“No one is in the desert between here and Aredann. I’m too far away to see much clearly, but the whole estate feels…frantic.”

“Can you sense the Well?” Elan asked. “Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?”

“Questions,” Tal reminded him gently.

Elan almost winced. He’d forgotten already. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

“I can follow the aqueduct toward the Well. I can sense the water easily enough,” Jae said, interrupting his apology. “But…”

The question—But what?—was on the tip of his tongue. He swallowed it, waiting, and she finally continued.

“The barrier.” She shuddered, and her eyes blinked back to normal. She hunched over her knees again. “I still can’t see beyond it, and it still feels…cursed.”

“Is it…” He caught himself this time. “I’d like to know how far it is. If you don’t mind.”

“A few days, I think.”

“Nights. We’ll want to travel at night,” he decided. “It’s easier to move in the cold than the heat.”

“Don’t tell us what to do,” Jae snapped.

“Jae, he’s right,” Tal said, stretching forward toward his feet. He grimaced, but stretching probably wasn’t a bad idea, after all the walking and running they’d done. Elan reached out to do the same, but the burn throbbed, and he gave up, relaxing his body instead.

“He doesn’t get to give us orders anymore,” Jae said.

“He can’t give me orders anymore,” Tal answered. “Nothing he’s said has set off the Curse. He’s not…” Tal shot him an apologetic look but continued. “Since he’s not Avowed anymore, neither of you can order me to do anything.”

Tal grinned a little as he said it, but his hand drifted up toward the nape of his neck again. His fingers twitched for a moment, catching the loose end of a curl, and then he dropped his hand into his lap.

“I don’t want to give you any orders,” Elan said, fighting an urge to brush his fingers against the brand, his throat aching as if it had gone dry again. No one had been disavowed in years, and Elan had never heard of a Highest being disowned. But of course not. He knew now that disavowal wasn’t just about protecting the social order—it was about keeping the Highest’s secrets, defending the lies at the foundation of their world.

Disavowal meant he’d lost everything. Not just his family, his status, and his power, but everything he’d known. It was as if the sun had changed directions in the sky. Nothing was as he’d thought, and now, as far as the world was concerned, he was nothing. No one at all.

“Let’s rest,” Tal said, voice so soft that Elan could barely hear it. “We’ll figure out travel when we wake.”

It was nearly impossible to sleep, even with the shelter of the tent. Though the coarse fabric blocked out the worst of the sun and the heat, it was still stifling inside, especially with the three of them in such close quarters. Elan rolled over and over, unable to get comfortable, constantly jostling his burn and setting off cascades of pain. Finally he just lay still on his back, one arm draped over his eyes to block out the light.

After the sun peaked and began its evening descent, Tal sat up. Elan followed slowly, disoriented, and took a long drink from his water skin. Now his chest not only ached; it itched.

They folded the tent messily, not able to get the packs back into the neat order they’d been in before. It was good enough, though. After a quick meal of bread and dried meat, tasteless even compared to what he’d been eating at Aredann, they started walking again. Tal was the one who took the lead, urging them on even though the sun wasn’t down yet, and Jae didn’t argue with him about it.

The sun was directly in front of them on the horizon, lighting the desert with red and orange as if it were on fire. It was uncomfortably warm to walk, and the sky stretched above them, endless and cloudless, an expanse of perfect blue. This far out, there were hardly even any scrub bushes poking up through the sand, just dune after dune, patterned by the wind.

If every step the previous evening had ached, then this was agony for the first hour. Finally, as the sun dropped out of sight at last, Elan found the rhythm of it. Maybe walking so much more stretched the soreness from his limbs, or maybe they went numb, but as long as he put one foot in front of the other without hesitating, he didn’t stumble.

The moon was nearly as bright as the sun had been, silver instead of gold, but thankfully without the heat. It wasn’t quite full yet, but it was bright enough to see by easily. The group took a single long break for something like lunch, a midnight meal instead of midday.

They ate quietly, the night silent and still around them, until Jae said, “Tell me everything you know about magic.”

Elan almost choked, shocked by both the sudden sound and being given an order like that. Not that it was anything like he imagined the Curse to be; there was nothing that would force him to answer Jae. Most likely, she hadn’t even meant it like that, and just wasn’t used to asking for anything at all. But it still took him a second to remember that and to beat down the feeling that she had no right to demand anything of him.

He must have needed more time to do that than he thought, because Tal said, “It’s probably a good idea, Elan.”

“I know. I just…” He couldn’t explain why it had taken him by surprise. He thoughtlessly reached up to scratch the sore skin around his burn, winced, and then said, “Of course. I just don’t know how much you already know.”

“Not enough,” Jae said.

“Then I’ll start at the beginning, but I don’t know all that much, either. I wish I’d brought some of my papers….” There had been no time to retrieve them. He hoped someone would think to take them when Aredann was packed and abandoned. Erra had borrowed most of them from someone. She’d want them back, and he didn’t want all that knowledge to be lost with Aredann if Jae failed to save it.

Tal and Jae were both waiting expectantly, so he tried to remember what he’d been able to glean from the few pages that hadn’t been in that strange, other language. “The world and everything in it is built from the four elements—earth, wind, fire, and water—and each element has its own kind of energy. Mages can sense that energy and manipulate it, use it to craft almost anything they can imagine.”