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I study his silhouette, clear against the night sky. “What about me? Why was I brought here? Where do I fit into all of this?”

He turns to face me. “That is what we need to discover.”

Silence falls. Beyond our shelter the caravan settles for the night, murmured conversations fading into silence, broken only by the occasional call of night birds, and the soft sound of wind through trees.

Sleep hovers just beyond reach, my mind churning with questions that only multiply the longer I remain in this world.

What awaits us in Ravencross? What secrets lie in the stories Sacha won't explain? What force pulled me off a Chicago street and dropped me into a desert tower in another reality? And now that his familiar has returned, now that he’s becoming whole again, where does that leave me?

The man sitting at the entrance of our shelter is keeping secrets, and revealing only what serves his purpose.

I know that the way I know the sun will rise tomorrow.

And that knowledge settles uncomfortably in my chest. Because the truth is, I don’t know if he sees me as an ally in all this, or just ameans to an end. A tool. Something to be used, then discarded once it’s served its purpose.

The woman who gave me clothes today showed me more kindness in one moment than Sacha has since the day we met.

And yet … I still find myself watching him. Trying to read him. Seeking something, approval maybe. Understanding. Or just a reason not to be afraid of what he’s becoming.

My fingers trace the weave of my new clothes. The fabric feels real beneath my fingertips, grounded and foreign at once. Chicago feels more like a dream with every passing hour. The thought should terrify me, but instead, it brings a strange, hollow ache.

I close my eyes and picture Ravencross somewhere in the mountains ahead, its name a promise or a warning, I can’t yet tell.

But maybe, just maybe, that’s where I’ll find the answer to the only question that truly matters.

Why me?

Chapter Twelve

SACHA

“The Vein does not demand allegiance. It reveals it.”

Writings of the Veinblood Masters

The night growsquiet around me. Stars wheel overhead. The caravan sleeps, forms huddled beneath blankets that ward against the chill. I remain the only one awake, seated at the edge of the shelter, listening to the night sounds of a world I am learning again.

I lift my hand. Shadows ripple between my joints, threading across my palm in shifting lines. There’s a restlessness beneath my skin, not mere curiosity, but a hunger. Freedom has returned, but it doesn’t satisfy. The years have left behind an ache that stillness cannot soothe. I need to know what is left of the world I lost. What the Authority destroyed. What might be reclaimed.

The mountain air tastes of pine and soil and woodsmoke, scents that stir memories I’d thought lost to time. For the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel truly awake. Not just alive, but returned.

Ellie sleeps fitfully behind me, her breathing catching now and then, most likely from dreams. Her journey from unwilling intruder to traveling companion has happened with remarkablespeed, dictated more by necessity than choice. She doesn’t trust me—why should she?—but she understands her survival here depends on the knowledge I possess.

Every time I look at her, the same questions rise. And I’m no closer to answering them.

Magic, as I once knew it, has been destroyed. The Authority made certain of that. They burned it from the land before I was taken, purging those who carried it in their blood. What remains now is what I hold, what they sealed away, believing it would never be loosed upon the world again.

I’m accustomed to understanding the magic I wield. Yet everything about Ellie resists explanation.

She is not supposed to be here. And I don’t understand what her presence means.

Ravencross lies less than half a day’s journey ahead. There, I can try to piece together what remains of the world I once knew, what has changed in my absence, and whether any of my former connections might still exist after so many years.

I shift position, easing stiff muscles. After so long inside the tower, my body has forgotten many physical discomforts, and while I still don’t need to eat or drink as often as other people, every little discomfort I do experience, I hoard. It proves I’m free.

A sound comes from the rocks above our camp. I remain motionless, extending my awareness outward through the shadows, between the trees, into the folds of night where light does not reach.

Something is moving along the ridge. A single observer. Human. Steady. Watching the caravan.