A scuffling noise outside my tent draws me from sleep, eyes flying open.

I throw my arm over my face to drown the sunlight that’s streaming through the folds of my tent, blinding me momentarily. 

Gods, I don’t remember the sun being this bright. 

I hear the noise again, closer this time than before. Slowly, I crawl over the tent’s entrance and peel the folds back, peeking through the opening. A long snout shoves its way through the opening. Yago’s wet nose leaves a trail of snot on my forehead.

“You about gave me a heart attack, buddy,” I say gently, reaching up to pet his muzzle. His lips nip at my fingers, and he snorts into the palm of my hand. 

“Okay, okay. Give me a second to wake up, and I’ll be out in a moment.”

Satisfied, he withdraws his head from my tent, and I hear him amble away. I flop back down into the pile of furs and listen to the sounds of camp waking up for the day.

Birds chirp distantly. The scuff of boots dragging across the dirt. A guard asks another to help him break down a few tents. 

It’s all so ordinary. Nobody is thinking about the girl with silver flames. Or how the King waits for us on the other side of this journey.

It unnerves me.

I frown and sit up, turning my wrists over to inspect my cuffs once again. The morning sunlight illuminates flecks of blue embedded in the stone that I missed the night before. 

Out of curiosity, I reach for my fire. Unlike the cell where I was met with a pit of nothing, I hit a hard wall that seems to wrap around the core of my magic where it lies in my stomach. I reach harder, rapping a mental finger against the exterior, but it holds firm.

Footsteps sound outside my tent and stop before the entrance. “Aruna? We’re leaving soon. Are you ready to go?”

I drop my wrists into my lap. “Yes.  I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Archie saved you some breakfast if you want it. I’ll leave it here for you.” I hear his riding leather scrunch together as he kneels and sets a bowl beside the tent. 

I stand up and regret the movement instantly, my legs painfully stiff from the ride yesterday. Ducking through the folds of the tent, I find Callahan standing with his arms crossed over his chest. 

“Did you rest well enough?”

I reach my hands over my head and stretch slowly from side to side before bending and picking up the bowl of breakfast mush. I can’t tell what it is exactly, but the savory smells are appetizing at least. 

“Hardly, but I’ll manage. Where will we end up today?”

He watches as I spoon a little of the mush into my mouth and chew the grainy texture. It’s salty with bits of vegetables throughout. I’ve definitely had worse.

“Our goal is to reach the edge of Emscroft Forest by nightfall. It’ll take us a good day or two to make it through the forest, but it’s easier to navigate during the day.”

“Why’s that?”

He raises a brow. “You’ve never been to Rokos, have you?”

Captain Obvious strikes again. “No. I was raised in Aeris with my family before Njal ransacked our village and captured me. I’ve only seen the southern tip of Rokos while traveling to his manor, but I was drugged for most of it.”

His other brow joins the first, high on his forehead. “How long ago was that?”

I monitor him for a beat before answering, narrowing my eyes slightly. “Why does it matter?”

He holds his hands up as if surrendering. “I was just curious. Don’t answer if you don’t want to.”

A guard calls his name and he half turns before looking back to me. “That’s our cue. Time to saddle up, again. You can leave the tent, someone will pack it up for you.”

I follow him over to the horses and find Yago. Cal tries to help me up again but I shoot him a glare before climbing into the saddle. That left eyebrow of his lifts again before he shrugs and turns away to mount his own horse. I wonder if it’s perpetually stuck that way.

Our caravan sets off once again, faster than yesterday. My sore muscles protest every move across the land and I curse myself silently for forgetting to seek out Archie before we left. I try shifting in the saddle a few times to alleviate the ache but after a while, a new set of muscles starts to ache, forcing me to shift again. 

I focus on the land around us to take my mind off the pain. Grassy plains stretch on for miles before disappearing into a thick forest at the bottom of a distant mountain range. If my memory is correct, those are the Grenvern Highlands that split the continent in half.

