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I glanced back and forth between him and Barrd. Was I going to trust these strangers over Jeddak? I didn’t want to believe him, though I couldn’t deny that I’d felt Jeddak had been hiding something since the moment we’d met. Had I been so distracted by his charm and good looks that I didn’t realize he’d been lying to me this entire time? Could I have been that naïve?

“You can’t trust him,” Skyler said softly, as if he was reading my thoughts. “He’s using you.”

My face grew hot. This was the same thing that Jeddak had said about Skyler. One of them was lying to me, and I had a feeling I knew which one.

“Will you stay here while I try to help Sora?” he asked, his eyes pleading. “I’ll return as soon as I can.”

I nodded.

Skyler sighed with relief. “Wait for me,” he called out before he and Barrd vanished, transforming into silhouettes of wings as they flew up into the stars.

I stared at the sky for a long time after they left, Skyler’s words replaying over and over in my head.He’s using you.

I swallowed the acid rising in my throat. Come morning, I was going to find out the truth.

38

Jeddak

“Wake up.”

A harsh voice pried its way into my dream, tugging me toward a hazy consciousness. I didn’t open my eyes, waiting to see if the voice was real or imagined.

“Wake up!”

This time, the words were accompanied by a not-so-gentle nudge to my shins.

Instinctively, my body moved. In a breath, I was upright, reaching for my staff before I realized it wasn’t there.

“Raven?” I blinked several times to make sure my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me. Her midnight eyes were slits, her hair wild and windblown. She looked like a brewing storm. “What are you doing? What’s wrong?” My voice strained with worry. If the Bramblemen had done something to hurt her?—

“Did you know about the map?” Raven asked, her voice barely on the cool side of boiling.

“What?” I let my fists drop. My brain was still foggy from sleep, but it didn’t take much to realize that Raven had finally seen through my lies.

“You’re after the stone, aren’t you?” she said, though it was more of an accusation than a question.

I glanced back at Kah.

Kah took a step backward as if to say,You’re on your own on this one.

“Raven, listen. Yes, but it’s not what you think?—”

“You liar!” Her words turned angry, like the restraints on her true emotions had just been unlocked. “You said you’d take me to Askeland so your grandmother could restore my magic. But this entire time, you were just using me to get to the map, weren’t you?”

“Wait, it’s not like that,” I said, holding up my hands like I was trying to calm a wild animal. Skies, this was not how I’d envisioned this conversation going. Or maybe this wasexactlyhow I’d envisioned this conversation going and why I’d delayed it for so long.

“That’s why you were so upset when you found out my magic was gone, wasn’t it?” she shouted. “Because you realized I couldn’t read the map, meaning you couldn’t get the stone and win the favor of your blazen king! So, you’re taking me to Askeland to fix me like a—like a broken wagon or something—so you can just keep using me for your own selfish needs.”

“Blazenhell, Raven, will you just let me explain?”

“Please do. Because I’m starting to think everything you’ve said to me since the moment we met has been a lie. Skies, Jeddak, would you even have looked twice at me in Malengard if it weren’t for this map?”

That was the scariest part to me. Iwouldn’thave. I would have left her behind—just like I’d left behind my friends and family and home—all to save Lila. The thought stole the airfrom my lungs. But everything had changed since Raven and I escaped Malengard. When I looked at her now, I couldn’t deny the unseen force that pulled us together like the tide against the shore. When I’d left Askeland, Lila was the pulse in my veins, but Raven had become the air I breathed. She was a part of me. A part I wasn’t willing to let go of.

“Would you have?” Raven repeated. Seeming unsure of what to do with her hands, she crossed them in a defiant manner over her chest. Despite the frost that clung to the bramble around us, her cheeks burned red with anger.

“Does it matter? You’re free now,” I said, staring past her shoulder. If I met her eyes, I didn’t trust myself not to move to her and meet her lips with mine to prove to her that this—us—was about more than the stupid map or stone. But there were too many reasons that could never happen again, so I kept my gaze aloft.