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“It’s numbing powder,” she said, practically breathing out the words. She felt the tingling along her gums and let herself take a bit more, already dreaming of the relief the medicine would bring.

“That won’t stop infection,” Flor said, almost petulant at her previous concerns being ignored.

Sofia could only shrug. “The healer put something on the cuts. We’ll be gone before I need more.”

Flor gave her a blank look. “You got carried in here looking three-fourths the way to dead and now you have a plan for escape?”

“Not yet,” Sofia said, not meeting Flor’s eyes. “I need to work on that. But that’s not the most important thing.”

“Of course not. Escape can wait. Please tell me what is more important.”

Sofia almost smiled. She’d missed Flor.

“Listen,” she said, pulling herself closer to the bars and dropping her voice. She ignored Flor’s attempt to change the subject back to her wounds with a sharp hiss. “We saw dragons.”

Flor blinked, expression flickering from confusion to concern. “I should check your head.”

She wished she had the energy to grab her friend and shake her.

“My head is fine.”

“You have a black eye and blood in your hair.”

“I don’t feel dizzy.”

Flor stared blankly at where she’d been dry heaving just a second before.

“I don’t feelthatdizzy. And that’s not why I’m talking about dragons.” She tried keeping her voice low even as she wanted to scream.

“You saw dragons.”

“Yes,” she said. “A cenote dragon and what I think was a sea dragon—it was farther away. Scales, Flor, I saw the damn thing up close. I felt its presence. I had a feather. The chief commander and the general both asked about them. They must have seen them, too. Or known about them. Heard about them.”

“The dragons.” Flor’s voice was flat.

Her friend looked at her like she’d truly gone crazy, and she couldn’t blame her. Maybe she had gone crazy. Maybe she’d been killed by the shapeshifters and the rest of this had all been a dream. A horrible and strange dream. It would explain why she couldn’t stop thinking about Fox.

“I’m not crazy,” Sofia said, wondering how many times she could say it before it made her sound more crazy.

“Who is we?”

“What?” she said, looking back at Flor.

“You said ‘we saw dragons’,” Flor said carefully.

With dread churning in her stomach.

“Fox Ocon.”

“The bastard that started all of this? The one that threw you in here, looking like—” she waved a hand at her. “You were gallivanting through the forest with him looking for dragons?”

“It was more complicated than that, but this wasn’t his handiwork. The general didn’t particularly like finding out I was still alive.” She fiddled with the small tin, knowing without proof that Fox had been the one to slip it into her pocket. Did it make up for him watching her tortured and interrogated? Perhaps not. But it meantsomething. It had to. “I have a lot to tell you,” Sofia said at last.

And she did. She told Flor everything, even the parts the other woman probably didn’t need or want to hear, but it was all she could do. She needed Flor to trust her. She needed Micael and the others to trust her.

Because they were going to get out of this, and she couldn’t do it alone. She needed her friends.

CHAPTERFORTY-ONE