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A smile crooked on his lips. “I’m the most real thing in this place.”

Corayne shrugged off the Spindleblade, letting it fall to the ground. She lunged forward, all but tackling Charlie around the middle. He toppled sideways, held up only by the man standing next to him. Corayne hardly cared, too busy wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

“You’re all sweaty,” Charlie grumbled. He made a show of trying to swat her off.

Corayne pulled back, taking him in again.Stubble on his cheeks, shadows beneath his eyes. Muck everywhere. And real.

She wrinkled her nose. “Well, youstink.”

His mud-brown eyes creased as he smiled back. “Quite a pair, then, the two of us.”

Justthe two of usechoed in her head. It was almost too much to bear.

“How did you find me?” she forced out, still clutching his forearms.

Over his shoulder, one of the Sirandel guard shifted into her eyeline.

“We found him,” the guard said. “It was not difficult. They filled half the Castlewood with their noise.”

Suddenly his rasping voice made sense. Corayne’s eyes widened.

“Did youshoutyour way into Elder custody?” she scoffed.

Charlie shrugged. “It worked,” he said, sounding just as surprised as she felt. “What about you?”

Her grin faded. “A search party found me the morning after—” She stumbled, the words too difficult to say. “After.”

Slowly, Charlie pulled his arms from her grip.

“I’m sorry for running away,” he said, his face turning pink with shame. Something glimmered in his eye and he scrubbed it away before a single tear could fall.

Corayne wanted to punch him.

“I’m not,” she said quickly, taking him by the shoulders again. Thistime, she held on too tightly, forcing Charlie to hug her back. “It’s the only reason you’re here now. With me.”

Even as she said it, she heard another voice in her head echoing the call.With me.Andry used to say it so many times, Corayne couldn’t believe she would never hear him say it again.

Charlie looked her dead in the eye, the same pain shining in him.

“With me,” he replied.

“I take it these are your Companions.”

Valnir’s low voice, breaking them apart. The Elder monarch looked them both over, before his gaze strayed to the stranger still standing next to Charlie.

“One of them is,” Corayne said, eyeing the unfamiliar man.

She read him as she would a map, eyeing his leathers and rapier. Her focus snagged on the familiar bronze blade poking out of his jacket.

“I am Garion,” the stranger said. “Of the Amhara.”

“Oh” popped out of Corayne’s mouth before she could stop herself.

Charlie flushed pink again.

Corayne looked between priest and assassin, delighted. Mismatched as the pair were, one a lithe killer with the bearing of a dancer, the other a fugitive priest with inky fingers, they seemed to fit together.

“A pleasure to finally meet you,” she said, taking Garion by the hand. “Charlie’s told me next to nothing.”