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“Thank you, Hunter,” she told him quietly. “I’m sorry for what I said before. Just—Just thank you. For coming after us, and for saving me.” She gestured to Bear and amended, “For saving both of us.”

He seemed to realise it was important to her that he accept her gratitude, so he didn’t brush her thanks aside and claim that he was just doing his job as her teacher. Instead, he said, “You’re welcome, Alex.”

She smiled at him, and then turned her eyes to Bear when he let out a low groan and regained consciousness.

“So it wasn’t a nightmare, then?” he said, the pain still clear in his tone.

“The sooner we get back to my vessel, the sooner we can leave the island’s anti-Bubbledoor wards and return to the academy, leaving your nightmare as nothing but a memory,” Hunter said in an attempt to be comforting.

“How far is your vessel?” Alex asked.

“About an hour from here,” he answered.

Alex’s gaze flicked back down just in time to see Bear blanch at the idea of having to walk for another hour on his injured leg. He was quick to school his expression, but she hadn’t imagined the dread flashing across his features.

“Isn’t there another way?” she asked quietly.

“Not without leaving him here,” Hunter replied, just as quietly.

They both ignored Bear when he grumbled, “There’s no point whispering. I broke my leg, not my ears.”

“We can’t leave him here,” Alex said to Hunter, not even considering it as an option.

“I know that,” Hunter agreed. “Which is why I said we have an hour to go. Normally it would only take half that time, but I’m accounting for the slower pace.”

“Good of you,” Bear grumbled again, his normally cheerful humour tempered by his pain. “But how ’bout an alternative?”

Both Alex and Hunter looked at him, a sliver of moonlight streaming through the canopy and splashing across his face.

“If I’m right,” Bear said, “we’d only have to walk five minutes in that direction”—he indicated to his left—“before we’d be back at the Library doorway.”

Alex gaped at him. “How can youpossiblyknow that?”

“I told you, I spent a lot of time in survival VRs as a kid,” Bear answered. “And when I say a lot, I meana lot.”

“But we’ve been unconscious for most of our time here!”

“I can’t explain it,” Bear said with a shrug that turned into a moan as it jostled his leg. “Either trust me or don’t.”

Hunter studied Bear closely. “How confident are you?”

“’Bout seventy-five percent.”

Before Hunter could agree or disagree to the new plan, Alex heard something that caused her to speak up first.

“We’re going to have to take those odds,” she said, bending lower to pry her way under Bear’s upper torso and wrapping his arm around her shoulders.

Sensing her newfound haste and repeating the move on Bear’s other side, Hunter helped haul her friend painfully up to his feet and said, “What is it?”

“The Jarnocks,” Alex said. “They’re coming.”

Nineteen

The next five minutes spent sloughing throughthe jungle felt like an eternity to Alex. With each groan that Bear tried his hardest to repress, she felt the phantom pain in her own body. She feared her friend would pass out again from their hurried, jolting movements, but he managed to pull through, guiding them until they all but tripped over the pile of wintry clothing they’d removed when they’d first arrived.

Not wanting to panic the others about how close the Jarnocks were on their tail, Alex didn’t say anything, but she also didn’t delay in calling forth their return doorway. When Bear slurred something about grabbing their clothes, Alex cried, somewhat hysterically, “Forget them!” and hauled him through the door right along with Hunter.

They stumbled out into the foyer of the Library, the only place Alex had thought to deliver them to at a moment’s notice, but thankfully there was no one other than the librarian to witness their magical arrival—or the darts that flew through the doorway, missing them by sheer luck alone. The librarian, of course, only sniffed and turned his nose up at them before wandering off.