can’t risk staying in one place too long. Orrian forces conversation out of the rest of us, unwilling to let us stoop into morbid silence. Predictably, the first thing he asks for is Jaq and Ryfon’s story. I am surprised that the king has held off asking for as long as he has, I certainly know that my curiosity has increased as it has aged.

It turns out that once Jaq and Ryfon’s rafts had escaped from the bay they hadn’t travelled far. They led their group of rafts up the coast someway before bringing themselves in onto a smaller beach. They knew that they couldn’t come back to us, and that out there alone with only the young and vulnerable they wouldn’t survive in the open for long. So, they went back to the only place of real safety that they’d known since the Great Fire, a place so daring to return to that the colony would hopefully not think to look there. They went back to the mountain.

“Did everyone make it?” Orrian interrupts.

“No,” answers Jaq grimly. “We lost a couple to arrows and one of the elders passed away mid-journey.”

Silence hangs in the air as the tribespeople all process the loss of more of them. They must have expected casualties, but it still hurts when they are confirmed.

“Is Tharrin still alive?” Jaq asks. At first, I think he’s simply worried for his younger comrade’s safety, but his expression indicates a much deeper sadness.

“He was in one of the locked cells so he should be,” says Orrian hesitantly.

“Arys didn’t make it,” says Jaq.

It doesn’t seem possible, surely Jaq must be mistaken. That energetic boy, the one who had pestered his brother in front of Horith, who had constantly been running with his friends and playing even on the darkest of days, surely he can’t be gone too. I remember him skidding past us in the sand, ruining his brother’s food before running off gleefully. Children shouldn’t be touched by wars or fighting. Arys had been the only family that Tharrin had left. I recall his worries as he fretted in his cell, barely able to be comforted by Astera and Horas. If my heart has been aching for him before it may as well be withering and dying now. Tharrin will still be sitting there in his cell. Horas will be trying to take his mind away from his fears, and neither of them will yet know that they have been made a reality. For the second time that day we take a moment to mourn the lost.

“Please, continue,” Orrian says eventually, his voice quiet and soft.

It took them a little while to find the mountain entrance, and longer still to clear Faelyn’s rubble that hid it, but eventually they made their way back inside. They managed to get enough food for the others but couldn’t just sit there not knowing what happened to the rest of us. Then Jaq remembered the ambush that first night that they had found us.

Sure enough, the defeated colony soldiers were still there. Jaq had told Ryfon and the pair of them started constructing a plan to get into the colony. They waited until the other gates were open and then simply marched inside dressed as the soldiers. The key was confidence they said, they had an agreed backstory, but no one even stopped to ask who they were.

Once inside, they camped out for a day getting the layout of the city and trying to figure out how to get inside the inner gates. They even managed to familiarise themselves with a few of the actual colony men, introducing themselves as new recruits and learning their job. It was risky though, they always had to keep their helmets on to cover up the green tattoos that would have given them away.

One night they were awoken from their hiding spot by shouts running along the wall. They were screaming about some signal that had been lit in one of the towers. The next thing they knew they were being dragged along by the others towards the entrance.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when you lot came charging towards us,” Jaq says with a half laugh. “Here we were trying to figure out how in the god’s names we were going to get inside to rescue you and you make it all the way to us by yourselves.”

“Yes well, we have Damion to thank for that,” informs Orrian.

This leads to Damion moving onto his story about how he was taken from his den and forced to serve the colony, with some encouragement from Orrian. He would be treated like an animal, as were dozens of the kids that accompanied him. Nobody knew what happened once you got too old, one day someone would just disappear. Damion was quickly becoming one of the older workers when we had been brought in.

It sounds as though I’d spoken truer words than I realised when I’d been convincing him to help us. Orrian takes over the story from here, describing the battle in the cells and my idea to jump from the moat.

“That’s why we found you so wet?” Jaq asks incredulous before turning to me, “and that was all your idea?”

I nod, embarrassed.

“Wow,” he laughs. “No wonder you’re the Akanian.”

There it is again. Yes, I fought on the beach, but I couldn’t even kill an unarmed Becker at my feet, and it was Orrian who had done most of the fighting to get us freed. I don’t need the look of warning that Orrian gives me, I know not to reveal my doubts, but Jaq’s words claw at me still.

“What are we going to do now?” asks the girl, she had introduced herself earlier as Damaris.

“Aren’t we going to Avlym?” Damion asks confused. Damn, I’d almost forgotten of my empty promise.

“Damion, the colony-” I start, unsure of if my words will allow me to continue, “I’m so sorry. Avlym, it’s gone.”

“But you said-” Damion begins. Comprehension slowly dawns behind his

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