My footsteps didn’t echo through our old house. The ceiling was too low and sloped, the walls too close together. Concrete painted green screamed at me instead of comforting me the way it once did. Crooked floorboards creaked as I entered the kitchen and looked around. The sight of the stovetop disturbed me, made my stomach twist and my lip curl up in disgust.

The smell of this place was still the same—old wood and soot. Except now it was tinged by hot summer stones as the sun blazed into the walls. People walked by the windows, children strode past the closed door, but it was quiet in here. As if the world knew I needed a moment to think.

There wasn’t much to reminisce on. There was nothing in this house. Nothing. There had been more in Cherish’s middle-of-the-woods cabin than there was in here. It was only silenced suffering and dust. I sat in here and wasted fifty-two years of my life away. Hid between the walls and kept away from the windows after dark.

My feet carried me to my old bedroom in the back of the house. It was so stuffy and hot it was suffocating. Dirt and sand coated the floor but I knelt down on it anyway, reaching beneath the too-small bed I’d slept in. Thrashed in.

I pulled out a box. Dark, dry wood with no designs, no paint, no carvings. Without feeling, without care or thought, I unlatched it and swung the top open.

There was no smell that came from inside. I’d expected death and decay, but all of that was gone, slipped through the cracks over the years. Nine dead flowers sat in there, flattened and brittle. All were a shade of deep red or gray.

The orchid Aldwin left for me on Cherish’s doorstep had turned the color of slate when it died. I wondered if he’d given it to me so I could think of the petals beneath my bed. Meant for me to keep these flowers so I could know what I’d been all along.

“Your daughter would be proud,” I said softly. Cherish froze for a moment, staring at the dark water, and I could tell she’d never heard those words before. It took her a moment to regain her thoughts.

“Most times when I walk by the river, I feel like she’s with me.” There was a glazed look to her eyes, like she could see something I couldn’t.

I looked at the water, too, and was struck with a sensation of coldness. Tiny bumps covered every inch of my skin. I knew what was coming as the temperature seemed to drop twenty, thirty, forty degrees. As I breathed out, I could see fog forming from my breath, even in the middle of summer.

My heart began racing. I looked around, eyeing Cherish to see if she was feeling what I was. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. When I looked at the forest, everything turned a familiar muted shade of blue. Dark and unsaturated and cold.

Then suddenly I felt far away, swept into a whole different version of the world. Like I was sucked through time and space into another dimension. I was not in my body, yet I still sat beside Cherish. She seemed to be saying something to me, but I couldn’t hear her, nor could I hear the river. It was as if it didn’t flow wherever I was.

The prickling at the back of my neck assured me this feeling was magic, but… was it mine? What was happening? I started to panic, my hands digging into the dirt beneath me, and just then—

“I’m here.”

My head swung to look over my shoulder, searching for whoever had spoken those words. There was nobody but the guards far behind us, though the voice was too soft and young and feminine to be them.

When I turned back around, I jumped and let out a yelp that Cherish strangely did not react to. A teenage girl was standing inches before me.

But every inch of her was covered in that same blue hue. Her skin was dark, her dress was light, her hair in two buns atop her head. She smiled at me, as if she’d been waiting a long, long time to see me.

Somewhere, I felt a tap on my arm. Not in this body, but in another one. When I looked at Cherish, I could see her grabbing my arm, shaking my still body. My body that I wasn’t in. That I seemed to have left on the other side.

“Tell her I love her,” the girl said to me.

Tears welled in my eyes, undiluted fear gripping every single one of my distant muscles. When I finally got a good look at the girl who couldn’t have even graduated secondary school, I saw it. I saw the brightness of the eyes I assumed were once yellow, and the shape of her nose and cheekbones. It was all Cherish.

It was Nala.

Before I could send myself into a downward spiral, Hazen stopped the group and checked his surroundings, then turned his back on the city and faced the rest of us.

“We split up here,” he ordered, his eyes grazing over every helmeted face. Even Ginny, the shortest of them all, wore a plated helmet that only showed her soft eyes.

“Eight o’clock sharp,” he reminded us, taking a moment to glance at the sun nearing the horizon. Then his eyes were on Thorne. “Good luck.”

Thorne did nothing more than nod, and began forming our group on the eastern side of the cream-colored cobblestone road. I turned to Hazen, his eyes full of pain yet to come. His lips, those soft and gentle lips, were turned into a frown as he looked at me. He showed nothing of the man who snuck into my tent last night or spoke of his scars in a forest pool. But the mark I’d left on him was still there, peeking above the neckline of his black shirt. If anybody had seen it, they didn’t say anything.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “For everything.”

“Stop,” he said, daring a step toward me. “No goodbyes.”

Tears welled up in my eyes, but I held them at bay and nodded. “Right.”

“I’ll see you on the other side, Nev.” There was a sad smile accompanying his words, and I matched his expression.

When I felt a hand on my arm, I painfully turned away from him and met Ginny, who had now removed her helmet, revealing her dark hair in a long braid. With one look at her, those tears fell, but I wiped them away and held my head high.

“I love you,” I blurted to her without thinking.

I did love her. She was someone I could consider a friend after a life without relationships. She was everything I was fighting for. She deserved so much more than this world could give her.

“I love you, too,” she whispered, her eyes glazing over with unshed tears.

Please, I begged every ancient god, please let her live.

That was all there was to say. No goodbyes, I reminded myself. And no more crying.

When I turned back toward Hazen, he was gone. Off to the western side of the road doing a final headcount, he looked as graceful as he was dangerous, and my heart ached. It took everything in me to rip my eyes from him and smile at Ginny before walking away toward my own group.

When we began our march east, I didn’t allow myself to look at the other troop across the road.

We would find each other again.