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It was as if someone had emptied a chest of jewels onto the world. Amethyst fields and coral forests, bright crimson roads and rivers that rippled a hundred different iridescent shades—opal and obsidian and milky-pink pearl. The cities that scattered the countryside boasted polished rooftops that winked with starlight. Thorn watched a flock of gleaming turquoise birds, bright as stars, spin past on a mountain wind.

An ache grew in Thorn’s heart. Tears burned behind her nose. The jumbled colors reminded her of her father’s gardens, and her own collection of paints—but the colors were so bright that she soon had to cover her eyes.

Zaf, though, stared dreamily at the world.

“Have you ever seen anything quite so lovely?” she whispered.

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to look at,” Thorn called down to Katsom. “There’s so much out there!”

“City on edge!” Katsom called. “Girlie, can’t you see?”

Thorn squinted through her fingers at the pink easternborder, her eyes watering from the glare of stars above and land below.

Then—there. A glint of a city, so tiny on the far horizon that it could have belonged to ants rather than people. It bordered a thin black line. An ocean?

“A city on the sea?” she called down to Katsom. “Is that what you mean?”

“City on sea!” Katsom answered. “City on sea!”

The birds scattered throughout the trees slapped their wings together, wet and thunderous, so loud that Thorn’s ears rang.

“Is that a yes?” Zaf muttered.

But Thorn could no longer keep her eyes open. She squeezed them shut against the blinding world; tears slipped down her cheeks.

“Hey there. You all right?” Zaf’s hand was soft on Thorn’s arm. “You’re crying.”

“My eyes keep watering. It’s so bright!”

“Oh, I think it’s just right. The Vale seems so dingy and gray compared—”

Before Zaf could finish, Katsom shot up into the air before them—Noro wrapped in one set of talons, Bartos in the other.

“Time for the help,” said Katsom. His wide black eyes gleamed, turning Thorn’s stomach.

Then Katsom used his beak to grab Thorn and Zaf by their collars and swooped down from the treetops, back to the forest floor, to drop them all unceremoniously into a soft grassy hollow in the ground.

They landed hard on a carpet of eggshells.

Giant, shattered white eggshells, still warm and sticky, speckled with a blue that matched Katsom’s beak.

“Thorn,” said Zaf, carefully calm. “Turn around. Slowly.”

Thorn obeyed.

Six Zaf-sized birds—their skin pink and gleaming, their eyes bleary and white—stared from the shadows.

One tilted its head and squawked, “Seen you.”

Another squawked, “Bite you.”

Two more than one,Katsom had said.

Six birds. Six pairs of unblinking eyes.

A shadow fell across the nest. “New girl, you and stick head go. Too much food. Too much magic.” Katsom stretched out a wing. “You climb. Bye, girlie girl. Bye, soldier boy. Two for six is one third each.”

Bartos scrambled away from the birds and shoved Thornand Zaf behind him. Noro surged forward with his head bowed and his horn flashing.