The terrain in Rokos is vastly different than Aeris. Whereas the former is mostly landlocked between two continents, Aeris on the south and Vidas in the north, and covered mostly by cold grasslands, Aeris borders the Oaktham Sea and is made up of rocky terrain and smells of salt. Elyna used to hate the way the sea spray and humid weather made her hair frizz terribly. 

“I just don’t understand why mama and papa had to settle in the swampy part of the continent,” she complained on a particularly hot and muggy day. We had opted for a walk along the coast in hopes the waves would shower us with cooler weather. Instead, it just made Elyna’s hair shrink even more than usual.

“I mean, seriously.” She went on. “They both had wavy hair and suffered from the same frizzy fate as we do. Wouldn’t they want to spare their daughters from having to endure it too?”

I rolled my eyes at her. “You are so dramatic sometimes, Elyna. Tell me why you’ve taken to studying ceramics when you could certainly excel in the theatre?”

“Because you made it look so easy that I figured, ‘hey, if Aruna can do it, certainly I can too.’”

I scoffed at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I adore my big sister so much that I’d do anything to be just like her.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what I thought,” I muttered. Her blue eyes pop against the ocean backdrop. A smattering of freckles dances across her slightly upturned nose that mirrors mine, one of the only similarities we have with each other. Her long, golden brown hair whips behind in perfect curls as the ocean breeze picks up momentarily, then settles back down. “I’ll never understand why you got all the good familial genes and I’m stuck with Grandmam’s drab coloring.”

She turned to me with a surprised look on her face. “Are you kidding? Men practically drop at your feet and beg you to spare even a single glance in their direction with those silver eyes. It totally works with your pale skin and black hair. You have a mysterious witchy vibe that men drool over.”

“Yeah, right,” I snort, biting the words off. “Run in fear is more like it.”

“Remember Draeden Lance and how he literally followed you around like a pup on a leash? You have no idea the effect you have on men. They love powerful women, and you, my dear sister of silver flames, are as powerful as they get.”

“Draeden Lance was a lovesick fool who moved on to the next as fast as he could when I told him I’d roast him alive if he didn’t leave me alone.”

“Semantics,” she said, waving a hand in front of her face. “All I’m saying is one day, you’re going to find a man who can handle everything you bring with you and won’t run away with his tail between his legs when you threaten to melt the flesh off his bones.”

“Who says I need a man?”

“Gods, Aruna. I’m obviously not saying that, I just mean that someday I hope you find someone who wants to take care of you and that you let them.”

I let her words sink in. Is that something I wanted? When I looked to the future, I saw me, Elyna, and maybe a cat or two. There was never a man pictured in that scenario, and I was most inclined for it to stay that way.

I turned to her, needing to get out of the hot seat. “Alright, miss Love Guru, what about you then? I see the way you and Rafferty Sala sneak glances at each other during the weekend markets.”

Elyna ducks her face away from me, but not before I caught the tinge of pink across her cheeks. “Raf and I are friends, that’s all. He helps me carry in the sacks of flour at the bakery when a delivery comes in.”

“Raf, eh?” I tease, poking her between the ribs. “I saw the eighteen roses on your desk that mysteriously appeared last week on your birthday. Don’t lie. Besides, at least he’s cute.”

“Very cute, but I swear. I’m focusing on school and work right now, and he knows that. I don’t have time for a boyfriend, and I don’t really want the drama if I’m being completely truthful.”

I laugh and thread my fingers through hers. “You and me both, Elly.” The sunset ripples off the ocean, casting a rose-gold hue over the world. A flash of white on the ground caught my eye and I spy a sand dollar. I bend and pick it up, flipping it over to inspect the other side before stuffing it into my pocket.

Now, back in Yago’s saddle, I struggle once again to smother the deep sorrow gathering in my chest as the sun overhead begins to set. It pales in comparison to the sunsets we had back home. Nothing will ever come close to the beauty of the walks at dusk I used to share with my sister.

I have no idea if Elyna heeded my advice to run as far from our little coast village as she could without looking back when Njal and his men came for me. I can only pray to the gods she did, and that wherever she landed, she is safe.

I wonder if Raf went with her.