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“What?” I panted.

“You don’t smile very often,” she said, a small crease forming between her brows. “Did you realize that?”

I shook my head.

“You should.” She grinned, and if it meant I got that in return, I’d try to smile more.

The rooms we’d been given were set above a tavern. When I descended the stairs that evening after bathing, Mila and Esmond were already around a table with another Bodymelder. They pulled out a chair between them for me.

“Thanks,” I said, sinking into it. “You wrote to Lyria?”

“No update,” Mila offered.

“I don’t like that.” I took a sip of the ale set before me. “We should have word of what Kakias is doing now.” She couldn’t be in Bodymelder Territory undetected and silent. My nerves prickled at the possibility.

“Malakai,” Esmond said. “Meet Gatrielle. We grew up together.”

I extended my hand to the Bodymelder. When he leaned across the table, his brown curls shifted across his shoulders, pale skin illuminated by the mystlight overhead to highlight the soft lines of his face and amicable grin. He looked about Esmond’s age—thirty or so.

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

“And you.” He gripped his drink with the hand I’d shook, and I noticed he did not have the KLP tattoos on his knuckles like other Bodymelders. “Esmond has been catching me up on his time with you all.”

I cast a glance at Esmond. With one ankle crossed over his knee, he seemed more at ease here than I’d ever seen of him before. “Gatrielle returned today from a special task for Brigiet and me,” he explained. “Collecting those ingredients Santorina wrote about. He’s the friend I told you about earlier.”

I sat up straighter, the noise in the tavern muting to a din. Gatrielle was not just any Bodymelder then—he was the one who had access to Firebird’s Field.

“I hear you can help us.” I dropped my voice, running a hand over the scar on my jaw.

“That I can.”

Though the hum in my veins had been stifled a bit during training, it kicked back up again. Lucidius’s ramblings of Firebird’s Field spurred through my mind. “Could we go tomorrow?”

“Don’t we need Ophelia?” Mila asked, but she watched my fingers tapping the table and seemed to understand.

“No reason we can’t take a look around,” I said, turning back to Esmond and Gatrielle. “If that’s allowed?”

The energy at the table shifted as Gatrielle grinned, hungry for an Angel’s adventure. “Absolutely.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Ophelia

The small villages the Bodymelders structured their territory in made it immensely harder to travel unnoticed. Now that we knew Kakias was coming, we needed to get to Firebird’s Field as quickly and covertly as possible.

We didn’t want to go through fields out of respect for the produce and flora they worked so hard to grow. Given that the towns and their crops formed a checkerboard across the territory, it was hard to avoid. They used every inch of the land besides the forests, a few vacant stretches of plains, and the trench near the capital.

We were left skirting the perimeters of fields on the outskirts of village borders. We pulled up our hoods when we couldn’t duck into the forests for coverage, avoiding any warriors, humans, or animals we saw. It was a stark contrast to the welcome we’d received from Ezalia and her Seawatchers, first at Brontain and then in her own home.

We could have written to Brigiet or Esmond and asked for assistance in securing passage, but with Kakias tracking me, it was too risky. It was a hazard to be anywhere near the innocent villages, truly.

The forests, though—those were safest. The Gennium Forest in particular stretched between fields of flowers, produce, and herbs, forming a network of gnarled branches and natural shelters.

That was the route we’d been on for days now, barely resting.

It was the cyphers’ ash-white trunks I was observing when a needle of pain stabbed through my arm. It twisted, and I bit back on a cry.

“All right, Alabath?” Tolek asked from atop Astania.