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“Raven!” Her eyes were wide with astonishment as she touched my arm as if to confirm that I wasn’t a ghost. “Itisyou.”
Startled to hear my name, I stepped backward.
“We’ve been looking for you for so long. IknewI’d find you.” The new girl looked about my age. She was shorter than me but looked sturdier, like she could swing a pickaxe with more force than anyone else down here. Her auburn hair was swept up into a high ponytail, leaving no loose strands to hide the relief in her expression as she stared at me. She had a fresh bruise on her right cheek and a gash on her arm, but the way she didn’t hunch or cower told me the mine hadn’t broken her. Unlike me.
“I—” I glanced nervously at the guard nearby. Before I could find the words, the girl grabbed my arm and pulled me into the shadows. Hen followed us, not wanting to let me out of her sight.
“We have to get that thing off of you,” the girl said, nodding toward my collar.
“Who are you? How do you know me?” I whispered, my tone edged with suspicion when I saw she didn’t have a malarite collar on and the black of her tunic appeared to be from dye, not filth and dust. Where had she come from?
The girl looked at me like I had a spider crawling on my face. “Raven, it’sme. It’s Sora.”
That didn’t help. I stared at her, willing myself to remember her. Desperate for some clue as to who she was—or whoIwas. She stared back, probably trying to figure out why I was looking at her like a complete stranger.
“We think your brother found where the stone is—” she said, speaking low and fast as she pulled a thin metal pin from her ponytail and started to work at the lock on my collar.
I knew we needed to get back to work before the guards noticed us, but the mention of my brother left me frozen in place. “My brother?”You know my brother?
“But we were attacked,” she continued. “He was severely injured. They captured him before we could do anything. Barrd and I barely escaped,” she said, nodding toward the gashes on her arms. “Raven, we have to find him and the stone before it’s too late.”
I was trying to keep up, but this girl was talking quickly, and none of it was making any sense to me.
The girl exhaled in frustration. “Suns! This lock isn’t budging.” She turned to scan the mine like she was making a mental note of the position of each guard. “Raven, I need to find a key to this collar. Stay here until I get back.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” I said in a harsh whisper.
“Remember what I told you before we left home? I will not fail you,” she said. “But first, take this.” She reached up to remove the necklace she was wearing. Hanging from the long leather cord was what looked like a dark glass bead. She leaned close to me so Hen couldn’t hear. “It’s a map, Raven. You’re the only one who can read it. We need you to decipher it so we can save your brother and finish what we started.”
She took my hand and placed the charm in it. When it touched my skin, it glowed like a bright-blue star and then dissolved like a water droplet into my palm. I clenched my fist so fast I couldn’t tell if what I just saw was real or not.
I gawked at her, speechless.
Hen cut in at last, grabbing my arm protectively. I was surprised it took her so long. “Who are you? And who exactly do you think Raven is?” Hen seemed rattled by this girl’s sudden appearance. Like me, she wasn’t quick to trust anyone down here.
Sora didn’t answer, her eyes trained on the guards as she waited for an opportunity to sneak past them.
This was not going to end well.
I held out my hand to stop her, coming back to my senses after the initial shock of being recognized. Even though I believed this girl knew who I was, I also knew she was going to get us killed if we didn’t get back to work before the guards saw us. Which was only a matter of minutes. “Listen, collar or not, we’re not getting out of here alive. We can’t just walk out the front door to freedom,” I said, my voice tight. “No one escapes Malengard alive.” Skies, I sounded just like Hen.
Fear flashed across Sora’s face like the Raven she knew would never have said such a thing. “Sun, what have they done to you down here, Raven?”
We stared at each other for a long moment.
“You don’t belong here,” Sora said, her tone becoming forceful and urgent. “You’re a Zavien. You’re a fighter. You’re my friend. And in case you’ve forgotten, you’re a shapechanger. So, let’s get that collar off you so we can fly out of here. We have a mission to complete.”
Fly?
Hen’s eyes darted back and forth between me and Sora, like the wordZavienhad triggered a memory. “Wait, you think Raven is from the Zavien tribe? But they’re just a myth, right?”
“Her name’sRavenfor a reason,” Sora said.
“This sounds like a strange bedtime story,” I said, shaking my head in confusion. “I?—”
Before I could finish, a cold voice slithered into our conversation. “I know another bedtime story. About a malack who got away.”
The three of us turned to see Meat standing behind us, flanked by five other mineguards. The scowl on his bruised and bloodied face said he was seeking vengeance.
