’re not flock. And their hatred for your kind and all their pent-up anger… it will be released on both of you. If they think you care…”

I took a deep breath and fixed on Torran’s darkening form as he carried Aster away from me. They would use Aster and me against each other and make us watch. It was standard practice for the Barren guards. So why did Eddie bring Aster into it?

Torran reached out his hand to the dark stone wall, and it hazed into a passageway—so there were FootPaths connecting all the phoenixes’ towers and ancient resting places.

A strange pulse rippled through the burn in my shoulder as I stepped through, and I shifted as I always did.

Torran noticed. His eyes narrowed on my shoulder before he readjusted Aster. “Move, before they follow.”

Kit grabbed my elbow. “Try not to touch anything.”

“Why?”

“Because some of the tunnels remember things.”

Just as Morlan had said about the mountains remembering. He motioned for me to walk, and I stepped into the passage. The stone beneath my boots was worn smooth from centuries of use, though no dust lingered there at all. The longer we walked, the colder the air became. The Skyworld sconces lining the walls flickered as we passed them, reaching out for Torran just as they had done in the library.

None of us spoke. There was a distant sound of dripping water somewhere deep beneath the mountain. The FootPaths stretched ahead of us, and my energy waned.

I stumbled, and Kit caught me.

“We need to get there before nightfall,” Kit whispered beside me. “We’ve been through many Yules. No different to this one.” But the way he met my eye told me it was a lie.

“You talk too much,” Torran muttered.

Kit sucked his teeth. “Scared I’ll give away all your brooding secrets? Or tell them about Kitten?”